50th Anniversary!

I'm going out of town this weekend to celebrate my in-laws' fiftieth anniversary. Wow!

Keep us in your prayers as we travel...just my little family of six is coming from three different places in three different cars.

I'll get back to blogging after the fourth.

---Katie

Latest update from Soulforce

Well, Soulforce is busily preparing for the Churchwide Assembly in August. Here is their latest dispatch:

Soulforce to be Present in Orlando for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Vote on Lifting the Ban Against GLBT Clergy

Soulforce and the Lutheran Alliance for Full Participation have partnered together in direct actions at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) biennial Churchwide Assemblies (CWA) since 2001. This year in Orlando, as in Indianapolis in 2001 and Milwaukee in 2003, we will together confront the lay and clergy leadership of the ELCA with the truth: ELCA church policy, which denies persons in committed relationships the ability to answer their calls to ordained and commissioned ministry, perpetuates spiritual violence in the name of God for the sake of "church unity."

As the result of actions taken at the 2001 CWA to avoid a vote on lifting the policy ban, a sexuality task force was established to allow the ELCA 4 years to “study” whether gays and lesbians who will not pledge to a life of celibacy should be allowed to serve as pastors and whether blessings of same-gender relationships should be supported by clergy and congregations. These four years are up, and it's time to vote! Unfortunately, the resolutions that will be put before the CWA do not include changing the policy; rather the recommendation is that the policy remain but that exceptions be allowed when synods and bishops agree that a candidate is worthy of the exception!

Soulforce (as a partner of Goodsoil) does not endorse the Church Council's proposal for granting exceptions to LGBT candidates who wish to be rostered with the ELCA. We believe this proposal continues to perpetuate spiritual violence against LGBT persons and is demeaning. We remain adamant that the ELCA must: 1)Remove completely policies that discriminate against LGBT people and that require life-long celibacy of those called into ministry and; 2)Refute the theologies in their communion that equate homosexuality with sin as well as those that undermine the sacredness of covenanted relationships and validity of our marriages. (To read more go to www.goodsoil.org)

Come to Orlando August 8-14, for the whole week or part of the week and do justice with Soulforce and the other members of Goodsoil. This is the year when the ban must be lifted for ALL LGBT persons called to ministry! Let us stand together AGAIN for justice for LGBT persons in committed relationships, in having their relationships blessed and their calls to ministry honored! We will be leafleting, doing other direct actions and possibly civil disobedience. We need your help. See you in Orlando!

---Katie

My dad is gone.

My dad passed away last night at about 9:40. I was with him.

It was a rough couple of weeks with him losing the ability to tell us what he needed and with him having long periods of agitation. On Tuesday night he even managed to work himself out of the bed, that with a nurse right there with him.

Mom and Dad's anniversary is today. They have been married 65 years. I was commenting to the nurse how sad it was that they both died this year and neither made it to their anniversary. She pointed out that Dad did manage to join Mom just in time for their anniversary. Wow.

This is in some ways easier than when my mom died because I don't have a grieving parent to comfort. I will be busy in the next few days taking care of details, but the service will be postponed until my sister can come out, probably in July. Her husband is in intensive care after an aortic dissection, something people usually don't survive. It looks like he will pull through.

Your prayers are appreciated.

---Katie

My Dad is very ill.

If I am not posting as much as I would like it is because my dad has taken quite a turn for the worse.

He suffered a stroke in January 2000. He went through six months of rehab and was finally able to live independently (with Mom). They moved here to Florida and lived in a retirement facility in the independent living section. That went well for Dad for about two years until he had an illness he just could not quite bounce back from. I think he got tired. He has done reasonably well in the nursing home. He was put on Hospice over a year ago because he kept getting sick and seemed to be deteriorating, but he stabilized and was healthy for about a year. He even seemed to handle Mom's death in January rather well. In the last several weeks, though, he has gone downhill. I am not sure he really knew I was there tonight. He is refusing all food and most drink. Please keep him (and us) in your prayers.

Thanks,

---Katie

Straight into Gay America

sigh. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.

This is from the Soulforce newsletter.

Straight into Gay America hits the road on June 14.

Rev. Lars Clausen is an ELCA Lutheran pastor who holds the Guinness World Record for traveling 9,136 miles on a unicycle in all 50 states. On June 14, 2005, Rev. Clausen will launch a new unicycle tour called Straight into Gay America.

The 1,000 mile tour begins in Burlington, Vermont. Near the end of the trip, Rev. Clausen will ride into Lynchburg, Virginia where he will worship at Jerry Falwell's church along with Mel White and Gary Nixon.

Rev. Clausen will attempt to get beyond the religious and political polarization surrounding GLBT issues in America today. He hopes the vulnerability and hospitality of the unicycle will allow him to get closer to the everyday life of gay people.

To read more about the Straight into Gay America tour, go to www.StraightIntoGayAmerica.com

---Katie

Virginia, South Dakota, and western Iowa take a stand

Check it out over at Shellfish - Shrimp has lots of new info, including quotes of our presiding bishop pointing out that we Lutherans are not bibliocentric like those eeevil fundamentalists....


---Katie

Stay away from home-schooled kids.

That's number 11 on Darren Rovell's guide to picking this year's spelling bee winner at ESPN.com. Here is his reasoning:

It goes without saying that these kids don't get out of the house much. There are 34 home-schooled competitors in this year's bee, including speller No. 142 Jack Ausick and speller No. 217 Benjamin Zachary Walter. The first home schooler won in 1997 and others followed, including Thampy in 2000. But kids that actually interact with other children at school have won three out of the last four bees.

Now, if in his list he made other "funny comments" about types of kids, I would just take this as a lame attempt at humor. I really don't see that as the case. This guy just wanted to take a swipe at homeschoolers. Considering that I know lots of homeschoolers and that it is obvious that they (most of them, at least) get out quite a bit and actually do interact with people of all ages, this guy's comments are just plain ignorant.

---Katie

For my friends with active little boys.

What is a Boy?

You can absolutely rely on a boy if you know what to expect.

A boy is nature’s answer to the false belief that there is no such thing
as perpetual motion.

The world is so full of boys that it is impossible to touch off a
firecracker, strike up a band or pitch a ball without collecting a
thousand of them.

Boys are not ornamental, they're useful.

If it were not for boys, the newspapers would go undelivered and unread
and a hundred thousand picture shows would go bankrupt.

The boy is a natural spectator; he watches parades, fires, fights,
football games, automobiles and planes with equal fervor.

However, he will not watch a clock.

A boy is a piece of skin stretched over an appetite.

However, he eats only when he’s awake.

Boys imitate their Dads in spite of all the efforts to teach them good
manners.

Boy’s are very durable.

A boy, if not washed too often and if not kept in kept in a cool quiet
place after each accident , will survive broken bones, hornet’s nests,
swimming holes and five helpings of pie.

Boys love to trade things. They'll trade fishhooks, marbles, broken
knives and snakes for anything that is priceless or worthless.

When he grows up, he'll trade puppy love, energy, warts, bashfulness and
a cast-iron stomach for a bay window, pride, ambition, pretense and a
bald head and will immediately say that; “boys aren't what they used to
be in the good old days.”

Herbert Hoover

I knew watching Howard Dean would be fun.

Some quotes from the DNC chair, Howard Dean:

"You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well Republicans, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives. "

Democrats are not the only ones who work all day, pick up their kids at child care, *and* manage to vote.

- "The Republicans are all about suppressing votes."

*yawn*

- "And the young lady piped up and said, now, Governor, just a second, I'm an Evangelical Christian. and we don't think there ought to be separation of church and state. We think this is a Christian Nation. And you could have heard a pin drop.....And after dinner I was thanking everybody for coming and contributing and everything. and I went up to her and said how is it that you managed to support me as an Evangelical Christian? There's some things you can't possibly agree with me on, such as Civil Rights for all Americans and a woman's right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she has."

Code words here: Civil rights for all Americans=gay marriage, women's health care=abortion

- "We need to have pension portability, so that pensions as we move from job to job to job, the pensions follow us. They don't stay in the company. That great Democrat, Jim Jeffords has been introducing this for 15 years."

Just for the record, Jeffords is an Independent.

Could the Democratic party please stand for something other than hating Bush and the Republicans? They're getting rather repetitive.

Hat tip to Ankle Biting Pundits!

---Katie

Rock your baby if you want kids with rhythm

This is from The Telegraph in the UK:

Parents who bounce their babies to a song and rock them to a lullaby are unwittingly helping their brains to appreciate music, scientists have discovered.

The ability to feel the strong and weak beats in a rhythm allows people to move and dance in time to music.

Now the corresponding way that movement shapes our appreciation of the complex structures of music has been revealed by a team at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

"The simultaneous experience of listening and moving to a rhythm wires the brain so that different senses work together," said Prof Laurel Trainor, co-author of a paper published today in Science magazine.

She has shown that the way seven-month-old infants interpret a rhythm is influenced by the way they are bounced to that beat.

"It has long been known that infants are attracted to music and responsive to its emotional content. Our findings provide evidence that the experience of body movement plays an important role in musical rhythm perception," she said.

However, she stressed that parents should not blame themselves if their children are not musical.

"The individual differences between people in musical ability probably stem from a combination of genetic and experiential effects," she said.

All of my kids were rocked and bounced and sang to...and they are all musical. Hmm.

---Katie

Is the ELCA Lutheran?

I read this book a couple of months ago and meant to blog about it, but I never seemed to be able to sift through and put down what I thought the author said that was important. Now Shrimp over at the Shellfish blog has done it, so I will refer you over there. Here is an excerpt:

Is the ELCA Lutheran? by Christine Larsen Goble

Is the ELCA Lutheran? by Christine Larsen Goble is available from Amazon

"A must read for ELCA members, both clergy and lay, Christine Goble has written a down-to-earth assessment of the problems within this denomination. She combines concise, disturbing, indisputable facts with clarity and a sense of humor. Written for the Lutheran in the pew, it spells out clearly how the ELCA is surrendering its heritage for the sake of ecumenical unity in the church. Not only has the ELCA tossed aside the Lutheran confessions, but now they are declaring that Scripture does not speak clearly on matters of sexuality. This book is a must read for Lutherans and Christians who want to understand what is going on in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America."


Click on the title to read more!

And visit Shellfish regularly. All ELCA, all the time.

Get the book. Read it. It will not make you happy with the ELCA.

---Katie

Oops, your agenda is showing!

This is from Neal Boortz:

GOVERNMENT SCHOOL --- SOLDIERS NOT WELCOME

We talked about this one on the show yesterday, but it didn't make the Nuze. So here we go .. the story of the Anita White Carson Middle School in Greensboro, Greene County, Georgia.

Our cast of characters is as follows:

• Matthew Lund, first year teacher
• Ulrica Corbett, Principal.
• Zach Richardson, Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps.

So .. here's the story, gleaned from the front page of the May 26th edition of Greensboro Herald-Journal.

Matthew Lund and Zach Richardson were college roommates. After college Richard joined the Marines and Lund started teaching. Richardson went to Iraq, Lund to Carson Middle School, there to teach a 6th grade language arts class.

As a class assignment Lund gave his students the opportunity to write a letter to Sgt. Richardson in Iraq. Richardson wrote back and gave the class the names of five other Marines who would like to receive letters. Soon other middle school classes were also sending letters to the Marines in Iraq.

When Sgt. Richardson returned to the United States he told Matthew Lund that he wanted to come to the Carson Middle School to personally thank the students for their support and letters. Lund filled out and submitted a "Resource Visitor or Guest Speaker Form" and submitted it to Principal Corbett. Lund says he never got the form back from Corbett. He says he asked the Principal about the form, and was told that she was not going to look at it.

Lund says that he realized his request to have Sgt. Richardson visit the school was going to be ignored by Ulrica Corbett. He made the decision to proceed with the plans for the visit, a visit that took place, or was to take place on May 23rd, one week before Memorial Day.

When Sgt. Richardson showed up at the Carson Middle School Lund took him to the school's media center to prepare to meet the students. At that point, according to Lund, Principal Corbett called him into the hall and told him that the Marine was not approved to be at the school. Lund told Corbett that the proper form had been submitted and had been ignored. Corbett's response was "that's your problem, not mine." Lund's version of the discussion with Corbett in the hallway suggests that Corbett harbored a great deal of hostility toward Sgt. Richardson and Matthew Lund. She told Lund that the students had not earned the visit from the Marine, and closed the discussion with Lund with the phrase "what part of what we just discussed do you not understand?" She then ordered Matthew Lund to escort Sgt. Richardson off the school campus.

When this story hit the local newspaper Ulrica Corbett thought it best to do a little CYA work. She submitted a written statement to the Herald-Journal in which she stated "My decision not to allow Zach Richardson to speak with the students on Monday came out of my regard for the safety and welfare of our children." What a crock. Is Ulrica Corbett saying that this U.S. Marine who had just spent a year putting his life on the line for his country presented some sort of a threat to the children at the Carson Middle School?

My guess? What we have here is some self-important middle school principal who harbors a dislike, if not an outright hatred, of the American armed forces, and who is steadfastly opposed to our actions in Iraq and quite possibly in Afghanistan. This principal then decided to let her petty prejudices stand in the way of what would have been a memorable and rewarding experience for both Sgt. Richardson and the children of Matthew Lund's 6th grade class. Now that's just a guess. I've received messages that Ulrica Corbett has family members in the military and serving in Iraq. You would have thought that information might have been set forth in her written statement to the newspaper. It wasn't

Corbett is saying that the teacher didn't follow protocol. The newspaper has signed and dated copies of the documentation submitted by Lund. Someone here isn't telling the truth. One thing for sure: Protocol be dammed, Ulrica Corbett could have found a way to allow this soldier to talk to the students who had befriended him. She didn't

This morning the story is getting increased attention. Calls have been coming into the Greene County Schools from across the nation. Superintendent John Jackson has offered a written apology, saying that the situation could have been handled differently. The official story still seems to be that Lund didn't follow the necessary steps to get permission for Richardson's visit. I would like to know a little more about Lund's assertion that Corbett told him that she was simply "not going to look at" the written request, and that this was "(his) problem, not mine." Right now it sounds more like the problem was with Corbett, not Lund. I guess it should be expected that the superintendent would protect an established principal in a controversy with a first year teacher on the way out the door.

Thanks to the Herald-Journal the people of Greene County know just what type of person they have in charge of the education of their children at the Carson Middle School.

Government schools. Gotta love 'em.

I'll keep watching this story to see if the truth comes out.

---Katie