THE GREEN CITY OF LAUGHTER
THERE'S no use gilding the pill. Work is disagreeable, and the joys of labor are forms of that optimistic self-hypnotism that buoys so many lift-yourself-by-the-bootstraps cults.
I hate work; I always have hated it. When I was a boy I loathed bringing in the coal and weeding the strawberry patch. I liked to play ball and go swimming.
I still hate all forms of work. But I have discovered how to make play out of it; and I enjoy play.
My job is more fun than any form of diversion I can indulge in after working hours. I would rather do my daily stunt than play golf or go to the ball game or attend the theater. I am 100 per cent happier on my task than off.
And I think this is the solution of the "labor problem." It is to solve how work may be made play.
When we take pride and interest in what we do it is not work. The housekeeper that delights in keeping her rooms in order, the clerk that enjoys performing his duties, the doctor that is enthusiastic over his profession, the carpenter, plumber, painter, or teamster that puts his soul
into his business such people work does not gall nor fret. Such have solved the "labor problem."
Machinery is slowly lifting the curse of labor from men. A vast deal of the dirty work that used to be done by hand is done by steam. The huge dredges at Panama did the task of hundreds of men with shovels and buckets.
Every child should be given a training in some kind of useful activity that is congenial to him. The time is past when there is a chance for the man who is "willing to do anything"; it is the man who is capable of doing "something," and of doing it well, that is employed.
More and more this world is becoming a colder and harder place for the person who simply wants the wage. Those who love their trade so well that it is play, who are miserable when they cannot work at it, and who are trained to skillfulness in it, are driving out the wage wanters.
Every factory, mill, office, farm, store, and railroad in the country is crying out for fit, capable, enthusiastic hands who will attack work in the spirit of play.
And only so is good work done.
Says Coningsby Dawson in The Craftsman:
"Play may be the best kind of work, the difference between work and play is a difference in training and mental attitude. Teach a child to play sadly and call his play work, you make him a laborer who toils even when he is playing.
"Ugliness and drudgery are no part of God's plan for His world. If man insists on inventing them God leaves man to do the explaining. Boys and girls playing in a green city of laughter, that was what God meant.
"Gray faces everywhere! Men and women who know anything but how to earn bread! In the crouching tread of cities the sound of the fear of life and the terror of death! And yet always between the stone cities lies the green City of Laughter where work is play, where birds sing as they build their nests, and rivers flow silver through meadows, certain of the sea and
unhurrying.
"The day is coming when, one by one, our wise men, like the old Eastern dreamer, will steal out from the walls of work into the grassy Metropolis of Laughter. There the work will still go on, but unknowingly. No one will be old; the streets of that city will be full of boys and girls
playing." END.

THE SILENCES
I WENT down by the seashore, and after long watching and dreaming I fancied it was given me to understand the voice of the waters.
And the waters said to me, "You wonder why we do not talk to you. We are talking ever and forever; but you have never, till now, been still enough to listen.
"The three voices, that of Nature, that of God, and that of Love, are never perfectly heard except at the bottom of the funnel of silence.
"There are few of your race who understand wind-sounds and the notes of birds, water voices, cloud-writings, and the signals that are wigwagged to souls by waving trees, and the color ideas that are spelled to them by flowers.
"You wonder why you cannot comprehend bird talk, as people do in fairy stories. You speculate as to whether monkeys communicate real ideas by their chatter, and whether cock-crows and hen-cackles are mere noise or have intelligent contents.
"Your difficulty lies in that you do not realize the extent, the range of ideas. You know that there are sounds of too high and others of too low vibration for the human ear to perceive. You know also that the colors perceptible to the human eye are comparatively few; that there are colors, beyond violet and beyond red, that are too subtle for the eye.
"It is precisely so with thoughts or soul vibrations. There is a whole world of ideas too simple for you to grasp, and another world of ideas too complex for you to grasp. Human beings think only a few notes in the middle of the gamut of Nature.
"I can only hint at our meanings, mine and the winds' and the bird's. We speak of such great realities as Alternation and Continuance, of Whirling Years and the Time Wheel, of Fecundation, Generation and Dissolution, of Star Meanings, of Lives and of their Masks and Appearances, of the walled-off yet interlocked Worlds, such as the World of Fishes, the World of Insects, the World of Microbes, the World of Field Mice, the World of Human Creatures, the
World of the Unborn, and the World of the Dead.
"We speak of the deep, voiceless Instincts, of the meaning of Heat and Cold, of the mysteries of Food, Drink and Sleep. We talk of the tragedies of Danger and of the comedies of Play. These are famous topics with barnyard creatures. The rats and roaches in your house discuss them. They interest the insects and the little woods people.
"We have our Laughter, though not as yours, for the universe is saturated with humor. We have our days of Mourning and of Loneliness, we have our Sins and our Remorse; "There are two kinds of humans that understand us, the witless and the worshipful."
Then I was aware that my friend was shaking me.
"What is the matter with you?" he said. "I have called you several times. Have you gone crazy?"
"Only part way," I answered. "Tell me why we are accounted sane only so long as we keep to the limitations of the ordinary; and that we never see the truth of poetry, religion, or nature until we overstep the limits? Is all greatness madness?"
"Give it up" returned my friend; and yet he was a hatter and measured the human head for a living! END.

UNCONSCIOUS GOODNESS
THIS is not written for the many, but for the few who understand.
Confess your sins, if you will, but not your goodness.
A high and noble quality in you, if it is once brought to light, withers as a flower plucked from its bed in the woods and worn on your dress.
There is no real purity but that of which you are unconscious. This permeates you and flavors your personality. The minute it is exposed by boasting it becomes offensive.
I doubt if preaching, moralizing, arguing and otherwise definitely laboring with people to make them good has ever been of much real benefit.
The actual uplift is that force that lies within our nature, concealed in the texture of the soul.
The cosmic powers of souls are silent and invisible; as the sun attracts the planets by its mass, as the hyacinth perfumes the room by its presence.
When you tell of a good deed you have done you have spoiled it. That instinct is correct which leads the brave man to belittle his own courage.
No act is fine unless it be done solely to gratify ourself, solely to win the praise of our own exacting soul; the bloom of virgin beauty is rubbed off from our nobleness when it is to get the approbation of others.
We complain that our efforts are not appreciated. Whatever is appreciated is depreciated. Only those helpful deeds that no one knows, which we ourselves do not recognize, are of the purest gold.
No one will be more surprised on the day of judgment than the genuine saints, who will exclaim in amazement: "Lord, when saw we thee sick, or ahungered, or in prison, and ministered unto thee?"
Action and speech, doing and talking, and all sorts of conscious exertion, are of second class, compared with the high worth of being.
This is proved by little children, who, we are shocked to discover, are not much influenced by our lecturings, and disregard our advice, but whose eyes penetrate to what we really are, whose ears hear the voices of our character; so that they follow us, but not our words.
No deeds of mine can counteract the subtle dynamic of my personal influence. If I endow churches and colleges, if I feed multitudes of the poor, if I give my body to be burned, and yet if I am essentially mean, my net result in the world is bad. On Time's books the debit of my character will outbalance the credit of my effort.
The day will come, when humanity is mature, that there shall be no more of what we now call charity or benevolence. For charity is the conscious attempt to correct the injustice of our acceptance of unjust customs.
In the perfect day to come no man will give to relieve another's distress, none will work to convert and redeem, for each shall try to do justice; and where there is universal justice all charity is swallowed up.
Then set loyalty to yourself as your goal. Think, speak and act to get that inner praise of your own being. Regard yourself as fortunate when you can do good without being found out.
And consider yourself most fortunate of all when you are not appreciated, when you are misunderstood, and when yolir good is called evil.
For then you are one of the real aristocrats of virtue. Then you are truly of a kin to God, who is forever silent, forever cavilled at, yet forever healing and helping by His very existence.
END.

A REASON FOR LOVE
THEY were no longer young. He was just past and she was almost fifty.
They had made a little wild excursion together. One spring day, when Old Nick was in the air, one of those prematurely warm August days that come sometimes in May, they were walking along the street in Paris, wondering where they should go to dinner.
Oh, no, no! nothing of that kind. Bless you, they had been married so long that they had a grandchild. They were Americans. He happened to be working in Paris. She was his wife.
Still, for all that, the Old Nick was in the air, the eglantine trees were budding in the Luxembourg gardens, and even these two felt they simply had to do something out of the way.
They took the first tram-car that came along and rode out to the end of the line. They were landed at one of the gates of the city, right by the fortifications. There they found a little restaurant and dined on the sidewalk.
They began to talk about love. When two who have been married a quarter of a century talk of love you better listen; you might learn something.
There is just one point brought out in their conversation that I wish to note. It struck me as a rather ingenious one.
"How do you know you love me?" he asked.
"Well," she responded, after reflecting a bit (perhaps if she had been twenty she would have answered by a look only, but now she took the question up seriously, as if anxious to answer herself as well as him), "one reason is that if I'm ever in any trouble, if I should lie sick or have
any calamity happen me, or anything terrible, I should want you, first of all.
"And another reason is that whenever I have any pleasure, when anything in the way of good luck comes, or when I see anything beautiful, my first instinct is to find you, to enjoy it with me."
"Those," he replied, "are really good reasons."
They were silent a bit. The Past is always a third guest when fifty-year-old lovers talk. He was in the thought of both. Then she added:
"And most of all it is the feeling, the certainty, that no matter what I do or say, no matter what happens or can possibly happen, you would be right by me; you would just be for me; you'd just be there, asking no questions, but just be for me, whoever, whatever was against me-till death." END.

NOAH AND THE FLOOD, DID IT HAPPEN? EDITORIAL
When we think of the flood, it usually takes place some where on the east end of the Mediterranean Sea. It rains for 40 days and 40 nights and covers the highest Mountains. Every one wants to know for sure if the earth was really covered with water.
If the story is true, then, Greenland and Antarctica would have been completely covered with water. Both places would have enough cold stored in the ice to prevent it from being completely melted down to bare land. If all the worlds ice did melt then the oceans would have risen some 300 feet after the flood, ( information from the radio) all coastal regions would be covered. The ocean level would have gone down slowly as the ice and snow thickness would be built back to its original depth.
Another question to ask, what would be the air temp if the water level went up to cover mount Everest? Could people survive that high in an unheated Ark?
As the water level on earth went down some of the water from the flood would have left a layer of ice covering both Greenland and Antarctica. This ice would have traces of the salt from the oceans. The salt concentrations would be less than the sea water since it would have been diluted with rain water.
I know that ice cores have been drilled in both Greenland and Antarctica. Some place in the ice cores there should be a layer of ice containing the salt of the ocean. If no layers of ice can be found containing salt, then it would be impossible for the story of Noah to be true and Greenland and Antarctica would not have been covered with water from the flood.
I do believe that a "local" flood could have taken place, making the story of Noah true, but the entire earth would not have been flooded.
Another question we must ask, If Noah took aboard one Male and one Female of each animal on earth, how did all the animals get from Australia, all animals would have to swim thousands of miles in the ocean. The animals from North and South America would have to cross the frozen Baring Sea. Thousands of small animals and insects would have frozen to death trying to get there. I think that those animals did not make the trip and they were not with Noah on the Arc as most people believe.
This would be a good project for the National Geographic Society to make a one hour documentary. I think the world should know what the test reveals. END.

3. HOSPITAL'S, FRIEND OR FOE EDITORIAL
What do you think about Hospital's? Let me advise you of some problems.
1. My Wife had sharp pains in her chest, we thought it could be a heart attack. I took her to a hospital emergency room. The Doctors could not diagnose the problem. And they sent me to a hospital in another town. When I took her to the other hospital, they diagnosed Gall Stones.
2. Another time a woman took her 3 year old child to the Hospital emergency room with all the skin burned off the palm of his hand. At 3 he did not know that a pan coming out of the oven would be 300 degrees in temprature. While waiting the child was set on top the nurses station counter. After 15 minutes waiting the child hit the small desk bell. The nurse came out and was MAD that the child rang the bell. The mother said that if you are so busy and can not come out to check, I will take my son to another hospital. She did and the child was in with the doctor with in 4 minutes.
4. This was almost beyond belief, 2 women, both appeared to be over 70 years old were brought in wheel chairs to the door. Each was wearing the hospital gown with the back open. A blanket was put on top of them, but not the bottom of their legs, the bottom side of their arms were not covered. Out side the wind was blowing about 25 miles per hour, the outside temprature was 14 below O, they were wheeled out to the van. All of the unprotected skin was subjected to the wind and cold. They should have been loaded in the shelter and protection of the ambulance garbage.
5. An 82 year old lady was bought to the hospital and the temprature was about 0 outside. The driver drove into the ambulance garbage where there was a wheel chair. Going into the reception area. The nurse came and had a fit, saying that the garbage was for the ambulance. He ask, do you have radio contact with the ambulance? Does any ambulance have a patient and coming here? She said no. What is the nurses problem with using the garbage that wasn’t going to be used?
6. A woman had a stroke and was taken to the hospital. The first thing they did was take a Cat scan. The Doctor said that this hospital could not take care of her problem and a hospital in Minneapolis could give her proper treatment. The cost of a helicopter ride was $3,500.00 So they transported her to Minneapolis. The woman's son asked the Doctors how bad her condition was. The Doctor said that if the hospital would have faxed up the cat scan first, his advice would be, not to transport the patient since there was no possibility of survival.
6. Another person went to the hospital emergency room with pains in his left arm pit then his right arm pit, then going across his chest. After a number of tests, the diagnosis was, its either a Heart Attack or Heart Burn, but we don’t know for sure which. 7. A hospital needed more room and built a new hospital. At the main entrance was a roof about 40 feet high but it only protects from rain coming straight down. Wind blown rain and snow blow right under the roof giving almost no protection for people walking in the front door. If you go to the back door where most patients come and go in wheel chairs and others that have a hard time moving around, There is no protection from wind or rain while trying to get into or out of their vehicle. Haven't the designers ever thought about the patients coming and going and provide any protection?
7. One hospital allows no smoking on their property, you must go across the street to smoke. A woman with 2 broken legs and in a wheel chair went out side to smoke about 50 feet away from the front door on a windy day. The hospital staff came out and said that you need to go across the street to smoke. Funny thing is, they have a canopy over the patient drop off entrance. They have room for 6 cars to off load patients while the cars stay running. The cars exhaust can find its way into the front door to enter the building. The volume of carbon dioxide and other exhaust gasses produce more problems than the smoke of one cigarette.
All of the above problems are true. It seems to me that hospitals need to think more about their patients. END.

3. THE KITCHEN

IF I ever get money enough to build a house of my own the first thing I shall construct will be the kitchen. The kitchen is to the home what the stomach is to the body. The Greeks used to think the soul was located in the stomach, and it wasn't a bad guess. Certain it is that you cannot see much glory in the universe while you have any kind of a stomachache.
My kitchen will be five things: big, light, clean, well equipped, and comfortable to loaf in.
To begin with the last, I do not see why a man who owns a house should be excluded from an essential part of it. Why should I be condemned to sit always in the front room surrounded by uncomfortable furniture, slippery floors, and fragile bric-a-brac, while the hired girl enjoys a neat, homey kitchen?
When I feel like it I want to occupy a cane rocker by the window, look around upon shining brass stew pans, and read in the recipe book how to make ginger cookies.
And then the sounds of the kitchen. They are more intimately lovely than any other house voices. First and foremost the song of the tea kettle: it just sings home and mother and solid comfort right into the core of your everlasting soul. Then the roar of the fire in the stove, the bubbling of the pot where the potatoes are boiling, the angry sputter of ham frying, and above all the solemn tick-tock of the old clock, beating time like an orchestra leader over the whole performance.
Also come the odors of the kitchen; the fragrance of bread just out of the oven, of the fowl done to a turn, filling the air with an aroma beyond that of flowers, and, Lord bless us all! if that isn't a real pumpkin pie the cook has just delivered into the world! It is an event that should be celebrated with cheer and song.
The eye feasts likewise. I want a floor of old-fashioned red brick on my kitchen floor; in all the realm of art no color is so rich. I want the copper utensils to gleam like burnished shields upon the shelf. I want to see the flash of the Sabatier knives in a row on the wall, weapons in the noble war of gastronomy. I want to see the old Delft-blue bowls and brown cooking vessels round about. Besides, there are the whiteness of white flour on the biscuit board, the sparkling heaps of sugar, the rosy-cheekedness of apples, the orangeness of oranges, and the grapeness of grapes.
There is no place where you can feel so human as in the kitchen. When you are tired of being respectable, and your soul is sick of good clothes, oh, to come aside a while here, in slippers and shirtsleeves, and in the cane rocker aforesaid read in peace in your daily paper all the antics of this mountebank world.
And then, best of all, the little boy comes in, you know what he wants, and although it is against the rules, you steal for him two Jonathan apples and three sugar cookies; he beams undying love at you, and skips out before mother sees him, while you, partner in such delicious crime, read your paper as if nothing had happened. END.

2. THINGS

MISS MATHILDA TOMMET of Milwaukee left a will the other day eight and one-half feet long, written in her own hand on sheets of paper pasted together. In it she bequeathed to one relative "my best bedspread and one-half of my best towels"; to another a high-backed chair, admonishing her executors to "be sure to take the one standing on the north side of the sideboard"; to another her chickens and feed; while vegetables, fruit, pickles, a pail of lard, and "father's old clock" go to another, and to her dearest enemy a pair of old shoestrings.
Then there was Thoreau, who in his, house by Walden Pond would have no furniture; he found a stone once which he fancied, and kept awhile, but soon threw it away, as he found it had to be dusted. One of the greatest tyrannies of life is THINGS.
The most common form of insanity is the mania to OWN. One of the first acts of a person who comes into money is to load himself down with a pile of rubbish that makes his life a fret and his deathbed terrible.
The very rich collect. They get together spoons, canes, pictures, vases, pitchers, books, or marbles. When there is no more room for them in the house they build a wing and pack it full. I knew a man who had $20,000 worth of old postage stamps locked up in a safety deposit vault. I knew an old woman who never traveled, although she longed to travel and had plenty of means, because she was afraid her parlor carpet and her blue china dishes would not properly be taken care of.
The stores are heaped up with THINGS. The most skillful men are employed to persuade people to buy THINGS for which they have no earthly use.
Every home contains expensive books that have stood on shelves for years without a soul looking into them.
American living rooms are as cluttered as Westminster Abbey. Every mantel is loaded with junk. The walls are covered with pictures, most of them bad. The floors are so thick with chairs and superfluous stands and tables that few can wind their way through them by day and none by night. Things, things, things ! Bedrooms are full of them, closets heaped with them, the attic is choked with them, the woodshed and barn are running over.
When we go away on vacations we take trunks full of things. When we go to Europe also we find that baggage is the plague of our life.
It is a relief to turn to the books of the Hindus and read, "Even if they have longer remained with us, the objects of sense are sure to vanish. Why, then, not forsake them ourselves? If they pass away by themselves they cause the greatest pain to the mind, but if we forsake them ourselves they cause endless happiness and peace."
And in another Oriental book we find this searching word: "For a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of THINGS which he possesseth." END.

THE SERVING VERSUS THE MONARCHIC VIRTUES

The Serving Virtues are humility, loyalty, selfcontrol and unselfishness. The Kings of earth, whether ancient or modern, whether European hereditary aristocracy or American selfmade plutocracy, are noticeable for their lack of these quailties. Such virtues are absolutely
inconsistent with the desire to dominate. The only governor who could have them would be the one who accepts rule merely because it is the best way he can serve.
The monarch virtues are pride, egoism, love of power and desire for prominence. These are essentially mean. They beget cruelty. They are what is the matter with our civilization. They cause a man to build a palace on Fifth Avenue as the moral apex of a pile of human suffeAng whose base is the sweat-shop and the gas-choked mine swarming with his stunted brothers.
On the contrary, you never meet a really great man, a truly majestic soul, full of the cosmic power of justice and altruism, who is not humble, who is not more considerate of human values than of money values. You never knew a beautiful soul that was not self-forgetful. These are not King-virtues.
They are blacksmith, school-teacher, housebuilder, poet and shoemaker virtues. They are the kind Jesus had, who was a Carpenter. They are the real virtues of God, who is Servant of All.
END.

PREPARATION

Before an artist can do anything the instrument must be tuned.
One way to open a locked door is to fall at it and scratch, kick, and shove I A better way is to get the key.
In other words, pluck and force and will power are all right in their place, but they are far from being the only secret of success. They are downright silly without--preparation.
Knowing how is half the battle. Practice and study count. Skill and efficiency mean a long time getting ready. We are familiar enough with this truth in ordinary matters. We send boys to school and prentices to the shop, and would-be stenographers to night school. For we recognize that the untrained man these days has to get off the earth, there's no room for him.
But we often fail to carry this primitive common sense over into the more serious concerns. We forget that one also has to learn-how to live. One cannot go at it tooth and nail It is not to be stormed, forced, and stampeded. Jt takes science, trainin, and practice.
The learning how is hard, always; but essentia The only things one can do without practice are over-eating, over-drinking, laziness, bad temper selfishness, and general meanness, also uselessnes But the good things come hard. Take humility rarest and noblest of virtues. The only road to humility is by being humiliated, which hurts.
The only way to patience is by self-restraint under irritation. If there is nothing to gnaw an worry and heckle us, then we never learn that beautiful art of patience. The only path to belief that is, to the only kind of belief that is of any us to character, is through doubt. Faith is a
product that is ground out of the mill of dismay, confusion, despair and struggle. Intellectual assent is cheap. The confidence that is a triumph of the soul over pessimism and fatuous reasonings is worth something.
The only means toward rest 'is work. It is to tired bones the bed tastes sweet. The soul can never enjoy letting go that has never hung On Real placidity is the product of strenuosity.
So also the preparation for knowledge is love Truth is not a lump of something a man may go and pick up. Truth is not, any thing at all. It is relation, a quality, a shine, an odor. It is not perceived by the intellect; it is perceived by the heart the intellect merely criticises and classifies it.
The secret of Edison's discoveries, and of Koch's, and of Marconi1s, is love. Only love can see. It has the X-ray eye. And this is true in business, or science, or literature, or art, quite as much as in religion. Brains can amass truths and pigeonhole them and arrange them; only passion of some sort can find them out where they are hidden.
Sorrow, disappointment, heartbreak, bereavement, all such things are the anterooms of greatness. There is a state into which a man can grow where he resembles an ordinary man about as much as a fine thoroughbred horse resembles a brokendown hack horse, or as a big American beauty rose resembles a dusty weed. Nobleness of charcter, grandeur of soul, sweetness of spirit, no one can get these without being prepared.
Some of us have the ignorant notion that we could be noble if we cared to make the effort. We are like the man who, when asked if he could play the violin, said he didn't know-he'd never tried.
What a deal of getting ready to live is needed! A man never really learns how to live till he's ready to die. And if with most of us, all of us, life is a mighty getting ready, then it is a getting ready for-what?
It is this tremendous question that unlocks the door of death and gives us our surest hope of the life beyond. END.

GAY MARRIAGE IS WRONG EDITORIAL
If God or his word the Bible or Heaven or Hell have any meaning, then the Gay life style is wrong. Read Leviticus 18, 22. It clearly states that, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." Also Leviticus 20, 13. It clearly states that, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.
I do not know if there is a place in the Bible that puts restrictions on a woman lying with another woman as she would lie with a male. Is it possible that Bible inferred the same restrictions for women that it stated for men? It is odd how we can interpret things to fit "our definition" of the life we want to live.
Some place in the Bible it states that a man shall take to him a "Wife." The choice is yours, abide by his laws or you will abide by his punishment. God will not abide by your feelings.
I have a small book, 114 pages, "Understanding The Fear Of The Lord" written by Floyd D. Martin from Minneapolis, ISBN1-886158-18-5. Humans do not understand that we should Fear God. I think we bring him down more to our level and that we feel he will understand us. The reverse is true, we need to take ourselves up more to his level and understand him, his power, his laws and his way of dealing with us after death.
We do not know what a Soul is, we can not comprehend what God can do with our Soul to cause our punishment for not following his laws. I think God could cause your body to feel the pain of being burned alive and for eternity he would not let your body ever be consumed and turned into ash. We should fear God for what he can do to us after death, and in his world.
I think if we fully understood God and his ability to punish us, we would all turn to angles over night. Note the comments after the next story that a man wrote back to me, apparently he has no fear of God, any idea what God will do with him? END.

MEN THAT STEAL. EDITORIAL
I found out about a burglary involving 3 or 4 individuals, could be more. When a man decides to burglarize someone‘s property he has tunnel vision. All he can see is what he can gain and not what he is putting up to loose if he is caught. Give this some thought, if they get a few hundred dollars or several thousand dollars, how much have they really gotten?
For the rest of his life he will have the stolen property. Oh! he may sell it, but he will still have the money from the stolen property. Maybe he will give it away, that doesn’t work either, he may not have possession, but he is still the thief that took it. More than likely he will not give it or sell it to a stranger, I am sure it would be a friend, relative or some one he knew. I don’t know about you, but I would not want a friend or relative that will give me or sell to me stolen property. If I can’t trust my friends or relatives more than that, I don’t want them either and we will part forever.
The only way for him to remove that black spot from his conscience is to return the same item he took or pay the replacement cost. Sorry but that is the only way for him to undue what he has stolen. What he has stolen will always be stolen property, even if it is around a hundred years from now and even if a hundred people have owned it.
When the man brings home something that he has stolen, half of the stolen property now belongs to his wife. Minnesota law states that a husband and wife each own half of what they have together. Now you have a wife that was not a participant in the burglary, receiving stolen property taken by her husband. I think at least 90 % of the wives would be furious with their husbands, made them an accessory to burglary. A wife will know when a husband comes home with things costing more than their budget will allow.
I wonder if the man thinks of what his wife and family will do with him in jail. Does he expect the wife to earn enough money to pay all the bills with him setting and doing nothing all day long. Will a wife really want to stay married to a man who has put her in this situation. For me, I would not stay married to someone that would make stolen property more important than our marriage, family and friends.
The day will come when he is the person who is burglarized, do you think he will say "years ago I invaded someone's home and burglarized it and took "what I wanted" so it is only fair that the same is done unto me and I will not say a bad word about them." "I don’t think so" He will be screaming the loudest about his missing property and the invasion of his privacy. How strange it is, this man of two faces.
My advice to any woman, tell your man that he has only one chance to steal, if he uses it, you will be gone. When my grandson tells me he found something, my advice is this, " If it was not yours before you found it. It is not yours after you found it." When you find something, you are only the care taker of that item until you can find it’s real owner. If you don’t want to take the time and energy to find the real owner, do not pick it up. Let it lay for some one else to "find," let some one else steal it. You will not find any material thing that is worth stealing, when you think about what you could loose if you get caught. Keep in mind that in this day and age, hidden cameras and people with camcorders are all over the place. END.

AMERICAN JOBS GOING OVERSEAS EDITORIAL
It has been said that the person that complains the most about something is the person that has the least to complain about. Almost every day someone is blaming President Bush for sending jobs abroad. I think more of the blame should be placed on the specific individuals that are the true problem. "YOU" are the problem, take a look at all the labels that you have purchased in the last year. How many of those items were Made In America? How many items did you, yourself put back on the shelf and show your Personal Support of American Workers because they were "NOT" Made In America, in the past year?
Everybody blames the President because he is fair game. He can not defend himself against your comments because you are hiding, anonymously.
The specific reason why the big box stores of this country go overseas to have products made, is your American dollar. They have millions of share holders to feed with your dollars and they want as many excess dollars as they can get. "Store 1" can entice you into their specific store by saying "We Have The Lowest Prices." "Store 2" will go out and find laborers to work for even less. "Store 2" can now say, "We Have The Lowest Prices." The stores fight each other, offering lower prices. Where do you think the low prices come from? They come from lower wages paid to "WORKERS," do management and share holders take a cut in pay equal to the workers?
The huge big box stores can go to a manufacture and say we want lower prices because of the huge orders we place with you or we will go to another supplier. The manufacture has a choice, lower his price or lay off the workers making that order.
Do you have any idea what would happen to the big box department stores if you said, I will only buy American Made when I spend my American Dollars. They would have a fire sale trying to unload Foreign Goods with no customers to sell it to. There would be manufacturing plants popping up all over the United States. Unemployment would drop down, almost to "Zero." I know, you are going to say I cannot afford it. Let my neighbor buy American. That sounds good, but he is saying the same about you.
I do not know when it will happen, but I feel that our economy is like a 3 legged stool with one leg being manufacturing. If you take that one leg of manufacturing away, the stool will not stand up. The other 2 legs will also fall.
Our country is like your savings account, how long will you have money in your savings if you keep taking out more money than you are putting back in. How long can the drain of our American Dollars going to other Countries continue. You can see what "YOUR" lack of support for American workers has done to our American Manufacturing sector.
Each day, you have the ability to show your Loyalty and bring jobs back to America by the way you spend your dollars. Can one or a thousand people make the change, NO, it takes every single Citizen. END.

WHEN DID MAN BEGIN, A THEORY EDITORIAL
Strange as it may sound some people still believe that God created the Universe in 7 of our 24 hour days. They say that God made all the Dinosaur bones and fossil records and put them on earth and that Dinosaurs have never lived. I feel that every one has the right to believe as they want.
The big bang took place about 14 billion years ago as the best estimate of our limited knowledge can be. Based on this time frame, Gods day would be about 2,333,333,333, that is 2 and a third billion, of our earth years is equal to one of Gods days. His hour is 96,222,222 of our years. His minute is 1,603,703 of our years. His second is 26,726 of our years. As you can see we have only started on Gods 7th day, His day of rest.
Some estimates say that the beginning of man started about 1 million years ago. This date is established by the fact of a humans ability to create and use tools. There is no evidence that animals could have ever shaped and used crude stone tools.
As I understand it there were 2 individuals, unknown to each other, that used the birth and death dates given in the bible to work backwards to Adams birth date. As I remember it, both men came up with the same year, the same month, but a different day. That was 2000 years before the birth of Christ. This is interesting when we have human, mummified remains from South America that have dated back to 35, 000 years ago.
The bible states that God placed Adam on earth toward the end of the 6th day. There is a belief that God picked up some earth and in an instant made Adams body, the same as our body is today. The question then becomes "how could any humans be living 31,000 years before the creation of Adam." The bible said that God made Adam in his likeness, does that mean that God has a body like ours? Is it possible that God made man in the likeness of his spirit or soul and the body was a place for God to put his likeness, the soul?
There is a possibility that people believing in Evolution and Christians need to come together. God could have use evolution for the path of putting Humans on earth. At some point in time God could have changed that being and gave him the ability to think. This could be the point where God created Adam
We already know that there are huge holes in the past historical record that we can not fill in. We do not know for sure the dates in which many of the things in the past took place. While this is only a theory, could it be true. END.

SHE IS MY BABY

She is my mother, said the young man, setting in the chair next to her, holding one hand and stroking the back of her head with the other hand, but I call her my baby.

She is eighty years old, even though she can not speak, she can say more than we will ever know. That diamond sparkle in those tiny tear drops, one in each eye, come and go as if to say, I am here in this body that I can not move and under stand every word that you say.

Old people are very much like babies, and we ought to love them, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven

I have an idea that life evens up things. When I was young and helpless she took care of me; now she is the baby she was when she was born. I take care of her. I am repaying my debt to her love, with my love. She never left me alone when I was an infant. I do not leave her alone now that she is an infant.

She was patient with me then; now I am patient with her. She fed me; now I feed her. I clothe her and keep her.

She sacrificed her young life to provide for me; I am glad of every chance I have to sacrifice myself for her.

She loved me when I was ignorant, awkward, needing constant care, and all because I was hers, born of her body and part of her soul. That part of her body that is me now, is well and able and will care for her.

Now every feebleness and trait of childishness in her endears me to her, for no reason except that she is my mother. By so much as she is a tax on my time, attention, and money, I love her.
She shall not triumph over me in the day of judgment; for my tenderness shall equal hers.
She watched with me until I grew up; I shall watch with her till she steps into Heaven. Nothing sacrificed by me is as great as the love we received from each other, in it's place. END.

1. GAY MARRIAGE IS WRONG EDITORIAL
If God or his word the Bible or Heaven or Hell have any meaning, then the Gay life style is wrong. Read Leviticus 18, 22. It clearly states that, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." Also Leviticus 20, 13. It clearly states that, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.
I do not know if there is a place in the Bible that puts restrictions on a woman lying with another woman as she would lie with a male. Is it possible that the Bible inferred the same restrictions for women that it stated for men? It is odd how we can interpret things to fit "our definition" of the life we want to live.
Some place in the Bible it states that a man shall take to him a "Wife." The choice is yours, abide by his laws or you will abide by his punishment. God will not abide by your feelings.
I have a small book, 114 pages, "Understanding The Fear Of The Lord" written by Floyd D. Martin from Minneapolis, ISBN1-886158-18-5. Humans do not understand that we should Fear God. I think we bring him down more to our level and that we feel he will understand us. The reverse is true, we need to take ourselves up more to his level and understand him, his power, his laws and his way of dealing with us after death.
We do not know what a Soul is, we can not comprehend what God can do with our Soul to cause our punishment for not following his laws. I think God could cause your body to feel the pain of being burned alive and for eternity he would not let your body ever be consumed and turned into ash. We should fear God for what he can do to us after death, and in his world.
I think if we fully understood God and his ability to punish us, we would all turn to angles over night. Note the comments after the next story that a man wrote back to me, apparently he has no fear of God, any idea what God will do with him? END.


2. ATHEISTS, ARE NOT TRUE ATHEIST EDITORIAL
Have you ever really thought about an atheist and their beliefs?They try every chance they get to remove any trace of God or Religion from the American way of life. They try to force their beliefs on us by arming themselves with ammunition taken from our own Constitution and using that ammunition to shoot down our own beliefs. I sometimes find that the ones who complain the most, are the ones that have the least to complain about in the first place.If we are to believe an atheist and his sincerity, we must ask one question. How can you live in America? An atheist is not a true Atheist. His statements are only used for his personal goals. I think you will find atheists do not object to every thing about God, almost every town has a Ten Commandments monument on public property. They do not make sure that every single one of them is removed in the United States.If an Atheist is a true believer, he or she could not have a copy of the word "God" on his person. If you check his clothes, I am sure he would have many copies of the word "God" on him. He could not eat, pay bills or purchase any thing. He could not work or receive any Social Security when he retires. In general he could not do any thing that requires the use of American Money, since all American money has the word God on it.Would he ever leave America because of the problems his beliefs are causing him to endure, in America, because God is everywhere. "I don’t think so"Take a look at the lady and her family that were operating an Atheist Origination in the United States. She had collected several million dollars, each with the word God on it. As I understand it, her and her family were killed for all those copies of the word God.I have always wanted to ask an Atheist this question. If by chance there is a God and there is a judgment day. Will you say to God? When I was alive on earth I had the choice to believe in you and abide by your commandment's. "I chose not to believe" Now, God, I will accept any punishment you have for me with out complaint or excuse for my actions. Could any one of them give me the simple answer, "YES"? END.
3. Comments to the above:
Leo said... Your religion has taught you false things about what atheism is. You say that atheists are hypocrites for not trying to purge themselves of all things related to god. Unfortunately you miss the entire point of atheism, atheism is not about hating god or being free of god. It is about not being fanatical about your beliefs and tolerating those of other people. Unlike a religion, there is no clause about atheism being the only correct belief, so it does not bother us in the least that we continually interact with things related to god.So what if there is a god? Firstly, I would be very surprised, and then I would say to him:"As you know, I did not believe in you while I was alive, however, I led a good life, I was fair to others, helped those less fortunate, and did not do unjust things. If you send me to hell now, how are you better than a petty dictator like we have so many of on earth?" END.
4. Answer, Fanatical! Tolerating! Atheists are the ones removing the 10 Commandments from public property when the majority of the people want it there. Who is not tolerating the beliefs of others? END.

5. SENTENTIAL WISDOM
THE following is a collection of sentential sayings (sayings in a single sentence) which may give you food for thought
Every kind of effort is useful except worry.
Ignorance is the hardest thing in the world to discover, especially your own; only the very wise can see it.
As most insane people think they are sane, so the fool is surest of his knowledge.
The best mirror in which to see yourself is your Work.
The seed of all Tragedy is a failure in Courage.
"To the hero there is no tragedy" (Maeterlinck).
"Butterflies are the souls of torn-up love letters" (Victor Hugo).
Only the great realize their littleness.
The only way to get anywhere is to start from where you stand.
"It is never too late for the soul of man" (Olive Schreiner).
Appreciation is to the human soul what the rain from heaven is to the plant.
The only practical use of Death is to show us what is worth while in Life.
"It takes two to tell the truth" (Thoreau).
There is but one sensible prayer it is to know the Will of God.
All there is to Efficiency is to know what are Essentials and do them, and to know what things are Nonessential, and let them alone.
You cannot prevent Evil Thought from knocking at your door, but you need not let him in.
Being Good is as much a matter of practice as playing the violin.
There is but one quality we are to hate. It is Egotism. And it has a thousand disguises.
Only the useful is beautiful. Only the beautiful is useful.
Love is not blind. Love is the only thing that can see.
Man is like a bicycle; he is safe from falling off only as he keeps going on.
The best antiseptic is health.
The best way to kill a lie is to keep on telling it.
Sincerity is more convincing than eloquence.
The bitterest pessimists are the young. For one soured old man I can show you ten soured young men.
The first and easiest noise to make is crying; and people can criticize, complain and croak who cannot do anything else.
No one is so much a slave to habit as Nature; the sun never rises in the West.
Success may be an accident, but Failure is always a habit.
There is no intelligent Faith that has not grown out of honest Doubts.
A fault acknowledged is half cured.
Do unto yourself as you would that others do unto you.
Education consists in correcting the errors of Common Sense.
No good literature was ever produced by one who wrote about people or things he did not know and did not love. END

6. THINGS YOU CAN LIVE WITHOUT
RUSKIN once said people could live without pictures, but they could not live so well. There are many things in life without which people can live, but not so well. Man is a creature of infinite want, but of remarkably few needs. The machinery of his life is immensely complicated, but surprisingly little keeps it running. The animal needs that keep life in his body are soon met. But it is in the margin beyond these that all that makes man a higher being takes place.
The beauty of music is one of the things you can live without. Life goes on even if the soul is never touched by the tenderness of song. Life goes on, but it does not go on the same. Something irreplaceable is lost.
Travel broadens and enlarges a man's life, but it is not necessary to it. The writer once talked to an old woman in the Kentucky mountains. She had lived in the same spot for over sixty years and had been only twice to a town five miles away.
Education is one of the things you can live without. A man may never have read a sentence in his life and yet may live longer than one who is widely read. He may live longer, but not so well!
Fine, worthwhile literature, the real food of the soul, can be entirely neglected. You can live all your life and never hear the name of Shakespeare. All the richness of the great minds of the past, the real legacy of older days, may never be heard of, but life goes on. Man can exist without religion. His body goes on living even though his soul is never awakened. The love and appreciation of flowers, of birds, of the wide, clean beauty of nature, can be entirely left out of his life, and still it continues.
One of the chief evils of poverty is that it means that "the things you can live without" often have to be discarded for the bare necessities. Like those born blind who cannot conceive of color or those born deaf who cannot imagine sound, those who never experience "the things you can live without" rarely miss them. They live on without them. But they do not live so well. END.

7. GOD'S PHONOGRAPH
ONE time, in my dream, a man showed me God's phonograph. It was a little box made of time and light and feeling, all wrought of gold and lily work. He told me that this phonograph contained a record of every word I had ever uttered, of every thought that had ever found place in my consciousness, of every love and hate that had vibrated from my heart.
"Whenever you talk," he said, "you are not speaking into empty space, but there is a spirit by your side which holds before your lips this machine. The recording apparatus in it turns unceasingly, and every emotion of your being is caught and held.
"Here is a row of keys. Press the appropriate key and you can hear again what took place at any period of your life."
This was curious. I pressed one key and heard myself crying and babbling at the age of six. I pressed another key and heard my recitation in school at the age of ten. By pressing other keys I heard my former episodes of anger, of love, of aspiration and of folly.
After I had listened a while I had a strong feeling of depression.
"Take it away," I said. "It makes me sick."
And the man asked, " Why do you say that?"
I answered, " My chief sentiment is pity. I am sorry for the soul to whom I have listened. He was so ignorant, so mistaken, so lacking in foresight, and there are few feelings worse than self-pity."
"Do you think, then," he said, "that God's feeling towards all men is one of pity, perhaps contempt? "
" I do, now," I replied.
"But," he answered, as he put the instrument away, "that is where you are mistaken. You have partial wisdom; God has perfect wisdom. Your difficulty is that you judge what took place at a former time as if you had done it at your present age. But the quality of any act depends upon the period of growth at which the person is who does the act. To you life is a series of errors; to God it is a continuance of growth. The gardener is not disgusted with a tree because it was once a sapling, nor with a flower because it was once a bud. Neither is the Creator angry with men because they were once more imperfect than they now are. Growth is the law of life, and growth implies imperfection. The Creator does not make any life perfect; he makes it to become perfect. Whatever is alive grows. Cling to that word 'growth,' it is the key that unlocks the Universe.
The Creator is not displeased with the human creatures He has made. He makes no mistakes. Our apparent mistakes are a part of his plan."
For all that, I should not want to listen often to God's phonograph. END.

8. DUST
WHEN I go along the crowded street I am greeted everywhere by whirls of dust. I find my shoes covered with it. Horses kick it up and it is everywhere, even in my lungs. This dust, however, is a remarkable thing. Out of it comes all that grows; the trees, the flowers and the crops all spring from it.
What is it? The decayed and disintegrated results of former life. All that lives must find its final abiding place in dust. The death of all things, however, is not so remarkable as the birth of new things out of this common element.
I myself am a product of dust, for He who created me made my body out of the dust of the ground. A man is just as much a growth of the soil as a tree. His evolution has only been a little longer. By and by he must return to the dust from which he came.
This dust, therefore, contains in itself the potentialities of all being. In it are the trees, birds, flowers and men of the future. How many times in the past has this Dust been a man, tree, animial, flower or any other living thing ?
It is a symbol of myself. For what is personality but a something or other composed of things, we know not what?
What are ideas and thoughts but things that have found lodgment in us and have floated to us from somewhere?
I have no original ideas. The very words I use are the detritus from others' ideas. And the very passions of my body and soul are but a temporary grouping of certain sensations that belong to the human race.
It is an interesting spectacle to watch human beings and all the growths that surround them, whether of plants or animals, rhythmically rising from the dust and settling back again. All life and growth as we know it, is but an episode. If there were no new births, all things would go speedily back to the dust from which they came.
Dust, therefore, is a remarkable substance, containing in itself not only the death of all living things, but the potentialities of their regeneration. END.

9. THE NEW ENGLAND STATES KEEP CRYING. EDITORIAL

It seems like we have to listen to the residents of the New England States complaining about the high cost of heating fuel every year. When the oil embargo took place in the mid 70’s I was burning #2 fuel oil when the price went out of sight and I spent $1,500.00 for one heating season. The next year I switched to wood for heating and I could get by paying less than $200.00.

Years later we switched back to #2 fuel oil. I knew that fuel prices would go up in the winter and the colder the temprature the higher the price would go. It doesn’t take many smarts to know that if I had 2 or 3 of the 365 gal fuel oil tanks full at the start of winter I would make it through most of the winter with out buying fuel. The savings, of the difference in summer price and the peak winter price paid for the tanks in a couple years.

If almost everyone in New England would have enough fuel to last most of the winter, at the start of winter, the peak price would drop down. The fact that users do not want to own their own storage, it forces the oil companies to own it. The oil companies charge the consumer for the use of their storage year after year after year.

The New Englanders, by their own actions, create their own high prices and create an artificial high demand during the winter when it is not necessary. As I see it, they are, the problem, as well as the answer. Why should the rest of us listen to people complain about their problem that they themselves can fix and in the process save their own money.

A good recommendation would be for any one that uses fuel oil or propane to double or triple their own storage capacity. This would help get you over the winter high demand hump. A side benefit would be that the fuel truck would make less trips to your location and use less diesel fuel in the winter. If large numbers of home owners would have filled up last summer the truck diesel fuel might be cheaper and you would be paying less at stores that now pay a fuel surcharge, passed along to you. END.

2. ATHEISTS, ARE NOT TRUE ATHEIST EDITORIAL

Have you ever really thought about an atheist and their beliefs?
They try every chance they get to remove any trace of God or Religion from the American way of life. They try to force their beliefs on us by arming themselves with ammunition taken from our own Constitution and using that ammunition to shoot down our own beliefs. I sometimes find that the ones who complain the most, are the ones that have the least to complain about in the first place.

If we are to believe an atheist and his sincerity, we must ask one question. How can you live in America? An atheist is not a true Atheist. His statements are only used for his personal goals. I think you will find atheists do not object to every thing about God, almost every town has a Ten Commandments monument on public property. They do not make sure that every single one of them is removed in the United States.

If an Atheist is a true believer, he or she could not have a copy of the word "God" on his person. If you check his clothes, I am sure he would have many copies of the word "God" on him. He could not eat, pay bills or purchase any thing. He could not work or receive any Social Security when he retires. In general he could not do any thing that requires the use of American Money, since all American money has the word God on it.

Would he ever leave America because of the problems his beliefs are causing him to endure, in America, because God is everywhere. "I don’t think so"

Take a look at the lady and her family that were operating an Atheist Origination in the United States. She had collected several million dollars, each with the word God on it. As I understand it, her and her family were killed for all those copies of the word God.

I have always wanted to ask an Atheist this question. If by chance there is a God and there is a judgment day. Will you say to God? When I was alive on earth I had the choice to believe in you and abide by your commandment's. "I chose not to believe" Now, God, I will accept any punishment you have for me with out complaint or excuse for my actions. Could any one of them give me the simple answer, "YES"? END.

1. MEN THAT STEAL. EDITORIAL

I found out about a burglary involving 3 or 4 individuals, could be more. When a man decides to burglarize someone‘s property he has tunnel vision. All he can see is what he can gain and not what he is putting up to loose if he is caught. Give this some thought, if they get a few hundred dollars or several thousand dollars, how much have they really gotten?

For the rest of his life he will have the stolen property. Oh! he may sell it, but he will still have the money from the stolen property. Maybe he will give it away, that doesn’t work either, he may not have possession, but he is still the thief that took it. More than likely he will not give it or sell it to a stranger, I am sure it would be a friend, relative or some one he knew. I don’t know about you, but I would not want a friend or relative that will give me or sell to me stolen property. If I can’t trust my friends or relatives more than that, I don’t want them either and we will part forever.

The only way for him to remove that black spot from his conscience is to return the same item he took or pay the replacement cost. Sorry but that is the only way for him to undue what he has stolen. What he has stolen will always be stolen property, even if it is around a hundred years from now and even if a hundred people have owned it.

When the man brings home something that he has stolen, half of the stolen property now belongs to his wife. Minnesota law states that a husband and wife each own half of what they have together. Now you have a wife that was not a participant in the burglary, receiving stolen property taken by her husband. I think at least 90 % of the wives would be furious with their husbands, made them an accessory to burglary. A wife will know when a husband comes home with things costing more than their budget will allow.

I wonder if the man thinks of what his wife and family will do with him in jail. Does he expect the wife to earn enough money to pay all the bills with him setting and doing nothing all day long. Will a wife really want to stay married to a man who has put her in this situation. For me, I would not stay married to someone that would make stolen property more important than our marriage, family and friends.

The day will come when he is the person who is burglarized, do you think he will say "years ago I invaded someone's home and burglarized it and took "what I wanted" so it is only fair that the same is done unto me and I will not say a bad word about them." "I don’t think so" He will be screaming the loudest about his missing property and the invasion of his privacy. How strange it is, this man of two faces.

My advice to any woman, tell your man that he has only one chance to steal, if he uses it, you will be gone. When my grandson tells me he found something, my advice is this, " If it was not yours before you found it. It is not yours after you found it." When you find something, you are only the care taker of that item until you can find it’s real owner. If you don’t want to take the time and energy to find the real owner, do not pick it up. Let it lay for some one else to "find," let some one else steal it. You will not find any material thing that is worth stealing, when you think about what you could loose if you get caught. Keep in mind that in this day and age, hidden cameras and people with camcorders are all over the place. END.