Friday, October 31, 2008

5 Halloween Character Case Files

I got this article from WebMD, by way of Alicia's blog Mental Health Notes (thanks, Alicia!).

They did case files for witches, zombies, ghouls, vampires, and werewolves. It's pretty fascinating. Some of the things we learn are that witches are probably the most psychologically healthy of the characters, since they were likely to have been women healers and herbalists, especially in the Middle Ages. Not that there haven't been women who weren't mentally ill or used their skills for harm, but mostly, they were just misunderstood and feared because of their knowledge and power.

Zombies were probably originally victims of medieval "trials by ordeal" in which accused persons were treated with a drug that made some people stumble about and walk stiffly with arms outstretched (of course, if you didn't do that, you were innocent). It's also possible that another origin was in Haiti, among voodoo priests who would drug a victim into subservience, say that it was done by magic, and make those victims their zombie slaves.

Ghouls, which are creatures that eat corpses, were probably originally people with one of those disordered compulsions that compelled them to fantasize and obsess about eating dead flesh, and then sometimes to do it. That's about all they say, but I'd be very interested in knowing more about that kind of obsession (or maybe I'm just better off not knowing!).

Apparently there are several psychiatrists who have done analyses of vampires, particularly Bram Stoker's Dracula. They talk about a pathological need to control others, which may be represented by their controlling their very life and death through their blood. They also mention anemia as a possible physiological cause, but surprisingly they don't mention porphyria, which is the one I've always heard.

Werewolves and other were-animals are probably afflicted with a rare psychiatric disorder called lycanthropy. In this disorder, the person imagines himself or herself able to turn into an animal, possibly as a way to cope with violent or murderous feelings.

So, there you go. All the spooky stories, all the supernatural things that have ever happened can be explained by the psychiatrists.

Or can they?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

And now for something really scary...

In honor of Halloween, I'm posting a site that might interest you. It features photographs and videos of ghosts and other entities that are thought to be supernatural. The site is Slightly Warped's Ghastly Ghost Gallery .

I am warning you, though, that some of these are really scary. Not bloody or gory, but just so real, and experts have never been able to figure out how they might have been faked or whether there's another, less supernatural explanation. So, if you are freaked out by this sort of thing, you probably shouldn't check this out. I kind of wish I had given myself that advice last night; I might have slept better.

I don't have any opinion about the veracity of these photos and videos. They look real to me, but I would probably be very easy to fool. But I do know that there are things in the world that can't be explained. And I also know that most of the people of the world throughout history have believed that the supernatural world touches the natural one--at least occasionally. That's pretty persuasive to me.

Love y'all. Have a safe Halloween.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Missouri Proposition A

One of the pieces of legistlation we'll be voting on here in Missouri is Proposition A, which would remove limits on gambling losses at Missouri casinos. Two groups that make a pretty good case for both sides of that argument are Casino Watch, Inc., and the Missouri Riverboat Gaming Association.

My first reaction was to say absolutely not, no way should loss limits be lifted. The loss limit in Missouri for any person in any single visit at one casino is $500, which has been in place since riverboat gambling was legalized in Missouri in 1992. The legislature has had many opportunities to lift this limit, but those bills have never passed in in all this time. The idea is that gambling addicts can't lose too much money in one sitting; it was one of the safeguards that voters insisted on before they would approve gambling. The president of Casino Watch has a lot of other things to say about the negative effects of lifting the loss limit.

But, the MRGA makes some good points about the problems of loss limits. They claim that Missouri loses gambling revenue because tourists go to other states that don't have them, such as our neighbors Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. And if Prop A passes, people can lose a lot more money, which will go to the casinos, which the state can then tax (Prop A includes a 1% increase in the casino tax). And of course, that money goes to the schools.

The Proposition is presented in such a way that its chief arguments are, "Everyone else is doing this and we are missing out on it," and "Don't you want to give money to the schools?"

And yet, I also know how devasting and destructive a gambling addiction can be to a family and community, and how many years it can families take to recover from some gambling losses. I don't know that it's right to fund our children's future on that kind of misery. But nobody is forced to gamble--this isn't a tax--and the schools need to be funded.

I don't know how I'm voting on this yet. I'm leaning toward no, but the arguments for it make a lot of sense, too.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsy

S.I.J. Schereschewsky is one of my favorite saints. I preached this sermon on his feast day a few years ago. It tells his amazing, humbling story.




“Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day…preparing us for an eternal weight of glory”

There are few saints whose lives I have found as poignant as Joseph Schereschewsky.

One article stated about him that he was the last person one might have expected to end his life working for Jesus from a wheelchair.

He was born to a Jewish family in Lithuania,
and converted to Christianity while he was in rabbinical school.

He came to the United States to study,
became an Episcopalian, and ended up at General Seminary.

He never actually graduated from General,
because Bishop Boone took him and ordained him and sent him to be a missionary to China.

I assume that young Joseph was a good priest.
He was certainly much beloved by the people in his care.

But his one outstanding gift,
the thing for which he is remembered
a hundred and more years later,
is his gift for languages.

He learned one Chinese dialect on the ship on his way to China, and by the time his ministry was over,
he had translated either parts or the whole of the Bible into five different Oriental dialects.

Along the way he got married to Susan Mary Waring,
and together they ministered to the people of China and Japan.

He was made bishop of Shanghai in 1877,
a post he didn’t really want,
but he took for the sake of his beloved people and beloved church.

That same year he founded St. John’s University,
so that Chinese Christians would have place to go and learn.

“Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day...preparing us for an eternal weight of glory.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t bishop for very long.
After six years in that office, he developed a disease,
which some say was Parkinson’s,
but could have been some other disease,
which resulted in him being largely paralyzed.
He resigned as bishop.

Now I don’t know what he was thinking at this point.

He was a world-renowned expert on Oriental culture and languages.

He was a world-traveled missionary bishop with a passion for the word of God.

He was at home with people the rest of the world didn’t give much thought to.

His life to that point was full of active, assertive verbs:
He founded and built and opened and taught and gave.

He resigned as Bishop and went back to the United States, and as I understand it took up residence in a little house just over the hill there, right here in Sewanee.

But I can’t really say he went back home to the United States, because it’s very clear his home was no longer on this side of the Pacific.

I imagine, though, that he returned to the US because he thought he was coming home to die.

He was paralyzed and sick and unable to do the things he was in the Orient to do.
He and his wife came back to prepare for his death.

“Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day...preparing us for an eternal weight of glory.”

But, as it happens,
while he did remain sick and paralyzed,
while he remained in a wheelchair unable to go out among his people and to his school,
he did not die.

And if you are not going to die, you have to find something to do. And there was one thing Joseph knew he could do.

He could translate.

So he and Susan returned to Shanghai and then to Tokyo.

Toward the end of his life,
Joseph said the thing for which he is most famous.

He said,
“I have sat in this chair for over twenty years.
It seemed very hard at first.
But God knew best.
He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”

That one line, “It seemed very hard at first,”
just about breaks my heart.

It seemed very hard at first.
Most of us can probably only imagine how hard it really was.

But even illness and paralysis could not keep this man from doing what God had given him to do.

He could translate,
he could make sure that people had access to God’s revelation in the Scriptures,
and that is what he did.

With what Lesser Feasts and Fasts calls “heroic perseverance,” Joseph completed his last translation of the Bible,
typing over 2000 pages
with the middle finger of his partially crippled hand.

And after 20 years of that,
of sitting bound to a wheelchair typing away in Wenli,
yet another Chinese dialect,
he was able to say,
“God knew best.
He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”

“Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day…preparing us for an eternal weight of glory”

If any life of any Christian could be said to demonstrate this verse from Second Corinthians, it’s Joseph Schereschewsky’s.

For over two decades, his outer life wasted away,
and day by day his inner nature was renewed.

Saint Paul says that as our outer nature wastes away,
our inner nature is being renewed as preparation for the eternal weight of glory.

By the time Joseph died in 1906,
the eternal weight of glory was shining through him,
through his obedience,
through his work,
through his perseverance,
through his love,
so that he was a nearly transparent vehicle of God’s
power made perfect in weakness.
The eternal weight of glory.

This kind of sainthood is humbling and
somewhat frightening for the rest of us.

It has some ramifications for us a hundred years later.

It means we’ve got no right to complain,
and no excuse for anything less than heroic perseverance.

It means that everything else can waste away,
including our very bodies,
but we are still to be renewed inside ourselves,
in the dwelling place of Christ.

We are being prepared for an eternal weight of glory,
and in the face of Joseph Schereschewsky’s
extraordinary example,
we’ve got no excuse in the world,
no reason at all that that glory shouldn’t shine in us as well.

But they're not terrorists...

This weekend, the Bush administration took North Korea off the Terrorist Nation list. This is in spite of the fact that North Korea is the #1 persecutor of Christians in the world, and has been for 6 years running--imprisoning, torturing, and killing more Christian believers than China, the Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq.

I don't know if anyone needed more proof that the United States is not a Christian nation by a long shot, but if you did, you can read more about it here. No Christian nation would normalize relations with a country that leaves 400,000 brothers and sisters not only without religious freedom, but in fear for their lives because of their faith.

I'm not President Bush's biggest fan, but I don't usually think he's as bad as the press makes him out to be. But this...? I don't know what to do with this.

If you are a praying person, pray for Christians and other religious people suffering for their faith, in North Korea and around the world.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Apple Butter Makin' Days!

Here in Mount Vernon, Apple Butter Makin' Days has arrived again. You can read what our chamber of commerce says about ABMD here. ABMD is one of the fall festivals that they have in almost every town in this region. Crafters set up booths and sell things and all the churches and organizations have booths and activities. It's always the second weekend of October, and it's a blast. The kids get out of school for Friday, and there's a huge parade on Saturday. Matt's parents usually come down and in fact are here right now! (Hi Mom and Dad!) This year my mom was able to come down, too--Yay!

We're already having so much fun! Matt spent all day cooking a huge fried chicken dinner--one of only 3 times we eat fried chicken in a year. It was soooo good. The kids got to do a lot of stuff today (including helping to clean the house for company, but not only that!), and I worked for a couple of hours at the PTA booth in the morning.

Tomorrow, though, is the big day. The parade starts at 9:00, and we have invited several friends to come sit on our porch, because the parade goes right by our house! That's one reason we never want to move out of this house. It's the best parade I've ever seen. All our kids are usually in it, because everyone has a float in the ABMD parade, but this year David just wants to sit on the porch and watch instead of riding on the soccer float.

The only drawback is the huge crowds that pour into town on Saturday. It's great for the town, and brings in a ton of business, but it's very crowded, and I start to wish all these people would go away--and leave ABMD to us townies! But it's not so bad, and people have a lot of fun.

And yes, if you were wondering, we really do make apple butter. At about 6:00 tomorrow morning, the giant cauldrons will be set up over the fires on the square, and thousands of apples will be converted into apple butter. We always buy a lot of it, so if you want apple butter for Christmas, this would be a good time to let us know.

Monday, October 6, 2008

National German-American Day!

Today is National German-American Day! Since I am one of those, I'd like to give a big shout-out to the Teels and the Kramers. I tend to identify myself more with my Italian heritage, but I'm exactly as much German as I am Italian, and actually, my kids are more German than anything.

Some good sites to learn more about our German-American heritage can be found here and here.

Haben sie ein gutan Tag! Ich liebe ihnen!

Katja

Happy Birthday, Annie!

This is more than a week late, but I figured now I've started a tradition of the week-after birthday posts, and who I am to go agaisnt tradition?

Last week was the 29th birthday of my baby sister, Annie! Yay! She was born at the end of a sweltering hot summer; if you look through news archives, you will see that we had a terrible heat wave in the summer of 1979. We didn't have air conditioning, either. I was not quite 9, but I still remember all that.

Annie is by far the most glamorous and fashionable person in our family. I mean, even if we all won the lottery, we could never match the sheer style and personality that Annie achieves every day. And I completely admire that (actually envy it a bit, to tell the truth).

But really, the best things about Annie aren't those gorgeous externals. She has a huge generous heart--she's even gotten awards for community service. She takes charge at the VFW, running Bingo games and volunteering and singing her heart out for our country and those who served it. She puts herself out for people, and really goes above and beyond for anyone who needs it. That's what I really admire about her; she's beautiful both inside and out.

Happy 29th birthday, sweetie! I hope it was a good one, and I hope you have a great year.

Love,
Your Big Sister

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The October List!

Hey, look! I found the list of October observances! This is what happens when you get 3 months behind in your emails...

October 2008 is:

Monthly Observances
Adopt A Shelter Dog Month
(World) Blindness Awareness Month
Celiac Sprue Awareness Month
Children's Magazine Month
Christmas Seal Campaign (10/1-12/31)
Class Reunion Month
Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Dyslexia Awareness Month
Eat Better, Eat Together Month
Emotional Wellness Month
German-American Heritage Month
Global Diversity Awareness Month
Long Term Care Planning Month
Lupus Awareness Month
National Animal Safety and Protection Month
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
National Chili Month
National Chiropractic Month
National Crime Prevention Month
National Dental Hygiene Month
National Depression Education & Awareness Month
National Down Syndrome Month
National Ergonomics Month
National Family Sexuality Education Month
National Liver Awareness Month
National Orthodontic Health Month
National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month
National Reading Group Month
National Seafood Month
National Spina Bifida Awareness Month
National Window Covering Safety Month
National Work and Family Month
National Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Awareness Month
Organize Your Medical Information Month
Polish American Heritage Month
Spinach Lovers Month
Stamp Collecting Month
Vegetarian Month
Women's Small Business Month

Weekly Observances
Universal Children's Week: 1-7
No Salt Week: 2-9
World Space Week: 4-10
National Work From Home Week: 5-11
Emergency Nurses Week: 5-11
Fire Prevention Week: 5-11
Mental Illness Awareness Week: 5-11
National Metric Week: 5-11
Nuclear Medicine Week: 5-11
Customer Service Week: 6-12
Financial Planning Week: 6-12
Improve Your Home Office Week: 6-10
Physicians Assistant Week: 6-12
Build Your Business with Business Cards Week: 12-18
Infection Prevention Week: 12-18
National Food Bank Week: 12-18
National School Lunch Week: 12-18
Teen Read Week: 12-18
American Association of Medical Assistants: 13-19
Freedom of Speech Week: 13-19
National Veterinary Technician Week: 13-19
World Rainforest Week: 13-19
Getting The World To Beat A Path To Your Door Week: 14-20
Celebrate Micro Small and Home Business Week: 16-22
Food and Drug Interaction Education and Awareness Week: 17-24
YWCA Week without Violence: 19-25
National Infection Prevention Week: 19-25
Kids Care Week: 19-25
National Food Bank Week: 19-25
National Massage Therapy Week: 19-25
National Respiratory Care Week: 19-25
National School Bus Safety Week: 19-25
National Businesswomen' s Week: 20-24
National Health Education Week: 20-24
World Hearing Aid Awareness Week: 23-29
Prescription Errors Education & Awareness Week: 24-31
Peace, Friendship and Good Will Week: 25-31
International Herpes Awareness Week: 31-11/6

Daily Observances
Balloons Around The World: 1
Child Health Day: 1
International Day of Older Persons: 1
World Vegetarian Day: 1
World Farm Animals Day: 2
Lee's National Denim Day: 3
National Diversity Day: 3
World Smile Day: 3
World Communion Day: 5
World Teachers Day: 5
National German-American Day: 6
Physician Assistant (PA) Day: 6
World Habitat Day: 6
Native Americans' Day: 8
Yom Kipper: 8
National Depression Screening Day: 9
World Post Day: 9
World Sight Day: 9
Naval Academy Day: 10
World Mental Health Day: 10
International Newspaper Carrier Day: 11
Universal Music Day: 11
Columbus Day: 13
National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day: 15
White Cane Safety Day: 15
Dictionary Day: 16
Get to Know Your Customers Day: 16
World Food Day: 16
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty: 17
Mammography Day: 17
World Menopause Day: 18
Sunday School Teacher Appreciation Day: 19
World Osteoporosis Day: 20
International Stuttering Awareness Day: 22
International Bandanna Day: 24
Lung Health Day: 24
United Nations Day: 24
World Priest Day: 26
Diwali: 28
National Chocolates Day: 28
St. Jude's Day: 28
Internet Day: 29
National Caramel Apple Day: 31
National Knock-Knock Jokes Day: 31
National UNICEF Day: 31
Halloween: 31

Hey, Annie and Abby! The 31st is National Knock-Knock Joke day! You guys should enjoy that!

As for me, I will be enjoying World Priest Day. I don't know what World Priests actually do, but it sounds like fun...

And I just want to say, I don't care what the rest of the world is doing, this is America, and you can't make me celebrate National Metric week.

Kat