In yesterday’s Under the Fedora I mentioned both that the reason I had not made it to CPAC lately was my full time job and also how DaTipJar has been falling short to the point where this will likely be the blog’s last year.
Well it only took 24 hours for things to get worse.
Things have been nasty at my work for a couple of years. The normal peak seasons at Christmastime that were crazy during the Trump years lasted less that a week. We closed two warehouses in the area and every single temp worker at our place was let go.
All of this despite the insistence of the media/left that our economy is absolutely fantastic and we need to thank the Biden Administration for it. Well I’ll give them this much, I do give Joe Biden/Obama credit for the economy we have. I got another dose of that economy last night.
Yesterday we were told that my shift, the 2nd shift is to be eliminated. I don’t know what my new shift is going to be but the end results at minimum are
a 4% pay decrease
Daily mass at best eliminated for 3 days a week and at worst eliminated completely
A 67% chance that I’ll have to give up both running the parish Adoration and my two hours
The joys of early mornings and rush hour traffic
And not only a shift no longer corresponding with my wife but because she sleeps in a recliner due to hip issues an excellent chance of waking her each morning and disrupting her sleep every day.
At my age and with the economy we have there is not much I can do I’ve done two of the three things that can be done.
I’ve arranged a Mass with all of us at the company as the Mass intention.
I voted for Trump today when I had the chance.
The only other thing I can do is ask you to consider hitting DaTipJar and or Sharing this post for that purpose. I’ll cut back and we’ll get by the best we can.
But if you would like to give a hand it would be most appreciated.
11th Doctor:Yes, I know that, Rory. I’m not exactly one to miss the obvious but we need everything we can get. Okay, Cyber weapons! This is basically a sentry box. So headless wonder here was a sentry. Probably got himself duffed up by the locals. Never underestimate a Celt. Rory: Doctor— 11th Doctor:Hush, Rory. Thinking. Why leave a Cyberman on guard unless it’s a Cyberthing in the box but why would they lock up one of their own? Okay, no, not a Cyberthing. But what? What? Oh! Missing something obvious, Rory. Something big. Something right slap in front of me. I can feel it. Rory: Yeah. I think you probably are. 11th Doctor:I’ll get it in a minute.
Doctor Who, The Pandorica Opens 2010
The Sunday before last I went to the supermarket with DaWife getting various things we needed for Christmas. As we were leaving there was a pile of large plush Christmas Stuffed Animals at the checkout for a rather low price. My wife immediately noticed a large three foot tall Gnome and game him a big hug, bigger than the ones I’ve been getting lately and went on about how cute he was.
She was working that weekend and left by 1:45 to go to her job. I also work every Sunday but this Sunday the fellows who ride with me had a different ride so instead of leaving early to pick them up I left early to get the Gnome. I didn’t have time to bring him home and I figured my trunk might be dirty so I buckled him into the passenger seat and took him to work with me leaving him in the car.
It was raining that evening so the problem was how to sneak him into the house. I took off my sweater and wrapped him in it and carried him onto the back porch where there was a large Gnome sized empty box that contained the Christmas Tree that is now permanently set up with what used to be our youngest son’s room but is now our permanent Christmas room. I tossed him in quickly and folded the sides so it could not be seen.
When I came in I was the one surprised as there was a Pinball machine in the den (A 1988 Williams Taxi). I had expected a rental for Christmas but not a week early. I also noticed a large blanket on the side of the machine next to the bookshelf that wasn’t there before. DaWife explained that it was the blanket he used to cover glass as it was brought in (a common thing when moving a pinball machine to help prevent it from being shattered and also if it does break to keep the glass from scattering.) and the fellow decided he might as well leave it there as he would need it when he took it out.
That gave me an idea, the next morning when DaWife went to the washing machine, in the covey of the kitchen I rushed the Gnome in put him in the space between the bookcase and the old entertainment center and tossed the blanket over it. Even with her sleeping directly across from the Pinball machine (she has back issues and sleeps on a recliner I sleep on the couch next to the recliner because what’s the point of being married and sleeping in a room alone) she would not be likely to notice something odd with the blanket thinking it was just over some clutter. I was right, she never noticed it.
The pinball machine gave me my plan, after she went to bed on Christmas Eve I would prop up the Gnome on the pinball machine standing up so when she woke up on Christmas day it would be the first thing she would see. When her sister came on Christmas Eve for dinner I showed her the Gnome under the blanket and explained my plan. She grinned and approved.
My sons were both over for Christmas Eve and decided to spend the night. We went to midnight mass and when we got home they went upstairs to sleep while DaWife got comfortable on her recliner. I waited on the couch watching the recap of the miraculous Patriots win over the Broncos but actually waiting for her to fall asleep so I could set up the Gnome. Finally at 2:30 AM I heard her snoring but to play it safe I waited till about 3:15 AM before I set up the Gnome in front of the black glass wondering if she would wake up in the middle of the night and see the gift.
I woke up at 7:38 AM with a bit of a cramp and noticed she was still out like a light. I decided to go to the 8 AM Christmas Mass since I normally go to daily mass anyways so as quietly as I could I made my way out of the room, got dressed and went to Mass. When I got home I parked in the front of the house and coming in the front door I noticed DaWife’s chair empty but the Gnome still set up on the pinball machine.
Confused I came in and saw her at the kitchen table waiting for the water to boil for her coffee and having banana bread. I asked her how her new friend was and she looked at me very odd asking what I was talking about. Trying not to sound incredulous I made conversation and realized that she somehow had not seen the giant 3 foot Gnome right in front of her when she woke up. I kept hinting that she was missing something but despite my efforts I couldn’t talk her into going back into the den. She simply looked at me confused and slightly irritated.
Eventually one of my son’s woke up and came down stairs and noticed the Gnome I signaled to him to say nothing but we started making remarks that indicated to DaWife that she was missing something she still had no clue. Even when I called him into the room and had him take a picture of the Gnome with the Pinball machine she didn’t get it still sitting at the kitchen table sipping her coffee and watching her phone. This is the picture he just took from the recliner my wife sleeps on. The hands on the bottom right are my hands typing this post.
The 2nd son also came down and I also signaled to him to say nothing and he played along. It is now 49 minutes since I came home as even as I type DaWife still hasn’t noticed the Gnome, ironically as I finished typing that sentence she walked in and finally saw it and then I repeated the story to her as I just wrote it. She hugged it named him Norman and finally understood why were were all confused. She insists that I note that she
Was running to the bathroom
Didn’t have her glasses on
And for the sake of peace in the house those things are duly noted
It was not an expensive gift and the you didn’t see it bit took less than an hour but if my sons ever find wives and we have grandchildren for the rest of our lives we will tell them the story of Norman the Invisible Christmas Gnome who Nana couldn’t see right in front of her.
Now if that story isn’t worth $15 bucks I’d like to know what is.
Merry Christmas all!
FYI this week I will be starting my post Christmas Fundraiser to try to get the blog into the black for the year. The goal is $3000 and 5 New $20 a month or 10 $10 a month subscribers. If you wish to keep us going beyond the election to our 16th anniversary please considering kicking in at the TipJar button in the upper left.
Update: DaWife informs me that his name is GNORMAN not Norman I regret the error
There is a story about how the special rare style of eclipse that will be viewed from Texas is going to produce issues with Texas’ power grid renewable side because said eclipse will be so long.
This highlights one of the things that sane Red States need to address. As people flee to them the demand on basic services from Electricity to water are going to increase which means you have to build the infrastructure to handle said increases. This means power stations, dams etc which will mean some expense for state budgets.
Of course they might decide not doing this will keep the liberals out.
There was a story out of New Zealand that I referenced briefly yesterday that based on their specialties Doctors were given Covid Vaccine exemptions but only if they did not reveal said exemptions is yet another “post Christian” horror story where the general population was kept in the dark for fun and profit but there was a stat in the story that I must confess throws me off. To wit:
The most highly Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are in order Portugal, Chile, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Spain and Australia. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is 91 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 12 per cent above the five-year historical average.
The least Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Switzerland. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is just 63 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 0 per cent compared to the five-year historical average. In other words, they have averaged a normal death rate.
The great difference between excess deaths is not a surprise but the 0% figure from countries that have a 63% of the population vaxxed is. 63% is a solid majority of the population. I’m no doctor but the math seems inconsistent that there would be no statistical excess deaths given that more than 3 in 5 of the population took the jab if the jab is the cause.
I’d be interested in seeing the historical rates of some of the known COVID jab side effects pre-covid in those countries vs the others and I wonder what the booster rates were in those countries. That might be the difference.
Stacy McCain took on the Trevor Bauer story on great Major League pitcher who insisted on his innocence and had the courage and wisdom to hold out till said innocence could be proven.
While I suspect the lawsuit against MLB will be epic as his suspension cost him tens of millions of dollars the bottom line is that by not embracing the Church’s teaching on marriage and sex Bauer put himself in that situation. However as many young rich men won’t listen to that point Stacy pointed out some basic facts both about there statistical odds of a genital herpes but more importantly a basic fact of life that might make a more effective argument:
If a woman is very attractive, why is she still single at age 27? Why is she still in the dating market? What’s wrong with her?
Now if you’re date her for a while with the thought of Christian marriage you might be able to find out the answer to that question but if you’re out for a quick lay these are the risks you take.
God’s laws aren’t just the right thing they’re the smart thing.
Thursday I was at a stop light in Fitchburg with a large truck on my left next to me. The light turned green and because I was running early I paused before going because our two lanes were going to merge into one not wanting to bottle neck.
It’s a good thing I did because the very next moment a car from the lane whose light just turned red passed just in front of me at high speed, jumped the curb and crashed into a parked car at the bank parking lot where I had been five minutes earlier.
If I had been a second or two faster in moving forward that car would have hit my drivers door square and you would be reading something else this morning.
I seem to have run into a lot of things over my lifetime where the difference between life and death was a split second away. I guess all those Rosaries make a difference.
Finally if you are in the New England area on Saturday October 28th consider Groktoberfest put on by the good folks at Granite Grok .
It will be an excellent chance to meet up with other conservatives. There will be music, comedy, Local Groups and Vendors, food, beverages, Speakers and even a gun raffle. (Ruger 10-22)!
Tickets are on sale now here. I’ll be buying mine before the end of the week.
Hi. I’m Zilla and I need to talk to you about mental health
The mental health big pharma industrial complex in the United States of America is, and has always been, an abomination. You could be a nice normal person just trying to live your life and maybe you have a bad day and say something in hyperbole that you don’t really mean but you said it to the wrong person and now they are coming for you. You have no rights at this point. You can go peacefully or you can resist (I always fight) but you WILL be taken from your home whether you like it or not. The restraints are painful and you do not yet know what dank hole you are being taken to, you just want the pain and humiliation to stop. No you can not have your clothes, your shoes, your meds, your wheelchair nor any other assistive device because some clown thinks you will use it as a weapon (while you are handcuffed, hog tied, or strapped to a gurney). No wallet for you! No house keys, either. If you live alone maybe they lock the house. Your pets are on their own. You will be taken against your will and spend several hours under psyche hold at a facility until they get around to seeing you. It can take days and nobody on the outside will know where you are. Maybe they will feed you. The techs try but they are seriously underfunded and overworked. Eventually the psychiatrist will see you and decide your fate. You will either be turned loose or get admitted and spend the next two weeks of your life locked up against your will. They will try to pump you full of drugs. Most patients do not know or cannot articulate that they have the right of refusal for most meds under certain conditions. Some of the medications are experimental and dangerous. I was harmed by them. It happened. Such is the way of things here but it need not be so. A different way is needed!
Saint Dymphna is the patron Saint of people who suffer from nervous and mental disorders. My grandmother introduced her to me when I was little because I think she always knew that I was different and she also knew that my young life was filled with violence and chaos in my family and in my neighborhood; my grandmother knew I needed something powerful to get me through the worst this life would throw at me – my grandmother was highly intuitive and struggled with issues as well. She was a wonderful teacher and I appreciate her and miss her more the older I get. But I digress…
Dymphna was a young Irish princess born to a pagan king and a devout Christian mother. She was beautiful, smart, and beloved by all. Like many young girls at the time, she loved the Lord above all things and pledged her chastity to Jesus. Dymphna had what would seem a charmed life until her mother died. Dymphna’s father went insane with grief. The story gets very dark from there…
So unhinged was Dymphna’s father, Damon, that the King’s counselors suggested he remarry. Though he was still grieving for his wife, he agreed to remarry if a woman as beautiful as she could be found.
Damon sent messengers throughout his town and other lands to find woman of noble birth who resembled his wife and would be willing to marry him, but when none could be found, his evil advisors whispered sinful suggestions to marry his own daughter. So twisted were Damon’s thoughts that he recognized only his wife when he looked upon Dymphna, and so he consented to the arrangement.
When she heard of her father’s misguided plot, Dymphna fled her castle with her confessor, a priest named Gerebran, two trusted servants, and the king’s fool. The group sailed toward what is now called Belgium, and hid in the town of Geel.
Though it becomes uncertain what exactly happened next, the best-known version claims the group settled in Geel, where Dymphna built a hospital for the poor and sick, but in using her wealth, her father was able to discover her location.
When Damon found his daughter was in Belgium, he traveled to Geel and captured them. He ordered the priest’s head to be separated from his body and attempted to convince Dymphna to return to Ireland and marry him.
When Dymphna refused, Damon became enraged and drew his sword. He struck Dymphna’s head from her shoulders and left her there. When she died, Dymphna was only fifteen-years-old. After her father left Geel, the residents collected both Dymphna and Gerebran’s remains and laid them to rest in a cave.
In defense of her purity, Dymphna received the crown of martyrdom around the year 620 and became known as the “Lily of Éire. In 1349, a church honoring St. Dymphna was built in Geel, and by 1480, so many pilgrims were arriving in need of treatment for mental ills, that the church was expanded. The expanded sanctuary was eventually overflowing again, leaving the townspeople to accept them into their homes, which began a tradition of care for the mentally ill that continues to this day.
Unfortunately, in the 15th century, the original St. Dymphna Church in Geel burned to the ground, and the magnificent Church of St. Dymphna was erected and consecrated in 1532, where it still stands above the location her body was originally buried.
Many miracles have been proven to take place at her shrine in the church erected in her honor, and her remains were placed in a silver reliquary in the church. Some of her remains can also be found at the Shrine to Saint Dymphna in the United States.
The priest who had helped Dymphna was also sainted, and his remains were moved to Xanten, Germany.
The United States National Shrine of Saint Dymphna is at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Massillon, Ohio and St. Dymphna’s Special School can be found in ballina, County Mayo, Republic of Ireland.
Saint Dymphna is the patroness of those suffering nervous and mental afflictions as well as victims of incest.
Traditionally, Saint Dymphna is often portrayed with a crown on her head, dressed in royal robes, and holding a sword. In modern art, Saint Dymphna is shown holding the sword, which symbolizes her martyrdom, quite awkwardly. She is also often shown holding a lamp, while some holy cards feature her wearing green and white, holding a book and white lilies.
Prayer: Hear us, O God, Our Saviour, as we honor St. Dymphna, patron of those afflicted with mental and emotional illness. Help us to be inspired by her example and comforted by her merciful help. Amen.
For CENTURIES, the local community of Geel, Belgium, where Saint Dymphna was martyred, has exemplified what it means to provide compassionate and HELPFUL care to troubled people. It is my fervent prayer that more community efforts be put forward similar to what they do in Geel for our troubled and vulnerable people HERE, and Soon! Amen. I also long to make a pilgrimage to Geel for the help I think I truly need and I would also like to visit the National Shrine in Massillon, Ohio, God willing.
What happens in Geel is astonishing.
It is an approach to psychiatric care that has gone on in Geel (pronounced “hail”) since as early as the 13th century, archives show. The locals began building a church to St. Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness, in the mid-1300s and pilgrims flocked to Geel. They lived in the local farmers’ homesteads, where they worked the land alongside their new families.
Both the tradition and the church still stand.
By the end of the 19th century, nearly 2,000 boarders lived among the Geelians, as the locals call themselves. Today the town of 41,000 in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, has 120 boarders in local homes.
That has made Geel both something of a model for a particular paradigm of psychiatric care and an outlier, often regarded over the centuries with suspicion (including by The New York Times, which, in a headlinefrom March 23, 1891, called Geel “a colony where lunatics live with peasants” that had been “productive of misery and evil results”).
Those suspicions only grew as Geel’s approach crushed up against the rising medical field of psychiatry. In more recent times, however, the town has come up for reconsideration as an emblem of a humane alternative to the neglect or institutionalization of those with mental illness found in other places.
“There has always been controversy about how ‘disturbed’ or ‘eccentric’ people should be treated,” wrote Oliver Sacks, the renowned neurologist, in 2007, in his foreword to the book “Geel Revisited,” an examination of 19 boarders over the course of decades.
“Should they be treated as ill, possibly dangerous, confined in institutions?” wrote Dr. Sacks, who died in 2015. “Or is there a chance that a more human and social approach, trying to reintegrate them into family and community life, a life of love and work, will succeed as well?”
For Dr. Sacks, who had visited Geel, the answer was to accept mental illness as individuality, rather than a stigmatizing disability.
Geel proves, Dr. Sacks concluded, that “even those who could seem to be incurably afflicted can, potentially, live full, dignified, loved and secure lives.”
I would dearly love to see such efforts attempted in the United States and elsewhere. I do what I can with my little street/psyche ward ministry along with a few very kind and trustworthy friends but I’m messed up too and also living in extreme poverty so I am a little bit limited in what I can do versus what I want to do.
I have a thing I call #TheGoodening and I declare it a Revolution based on love, compassion, dignity, and kindness.
I know plenty of locked up people who could do just fine if they were simply treated like the free human beings that God created us to be.
Sometimes all a troubled person needs is a little bit of kindness, respect, and dignity. Amazing things can happen when punishment ends and treating the troubled as sick instead of criminal begins. #CrazyLivesMatter and who is who to judge whether a person is a simple misfit or a very troubled person. Something needs to change.
I pray I may be part of that change, God willing. I long to see less misery and more compassion among our own people.
Thank you for listening and reading. Please always pray for the truly vulnerable people and help out when you can. Peace be with you. I love you. God bless you.
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