My 2nd Favorite Month

Actually, my favorite month is not April. April is my second-favorite month. I love the flowering trees, especially. Two of my favorite flowers are lilacs and dogwoods, and those are out in profusion in April. Here in the Ozarks, we have dogwood of all different colors, thought I think that maybe the ubiquitous white is still my favorite. And of course, since Easter is usually in April, it's the perfect time to tell the story of the legend of the dogwood tree.

Another thing about April that I love is that after March's cruel teasing (is it winter? is it spring? I don't know!), April might have some cold days, but it can only move toward springtime. Of course, that means not only warmth and sunshine, but also storms, which I really, really love. We've already had some excellent and dramatic thunder storms; they were incredible. There's nothing like a good thunderstorm.

In case you were wondering, my favorite month is October. But April's a really close second.

An Easter Quotation

Without Easter, there can be no reason to suppose that Good will triumph over evil, that love will win over hatred, that life will win over death. But with Easter we have hope; because hope depends on love; and love has become human and has died, and is now alive forevermore, and holds the keys of Death and Hades. It is because of him we know--we don’t just hope, we know-- that God will wipe away all tears from all eyes. And in that knowledge we find ourselves to be Sunday people, called to live in a world of Fridays.

-N.T. Wright, Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship

Happy Easter!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

After a very long Lent, Easter is finally here. Holy Week was long, brutal, exhausting, and strangely and deeply satisfying. It always is all those things. The exhaustion is welcome; it's the fatigue of a race well run. Of accepting a challenge--to keep watch with Jesus--and rising to it. Sure, it takes a lot out of you. But at the end, you greet the dawn knowing that you were faithful, even when it was so hard to be.

The cold and rain didn't dampen our Easter celebrations here (and hey, the heater in my car works now, so I have nothing to complain about). At home, we hid eggs in the living room and dining room (with help from AJ, who is now too old to hunt eggs--or so she tells us). At church, we hid eggs inside the church while everyone celebrated in the parish hall.

In my World Religions class, my unit on Christianity began during Holy Week, which has never happened before. It was kind of cool. It was a nice calendrical backdrop to my lesson that the most important holy day in Christianity is Easter (not Christmas, even if you like Christmas better) (but seriously, what could be better than Easter?).

I wish everybody a blessed Easter season. 50 days to celebrate before it's back to life as usual.

Christos Anesti!

Alethos Anesti!

Denied!

Well, I ran for school board here in Mount Vernon, but I lost. :(

Yet, I am not discouraged. I have a plan for next time. Here it is:

All y'all need to move down here and vote for me.

I lost by a pretty small margin, which I calculate to be the other guy's relatives and friends. So, if my relatives and friends come down and vote, I am so in.

So, my dear ones...if you could get to work on that, that would be great.

Love you!

Harry Reid Says Taxes are Voluntary Now!

Umm ...sort of.

"Of course you have to pay your taxes...but the fact of the matter is that our system is a voluntary system."

The link is here. I still can't figure out how to embed video in a blog entry.

Okay, I fell for it

Okay, fine, I fell for it. The Katie Couric quotation from the last post was from Media Research Center...on Wednesday. April 1.

See where I'm going with this?

So, yeah...Katie Couric didn't really say this. Not that she wouldn't have or couldn't have, but she didn't. I don't pay any attention to April Fool's Day, it's just not on my radar at all, so I missed this.

Sorry about that folks. If I post something this awful next April 1, feel free to call me on it.

(PS: You should have seen the ones I didn't post...sometimes procrastination pays!)

Oh, Now I Get It

In case any of you have been struggling to understand all this stuff about bailouts, stimulus packages, etc...and maybe even been trying to wrap your minds around even the concept of trillions of dollars, you don't have to worry any more. Katie Couric has explained it all for us.

"For many Americans, it can be tough to grasp how all this deficit spending will turbo-charge our economy and end the recession. Tonight, with the help of a few visual aids, we'll show how everyone gets a macro-cosmic boost whenever Uncle Sam opens his wallet....Think of each dollar in the economy as a jelly bean. You and I each have a few jelly beans, but the government has a whole lot of them. In a recession -- a jelly bean shortage -- we might feel like holding on to our jelly beans instead of sharing them, but that would bring our jelly bean party to a grinding halt. But if Uncle Sam re-fills the jelly bean bags of those who are running low, our party can go on and on....And if we ever find ourselves running out of candy, Uncle Sam can always make more -- he owns the jelly bean factory! The fun never has to stop...."

-- Katie Couric explaining the economics of bailouts on the April 1
CBS Evening News.

Now, Katie Couric is an professionally trained economist, and I'm not...but is there something a little screwy about this?

She seems to be forgetting that if Uncle Sam has a huge bag of jelly beans, he got them from us in the first place.

So...say I have 10 jelly beans (it's jelly bean payday) and Uncle Sam takes state and federal income taxes, medicare, social security, gas tax, property taxes, and sales tax. That's 7 jelly beans, leaving me with 3 to pay for my mortgage, student loans, utilities, food, clothes, medical care, birthday presents, car repairs, house repairs, insurance, personal loans and Girl Scout Cookies.

Is Katie saying that I shouldn't be so tight-fisted with my 3 remaining jelly beans? The government might have a whole lot of jelly beans (something I'm not convinced of), but if so, it has them because it took my 7 jelly beans. Katie seems to be saying that if I just shared my 3 jelly beans with the government, rather than keeping them to take care of my family, we would all be having a lot more fun.

But then she says that if the government's bag runs out of jelly beans, they can just make more. But if that's true, why do they need my 7 jelly beans in the first place? And why should I be complacent about handing over my remaining 3?

And for what? So that our jelly bean party doesn't come to a grinding halt? Do I care about our jelly bean party? If every jelly bean represents a dollar, I must have missed my invitation to the big Mount Vernon dollar party.

The thing is...the government can't just make more money. Every piece of paper represents something of value...gold, perhaps, or items in trade, or hours of your life that you trade for compensation. Doesn't anyone remember the depression, when Germany printed millions of dollars and it was all worthless? It has to represent something.

And government can't just create jobs, either. I might get more jelly beans if I have a government job, but to pay for my job, the government has to take even more jelly beans from me and everyone else. Why not let people keep their jelly beans and let them create the jobs? That way, I have not simply handed over pieces of my life for a handful of jelly beans someone's just going to take away, anyway.

But like I said, I'm not an economist, not like Katie Couric.