Month: May 2025

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Cutting The Grass

Cutting The Grass

This is my neighbor.
He has no idea I took this photo from my window.
When my husband was deployed, one of the worries we had was about the grass.
Who would maintain the yard?
I could go out there and cut the grass myself, but with everything I had on my plate with the two girls, I wasn’t feeling it.
We could try and find a lawn service, but that still meant me having to make sure it got done and that they did a good job.
I wanted as little additional worry as possible while my husband was deployed.
This is where Steve comes in.
I sent him a text and told him about the deployment. I wasn’t sure if he would say yes, but I asked.
“Could you help cut our grass? He will cut it today before he deploys tomorrow, but it would be great if you could cut it and help me maintain it while he is gone. We can pay you.”
He responded right away that it wasn’t a problem at all and that he would not accept payment. He wanted to help.
I let my husband know, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.
When your husband is deployed, whatever worry you can take off your plate means the world.
Knowing the grass would be taken care of was enormous stress off my shoulders.
About an hour later, daddy was playing with his girls.
He was trying to soak up as much time as possible with them before deploying the next day.
He told them he could play for a bit, but he also had to go outside and cut the grass soon.
Then we heard it.
A mower.
My husband said, “Aliette, Steve is cutting the grass! Maybe he misunderstood that we didn’t need him to help us until next week when I’m already gone.”
I went outside. “Steve, we didn’t need you to start until next week, and he was going to do it today before he leaves tomorrow.”
Steve responded, “I know. But I’m not the one about to leave my family for deployment. He can spend time with his family, and I got it.”
My face swelled with tears.
Tears of worry, gratitude, anxiety, relief all rolled into one.
It all came pouring out on Steve, who probably thought I was a bit overly emotional about grass.
But it wasn’t about the grass.
It was about the gift of time he gave us.
A neighbor stepped up to help when we needed it.

As I came back inside, I thought of Mr. Rogers.
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we’re together, we might as well say,
Won’t you be my neighbor?

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Reading

Reading

“I read so many books, but I forgot most of them. But then what’s the point of reading? ”
This was the question a pupil once asked his Master.

The Master didn’t answer at that moment. After a few days, however, while he and the young pupil were sitting by a river, he said he was thirsty and asked the boy to get some water from him using an old filthy sieve that was there on the ground.

The pupil moved, because he knew it was a request without any logic.

However, he couldn’t contradict his own Master and, when he got the filter, he began to do this absurd task. Every time he was drowning the sieve in the river to pull some water to take to his Master, he couldn’t even take a step towards him because there wasn’t even a drop left in the sieve.
He tried and tried dozens of times but, as he tried to run faster from the shore to his Master, the water kept going through all the holes in the sieve and got lost along the way.

Exhausted, he sat next to the Master and said: “I can’t fetch water with that filter. Forgive me Master, it is impossible and I failed in my task.”

“No – the old man replied smiling – you have not failed. Look at the filter it’s like new now. Water, filtering through its holes cleaned it.”

“When you read books – the old Master continued – you are like the sieve and they are like the water of the river.”

“It doesn’t matter if you can’t hold in your memory all the water they make you flow, because books will anyway, with their ideas, emotions, feelings, knowledge, truth that you will find between the pages, clean your mind and spirit, and you they will make you a better, renewed person. That’s the point of reading.”

Have a good read everyone.

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The House With Nobody In It

Unoccupied House

One of my favorite poems, this piece was written by Joyce Kilmer.
Kilmer wrote this poem in 1914 and in April 1917, he enlisted and was deployed to Europe to fight in WWI. He would not survive as he was K.I.A. by a German sniper’s bullet on July 30, 1918 in France. He was 32 years old.

“Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn’t haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn’t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I’d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I’d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I’d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there’s nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it’s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can’t help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.”

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I Am Loose With Dr Seuss

Alas they’ve come for Dr. SEUSS,
they wish to hang him with a noose.
They claim his tales were racist bent,
they judged him fast, missed what he meant.
But if we look inside his tales,
you’ll find the balance of the scales.
Remember when Horton heard a Who,
and we heard the wisdom of the Lorax too.
The lesson behind Green Eggs and Ham,
that changed the mind of Sam I am.
Remember too the rotten Grinch,
who once would never give an inch.
He taught us lessons, one and all,
boys and girls, big and small.
So if you’ve judged his works as poor,
you should re- read them, I implore.
The man we know as Dr. SEUSS,
turned our imaginations loose.
His impact was beyond compare,
he taught us it was good to care.
To accept the red, the blue, the green,
and on each other we can lean.
So if you still won’t give an inch,
your heart has hardened like the Grinch.
Release the grudge, the hate, the rue,
and embrace the hope of Cindy Lou.

We support the Seuss!!!

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Newlyweds

The young woman who submitted the tech support message below (about her relationship to her husband) presumably did it as a joke. Then she got a reply that was way too good to keep to herself. The tech support people’s love advice was hilarious and genius!

The query:
Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Atention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
What can I do?

Signed: Desperate

The response (that came weeks later out of the blue)…

Dear Desperate,

First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating
System.

Please enter command: I thought you loved me.html and try to download Tears 6.2. Do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. However, remember, overuse of the Tears application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1.

Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad progrm that will download Snoring Loudly Beta version.
Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In-Law 1.0 as it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.

In addition, please do not attempt to re-install the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0.

Good Luck
Tech Support

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A shared story

The House With Nobody In It

Two Saturday nights a month, I work in Cullman County at a dirt racing track. Tonight as I arrived at the track, I noticed I was the only person there. Tonight’s race had been postponed, and I wouldn’t be playing my role on the mic as the “Voice of River Valley Speedway.” It appeared that I had made a burnt run.

On my way home, I stopped by an old house that I’d passed many times before. Fallen walls, a rotting porch, and broken windows told me that the house had been lifeless for at least fifty years. I had to have a picture. I just had to.

I walked next door to a brick house, much younger– and knocked on the door. I introduced myself, and asked permission to photograph the old house next door.

“I’ll do you one better. Would you like a history lesson?” I nodded yes, and not quite knowing what to expect I followed the woman inside.

I was introduced to her parents, an elderly couple perhaps in their nineties. I shook hands and was told to sit down in a recliner near the television showing the baseball game I had unintentionally interrupted. Mr. Pate muted the game, while his wife continued on with putting her puzzle together.
“That house was built by my grandfather in 1901 or so. Over 100 years old.” For the better part of the next hour, this couple shared stories of growing up in log cabins, hard country life, and coming to know Christ. I was shown pictures of rural Cullman County from the late 1800’s, and the last will and testament of the last man ever hanged in Cullman– for a crime he didn’t commit. I listened attentively as they poured years of history into someone they’d never met before.

As I stood up to say goodbye, my new friends tried to discourage me from leaving. “Preacher, don’t go. Why don’t you stay over for dinner?”

As inviting as it sounded, the disappearing sunlight told me that I needed to take my pictures and schedule a rain check. We shook hands again, and I was on my way towards the older house, with two mutts following me with curiosity.

As I took a few shots, suddenly I was in the house. I stopped taking pictures as the thoughts of children ran across the porch, playing tag as they ran barefoot. I saw a woman in the corner, sewing clothes to wear to church. A man was outside chopping wood for the stove, and I could see the mules tied to a plow near the dirt road where my car would be parked 100 years later. It was a different world: slower, simpler, and with more integrity. No technology, no electricity, and no water demanded a slower life at this house.

My odometer showed that I went fifty miles tonight– but I traveled much, much farther.
On my way to the racetrack I was anticipating a night of speed, but instead I understood the importance of slowing down.

Sometimes in life we’re too fast. We’ve gone too far and haven’t appreciated the journey. Turn the phone off for a bit. Unplug the television for a while. Log off the net for a few hours.

Let’s all slow down just a bit. Enjoy the ride we’re on.

Pretty soon it’ll just be a memory….

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Materials Required By Energy Source

Chris Martz writes on X:

Okay. Study this chart. Look at it real hard. Look until your eyeballs fall out of their sockets.

Materials requirements per terawatt-hour (TWh) of electricity produced for renewables:

Solar Photovoltaic (PV)
4,050 tons/TWh of concrete
7,900 tons/TWh of steel
2,700 tons/TWh of glass
850 tons/TWh of copper
680 tons/TWh of aluminum
210 tons/TWh of plastic

Hydroelectric Power
14,000 tons/TWh of concrete
67 tons/TWh of steel
1 ton/TWh of copper

Wind
8,000 tons/TWh of concrete
1,800 tons/TWh of steel
92 tons/TWh of glass
23 tons/TWh of copper
35 tons/TWh of aluminum
190 tons/TWh of plastic

Geothermal
1,850 tons/TWh of concrete
3,300 tons/TWh steel
2 tons/TWh of copper
100 tons/TWh of aluminum

Materials requirements per terawatt-hour (TWh) of electricity produced for nuclear and natural gas:

Nuclear
760 tons/TWh of concrete
160 tons/TWh of steel
3 tons/TWh of copper

Natural Gas
400 tons/TWh of concrete
170 tons/TWh of steel
1 ton/TWh of aluminum

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/quadrennial-technology-review-2015_1.pdf

So, tell me again how clean “green energy” really is? Mining for these raw materials would have to increase by >300% to achieve “net zero” goals, which would make that [arbitrary] target date by 2050 impossible.

Nuclear is by far the most efficient energy source we have, and it is the most “carbon-free” (and I use that term lightly) technology. Natural gas, while not carbon-free in the slightest, burns cleaner and is much more efficient than coal. If nuclear and natural gas aren’t a part of the “solution” to wane us off fossil fuels, then you, as an environmentalist, cannot be take seriously.

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Mental Health Professionals Research Results

Dr Karen Mitchell PhD writes on X:

Hey everyone. I am reaching out for support.

I have been chatting on here, respectfully and happily.

Yesterday I tweeted that there are many narcissists/psychopaths/predators in the psychiatric and psychology community based on my PhD research.

The responses from mental health professionals have been nothing short of abusive. I feel judged, character-assassinated, misunderstood, humiliated, disrespected. I feel physically sick.

I am stunned at the maliciousness and demeaning nature of the group bullying from mental health professionals. I am really, really distressed.

Have a look at all the retweet comments on the post below.

For any psychiatrists and psychologists who might like to actually read my work before further attacking me, here is a link…

https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/file/15436c0d-4d4f-4506-b649-eb1129ab0390/1/karen_mitchell_thesis.pdf#page145

I replied:

If you ever needed the equivalent or better (and without the wait) of a peer review of your work, it was just handed you on a silver platter!

So, well done for being over the target, that’s when you cop the flack! You stand with giants in the field who tried to clean it up..

…Dr Peter Breggin and Dr Thomas Szasz being two that come to mind.
As to immediate help for you personally, take a walk and look at things till you feel better. The only power anti-social personalities have is the power to enturbulate. Disempower them!