Just a Church Door

A heavy, wood and iron door, the side entry into one of many churches in the town. There were at least three or four, plus this church, depending on how you counted chapels. People came and went through the door. It had been there since the stones of the church were laid in order on their foundations, an ordinary door to keep weather out and people in. Like every other door in every other church.

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Seasonal Music – All Hallows Eve

So, I was tied up writing the Cat Christmas story for this year, and had a concert to assist with, and Day Job work. This week is…Odd, even by my standards, and that’s just taking into account the Knowns and the Known-Unknowns. [h/t Sec. Rumsfeld]

The spooky, Satanic, and scary have fascinated musicians for quite a while. Some of the compositions are better known than others, and some have become seasonal icons. One of those is:

In a way Saint-Saens was nodding to the Baroque composer C. W. Gluck. The “Dance of the Furies” from “Orpheus and Euridice” is not as creepy, but just as frenetic, a bit like “Hall of the Mountain King.” (Which is an interesting music-history story in itself.)

The Anthology Lives!!

It’s alive!

For certain publishing of fiction versions of “alive”.

The stories range in tone and topic, but all are based on J. L. Curtis’s “What if California made good on its threat to secede?” question.

A teaser for my offering, “Roll, Colorado, Roll!”

Saturday Story: Reaping the Harvest Part 2

Kiara has been selected to marry the nephew of the Empress of NovRodi. Kiara’s mother has plans…

In a New World

 

The next weeks passed in a hazy mist of fabric, fussing, and her mother’s hysterics. Kiara began to look forward to going to NovRodi because after she married, her mother could no longer interfere with her every minute. Forgive me, Godown, but I liked it better when she pretended I did not exist.

Kiara leaned into the body brush, giving Woody a thorough cleaning before she allowed the grooms to put the saddle on him. She needed to get out of the manor house for a while, even though the low, dark skies and wind from the sea warned of a little late snow. Woody had already started shedding his heavy winter coat and red-brown hair drifted down around her, settling onto her cloak and split skirt. She did not care in the least. Smelling like horse was preferable to enduring her mother’s vapors. Her father had gone out on a diplomatic visit to Courland, leaving Kiara to her mother’s mercies.

Charity Bleg

This is not for me, but for a young family that really needs a little assist. OK, a lot of assist. I’ve chipped in what I could. Kind thoughts and prayers, for those so inclined, are also welcome as Andi and her family try to cope with this. Several of us are participating, so you may have seen this at Old NFO’s and Peter Grant’s places, among others.

“I know this is a lousy time to ask for money, but one of our extended Blogarado family is in need. FarmFam’s daughter-in-law, Andi, 33 and the mother of two small boys, suffered a stroke in mid August. Unfortunately, it wasn’t diagnosed correctly for two weeks, delaying treatment.

She’s facing a year to 18 months of physical therapy to get back to full function. 

Therapy costs are running $200-500 per session, and she needs therapy once a week. Andi has not been able to afford health insurance, because she her husband own a small business that makes too much money for them to get assistance with health insurance, but not enough for them to be able to afford health insurance, and raising two boys.

Any help will be much appreciated, as Andi has begun physical therapy, and without health insurance she has to pay the full cost of every session.

In order to help her out, we are doing another gun raffle to try to help her with her therapy. One change from what we did for Tam is to run this through a Go Fund Me, https://www.gofundme.com/andrea-keenan-medical-fund, so that the money is immediately available to her for her therapy. One IRS change is that Go Fund Me $$ are now counted as income for the family, so we are shooting for a goal of $25,000 to offset the tax burden they will be hit with.

Here are the ‘rules’ $10 per chance, $50/6 chances, $100/12 chances, etc. Make your donation to the Go Fund Me above, and copy your donation receipt to 4anditherapy@gmail.com. This will count as your entry into the raffle. If you have already donated, we will accept prior donations to the Go Fund Me.

The raffle will run from now through the end of November, with the drawing to be held 1 December via a random drawing program. First number gets their choice, second gets their choice, etc.

The raffle packages are-

Her Royal Lowness…

My lap, my rules.

Restriction or Protection? Speech and Government

Free speech has been a hot topic this year. Is some speech too “dangerous” or “Painful” or “hatred-inciting” to be allowed? Can someone be prosecuted for showing a historical photograph that might be offensive to a protected group? While people in the US are arguing about it, and Canada’s parliament is listening to testimony about possible regulation of “Islamophobic” speech, the German government has made it a federal offense, punishable by large fines, if social media platforms do not quickly remove any material deemed “offensive and hateful” by the German government. And then there’s this, courtesy of the Gatestone Institute:

Meanwhile, the district court in Munich recently sentenced a German journalist, Michael Stürzenberger, to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photograph. The court found Stürzenberger guilty of “disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations”. While the mutual admiration that once existed between al-Husseini and German Nazis is an undisputed historical fact, now evidently history is being rewritten by German courts. Stürzenberger has appealed the verdict.

 

I strongly encourage you to read the entire article from the Gatestone Institute. It is a clear example of what happens when a government’s powers come from above, not from below, and when protecting the people from possibly damaging ideas and words is more important than freedom of debate and discussion. The Germans, and British, are not the first to follow this path. In many ways, they are on the traditional route, and it is the United States that went totally off the historical deep end. As is our wont.

Flutter-bys

Monarchs of all they survey.

I live on the edge of the monarch migration path. We don’t see the huge clouds of butterflies moving through. However, every autumn, it seems that monarchs, queens, painted-ladies, and others suddenly erupt out of the ground, trying to rip the Buddleia out of by their roots. The big plants in the front garden get most of the attention, but the ones in the back yard do not go unvisited. In case you were wondering, the Buddleia is five feet tall. The one in the back yard is six feet tall.

Happy Mole Day!

A rerun, yes. But still…

The author before caffeine.

Oops! Wrong mole!

This mole.

Double pun for the win!

Happy Mole Day!

Howdy, Instapunderati!

Too-Many-Tomatoes Sauce

It’s that time of year, when the tomato plants that spent all summer growing but not bearing fruit have decided to go all out, hell-bent for election, bushels-or-bust. Redquarters has three tomato plants, and we are up to our ears in cherry tomatoes and a few Romas. The snails and blue jays also like Romas, much to MomRed’s disgust and frustration. So what do you do when you have a quart a day of cherry tomatoes? Pasta sauce.