A Poetic Janello

A Cavern Lit With Love,

While Outside Storms Are Raging;

 The Time Filled With Present,

While Other Concerns Are Raging.  - Janello

A Long, Dark Night

The day began sunny and calm, but as the sun rose in the sky so did the wind. The leaves shook on the trees and the branches bent. The waves swelled. I stopped at the salon to get my hair trimmed and returned to the Manse just as the electricity went out. I walked back to the salon and learned the electricity was out all the way to the Soo Locks. It was going to be a long, dark night. With candles for light, I peeled and cut the apples from the neglected apple trees. They would make wonderful additions to muffins, cakes and pies. The world lives in a state of darkness, maybe not the lack of artificial light, but the darkness of life without the light of God. When God chose to come near, to send his Son, in human image, to earth as Jesus, he chose to dwell among us; he moved into the neighborhood. Jesus became a brother, a son, a friend, a healer, and a teacher. Jesus came to help us know goodness and kindness - to know him - the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). He taught us to live as sons and daughters of God, righteous in thoughts and deeds. He came to grace our lives with love. - Peggy B. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, … " (John 1:14).

Debt Spiral

"It is impossible to know exactly when the next recession will hit. But when it does, two things will happen. One, people will lose their jobs, so tax revenue will fall. And two, more people will start claiming entitlements like welfare, which means the government will have to spend more money. Since these two trends are mathematically exclusionary, the government will likely resort to borrowing even more money, bloating the national debt even faster. This happened during the last recession, and America is in an even worse predicament this time. The federal government is over $22 trillion in debt. It has borrowed almost $6 trillion from its Social Security Trust Fund (intragovernmental debt) and over $16 trillion from outside investors (public debt). Last year, it paid an astounding $324.7 billion in interest payments on its debt - roughly half of what it spends on defense. Data from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office Of Debt Management shows that the government is only five years away from the point where every new dollar it borrows will have to be paid as interest on the debt. This is called a debt death spiral. The government will soon be borrowing money to pay the interest on money it has already borrowed." - A. Miller (October, 2019)

U.S. Economy

"Our economy is very strong, despite the horrendous lack of vision by Jay Powell and the Fed. but the Democrats are trying to will the economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 election. Very selfish! Our dollar is so strong that it is sadly hurting other parts of the world … The Fed rate, over a fairly short period of time, should be reduced by at least 100 basis points, with perhaps some quantitative easing as well. If that happened, our economy would be better, and the world economy would be greatly and quickly enhanced - good for everyone." - President Trump Posted On Twitter; August 19, 2019

Highway Patrol

I made a traffic stop on an elderly lady the other day for speeding on U.S. 166 Eastbound at Mike Marker 73 just East of Sedan, KS. I asked for her driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance. The lady took out the required information and handed it to me. In with the cards I was somewhat surprised to see she had a conceal carry permit. I looked at her and asked if she had a weapon in her possession at this time. She responded that she indeed had a .45 automatic in her glove box. Something … body language, or the way she said it … made me want to ask if she had any other firearms. She did admit to also having a 9mm Glock in her center console. Now I had to ask one more time if that was all. She responded once again that she did have just one more, a .38 special in her purse. I then asked her what she was so afraid of. She looked me right in the eye and said, "Not a damn thing!"

Broadcast By Radio

    "Now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach and face the worst that the tyrant's might and enmity can do. Bearing ourselves humbly before God, but conscious that we serve an unfolding purpose, we are ready to defend our native land against the invasion by which it is threatened. We are fighting by ourselves alone, but we are not fighting for ourselves alone. Here in this strong city of refuge which enshrines the title-deeds of human progress and is of deep consequence to Christian civilization, here, girt about by the seas and oceans where the navy reigns, shielded from above by the prowess and devotion of our airmen, we await undismayed the impending assault." - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (July 14, 1940).

Derived

"People focus on the new, or the old, but rarely both. A place is not just as it is, but the result of everything it has been before." - C. Ellingham

Using Children

   "The FBI figures 300,000 minors in America are employed as prostitutes each year. Staggering. One for every thousand people. An advocacy group called Shared Hope International estimates their average age is 13. Thirteen years old on average. Try to wrap your mind around this. The Department Of Justice says there are pimps in America earning money off girls as young as 5 and 6. Last year, the U.S., together with Mexico and the Phillipines, ranked as one of the world's worst places for human trafficking. Worldwide, millions of children live in slavery. UNICEF says as many as 2 million more are trafficked each year, a great many for sex. The UN's International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that at any given moment, at least 40.3 million people, including children, are in forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial sex servitude. Four out of five are female. Half are children. The slave trade, the ILO believes, is a $150 billion business, saturated in unchecked greed, sleaze and abuse. And shamefully, it is the fastest growing industry in the world. Somewhere in here, the imagination of many of us reaches its limit. Unexposed to such grotesque realities, we can barely conceive of them. Yet this is only one of literally countless ways that people put other people through indescribable torment. Cruelty. Tyranny. Corruption. Thievery. Poor resource management that results in starvation, poverty and disease. Racism. Religious persecution. Violence of every stripe. Full-blown war. The human mind can only take in so much. And in this information-saturated age, news of people mistreating their fellow human beings come in such a torrent that we can easily grow numb to it. These blights are painfully endemic to the human condition, resilient against virtually all efforts to stop them." - J. Hilliker

To Believe And Know

"BLESSED is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is.  For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." - Jeremiah 17: 7-10.

A Pigeon On The Grey Cement

Pigeon On The Grey Cement Wobble Up To Me, I Have An Unsalted Cracker For You. Just you here? Where's your family? Across the way; at the fountain, drinking water? You thirsty? Your eyes are black like the buffalo. Gotta go. See you again tomorrow. Big CTA Bus. Run little pigeon. Fly a little. Try a little. Over to the fountain. Blue, black, gray and white pigeon - where'd you come from? Where do you hide your eggs? Don't get smashed on the asphalt. Tweetie, Twittle. Gosh. Wonder where you'll sleep tonight. I'll look for you again tomorrow; you'll be here as you have been for the last 50 years. All you see are the shoes on people's feet; all day long. They're so mean to you; too.

Concerned Citizens

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Famous Cultural Anthropologist, Margaret Mead

A New Movement

   "I would like to propose a solution to the hate that I see between people of differing opinions in the United States.  I have opinions in politics and religion, and if I am not careful, I will argue with people having different opinions; but, I have come to the conclusion that, in spite of our difference of opinion most people are good people who only want the best for themselves and others.

    What concerns me is the way some people hate those that have a different opinion. Hate is a terrible thing. Hate serves no useful purpose. Hate is destructive. Hate hurts the hater far more than it hurts the person being hated. When you hate someone, it destroys your inner being, slowly but surely.

     Love is the answer to hate. With love you can understand why the other person believes the way they do, even if you disagree with them. It is better to lose an argument and end up being right, than it is to think you won the argument and continue to live in a lie. With love, if the other person is wrong, then they may listen to you when they see that you are willing to listen to them. Love is the answer, I sincerely believe. Let's spread this message of love everywhere." - Frank DeLucca

Rev. William Huntington

     "Only those who heard William Huntington preach can have any idea of the greatness of his mind in spiritual things, or can ever feel what those felt who heard the glorious truths of the gospel from his own lips.  I shall never forget the impression I received under the first sermon I heard from him.  I could only weep and pray.  I felt an inexpressible awe.  His writings give but a faint idea of this truly wonderful and holy man. His power as a preacher was seldom equaled, never surpassed." - Rev. Samuel Adams

Perfect Freedom

    "Thus am I free.  If I look to the law, the handwriting is blotted out, and nailed to his cross.  If I look to the book of God's remembrance, the debt is cancelled, and God will remember my sins no more.  If I look to justice, that is satisfied, and God is just in forgiving me my sins, and in cleansing me from all unrighteousness; nor is he unrighteous to forget my works of faith and labours of love; nor will his justice forbid me the crown of righteousness when I have finished my warfare; no, the righteous Judge will give it me in that day.  If I look to Christ, I am complete in him; if I look to God the Father, it is he that justified me; and, if I look to my infirmities within, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, for my soul hates evil.  My will is sanctified, 'I would do good.'  My mind is renewed; 'with the mind I myself serve the law of God.'  My affections are satisfied; I delight in the law of God after the inward man.  I will glory therefore in my infirmities, for they drive me from all confidence in the flesh, and make me cleave the closer to Christ and rejoice in him, they keep me humble, watchful, and grateful, to my Saviour for so great a salvation.  I have renounced all that I was and all that I had, and have received Christ as all in me and all to me.  I am a dead man in his death and in the law; and, as such, he took possession of me, and I live by him; yet not I, but Christ lives in me, shines out of me, speaks by me.  I fill up the measure of his suffering in my flesh, and his strength is made perfect in my weakness; his wisdom is displayed in my ignorance, his beauty in my deformity, and his matchless grace in my preservation and salvation, and in the salvation of all that believe on his name.  "For me to live is Christ (for he lives in me), and to die is gain," for Christ is the portion of my soul, and my all in all.  'He that is dead is freed from sin.' Amen."  -  Rev. William Huntington, (1745-1813)

A Marriage

"Marriage is a public declaration of a man and a woman that they have formed a secret alliance, with the intention to belong to, and to share with each other, a mystical estate; mystical exactly in the sense that the real experience cannot be communicated to others, nor explained even to oneself on rational grounds." - Katherine Ann Porter

... From A Journalist

   "In America there isn't any mainstream independent press.  If you tell the truth it will never appear in print.  The business of mainstream journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell their country and race for their daily bread.  We are intellectual prostitutes."  - John Swinton, A Senior Journalist For 'The New York Times' - 1953

The Misery

   "The Spring of the year was unusually cold; and the blasts of the northeast wind shook the large oriel window of his room, and made him shiver with cold as he crouched over the fire. A universal doubt shook every prop and pillar on which his moral Being had hitherto reposed. Something was continually whispering: 'What if all thy Religion, all thy aspiring hope, all thy trust in God, be a mere delusion? The more thou searchest into the mystery of thy Being, findest thou not that iron, relentless laws govern thee, and every impulse and thought of thee, no less than the dull stones beneath thy feet? What art thou more than a material arrangement, the elements of which might at any moment, by an accident, be dispersed, and thou, without any to care for or pity thee throughout the wide universe, sink into the universal night? Prate not any more of thy God and thy Providence; thou art here alone, placed at the mercy of impersonal and unbending laws, which, whether they preserve or crush thee, the universe with supremist indifference will roll onward on its way.'

   The misery of the incessant recurrence of such thoughts to a believing mind, he only who has experienced them can understand. They took away the charm from the human face, the glory from the sky, the beauty from the flowers: all these seemed to be the garlands round the victim's neck, designed to cheat it for a time into a little ease and forgetfulness of the cold, inexorable necessity that lay beneath."            - Thomas Arnold

Mrs. Randolph Churchill

   "Daughter of the millionaire New York sportsman Leonard Jerome, she was born with the proverbial silver spoon and in her teens was taken to Paris for the 'finishing' every wealthy girl was supposed to receive before being presented to Society. There she became a talented pianist and an accomplished linguist.

    Wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, the younger son of the Duke of Marlborough whom she married at 20, she was an instant success in the top circles of London society, being singled out for particular attention by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, who remained her devoted admirer for the rest of his life. Her brilliant career was paralleled by that of her husband whose spectacular rise to Parliament was snuffed out too soon by an illness.

   Mother of Winston Churchill, she received from him first the complete devotion of a little boy and then the open-hearted confidence of an ambitious young man whose career she did everything within her power to further. She firmly believed he would become Prime Minister although she did not live to see it.

    Mrs. Churchill grew older, of course, but never 'old' keeping her beauty, charm and drive to the end. Her star was not dimmed by two subsequent marriages, one of which ended in divorce, and her relationship with her son never faltered."  - Anita Leslie