They Were Not Always Like This

Please give me one more day on the current topic which impassions us. I think this may be new information  for many of you.

First, please look at this table and see how universally, evangelicals are against women's reproductive rights and freedom. They are the only religious group to hold such an opinion. Other protestant groups do not share their opinion. Neither do Catholics for that matter.

You may be tempted to shrug and wonder "What else is new?" but the following clip reveals that it wasn't always thus. At one time, in the early 70s, evangelical leaders were unconcerned. Then it became a wedge and money issue.

Frank Schaeffer and his father Francis were on the ground floor of the movement; he knows whereof he speaks. He is now an exvangelical with very different views.

This is the full version of Frank Schaeffer's CNN interview, which I posted yesterday. You will hear him reveal that in the early 70s, evangelical leaders were uninterested in the abortion issue and that some were even pro choice. You will also hear his view, from the inside of the movement, that it was all about the money.

The whole clip is ~20 minutes, but I have cued it to begin at the 7 minute mark where he discusses in more detail what I just write above. The most relevant part lasts for about 5 minutes, but the whole 20 minute interview is very worthwhile in my opinion. However, I know that even 5 minutes is a lot of time when someone is cruising their way through multiple blog posts.

It may seem like I am beating the drum, and I guess I am a bit, but I feel that this is mainly informative and new information for many of us. I have mainly just been sharing information, and I promise to leave the topic alone now, for this blog only gets political in short bursts before it gets back to cats and things. Lacey sends here Caturday regards by the way 😎

Evangelicals are not Pro Life

Frank Schaeffer takes extreme issue with that ↑ statement in this ↓ CNN clip which is less than 2 minutes long. He claims that evangelicals don't really believe that at all. Basically, all of their other policies are anti child and family.

 In a somewhat related vein, I leave you with ↓ this.

Oops ... a bit more to add. I guess we're all thinking along similar lines these days. The first, below, is what Shauna posted on FB, and the second was Danica's response. Good girls, those.

Candid Portraits after Family Dinner

For some time now, we have resumed the very pandemic interrupted family dinners. Monday is the usual day, but we have occasionally moved it to Tuesday to accommodate either Jonathan's hockey games or Danica's work schedule.

As I have also mentioned, it is portrait week foe Sue's 365 theme, so she nabbed a few candids of the kids as we were sitting around post meal. Sue didn't move from her chair and the kids didn't move from theirs, but I moved around with our little portable light.

Above: I shone the light from the side to get a rim effect on JJ.

Below: I got low to provide some fill light for Danica who was otherwise in shadow.

Both photos are soft in the low light, and I cropped and slightly edited these versions according to my taste.

Lacey also got her picture taken with me again holding the light low outside of the photo.

Speaking of Lacey, she still rather likes Jonathan.

Comments, FB, and Sue

Some of you are still experiencing problems with commenting, not necessarily here but elsewhere on Blogger. Riverbend has written two posts that helped me with my commenting issues. Take heart: they are not difficult.

http://riverbendjournal.blogspot.com/2022/04/a-fix-for-commenting.html http://riverbendjournal.blogspot.com/2022/04/solution-for-blogs-with-embedded.html

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I get the negative comments about FB on yesterday's, and my own post was also -ve enough. On the +ve side, a few well-placed blocks eliminated my issues – for now at least. It's actually pretty easy to control. I just had to get around to it.

Otherwise, the app comes in very handy in communicating with family groups as well as with keeping up with my community. For newsfeeds, however, I tend to use that other platform, Twitter.

The occasional FaceTime session can be helpful without having to invoke another app, and some people use the calling feature, associated with Facetime. You don't have to use the video feature, but you can just phone, as it were. For example, my friend uses it daily to talk at length with his cousins in Ukraine. It's a pretty nice and feature, and it is free too.

One more benefit: there are some backslidden bloggers 😜 with whom I can still connect on FB.

While I don't at all like to support Zuckerberg in any way, I guess it is like going to store you don't care for to get a product that you can't readily obtain elsewhere. You hold your nose, and you just do it.

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Sue continues her daily 365 theme. The prompt yesterday: portrait, progress. She has made an awful lot of progress with her iPhone photography, so she set up this photo with her book and various props. She knew what she wanted to do but just needed one more hand to actually take the photo, so she drafted me for the job. She was working on a very tight space in the basement, but I think she pulled it off well.

Has Social Media Doomed Us?

I had been seeing them for some time but had just been skimming by. I finally had to tell FB to stop throwing conservative propaganda on my wall. I don't know why FB decided that I should see them and then why I should see post after post. Perhaps, in a spirit of acceptance and broad-mindedness, I once clicked on a semi-conservative post, but I honestly can't recall. Moderate conservatism is one thing, but braindead propaganda is quite another.

After I told FB to remove 3 or 4 of these posts within minutes, I thought I should capture a few before they were all gone. I won't go overboard, but you can see how they totally misrepresent  things, such as Netflix, Disney and CNN imploding. It's nonsense, but the faithful raise their hands in glee and shout glad hosannas to the Trumps, De Santos, Cruzes, and the myriad other lying cretins. 

Take a look at the Disney Woke cartoon for yet another pile of false, steaming merde. It's a variation of the Strawman logical fallacy, in which someone misrepresents something so that they can appear to tear it down in an argument. If you're good at it, people don't even notice that you have pulled a fast one but clap their hands in giddy agreement.

The sad thing is that millions are trapped inside the disinformation bubble of rightwing extremism, and they don't even know it. A recent study noted minds beginning to shift after Fox viewers were paid to watch CNN for just one month. 

Other than paying people, how do we get them out of their bubbles and to think critically? Sometimes, I think we are doomed.

Sunday Morning Red Lights Disdained

On alternate Sunday mornings, as I have written before, I pick up Danica and take her to work by 7 o'clock. Mom can sleep in, and I am always up anyway, so it is a helpful task that I don't mind doing.

As I have also written previously, I set three alarms but have never had to use even one.

I set my watch to go off at 6:00, my phone for 6:05, and Alexa for 6:10.

This Sunday, I awoke at 5:50 from a dream in which I was carrying a feeble and frail old fellow up the hospital stairs. He seemed to be at death's door, and for some reason, the staff wouldn't carry him up those fearsome stairs. When I saw him the next day, he was well enough to greet me as I stood in line at a snack counter. He got up, thanked me, and said that he felt better.

Who knows how some like me, who has trouble weeding his garden, managed to carry someone up a flight of stairs?

I always ramble on with background information, but now I intend to get to what I was going to post – Red Lights Disdained.

Sunday mornings are quiet with almost no traffic in this town. When I turn the first corner on my way to Danica's, I invariably hit a red light. The cross street is a major artery, so the light is a long one. I look carefully, maybe a half kilometre or more up and down the road. There is no vehicle approaching from either direction. I look left and right again. It seems senseless to sit there. I drive through. I look behind in my rearview mirror; the light remains red for quite some time.

I get to the main downtown intersection, scan carefully in both directions, and off I go through my second red light. It's not a terribly long light, so I don't really need to run through it, but I do, regardless.

Onward I go to wait in the driveway for Danica to emerge. I worry that she has slept in, but she never does. Almost like clockwork, she emerges a minute or two before 6:45. It's only 5 minutes to the grocery store where she works, so we always arrive in good time. But first, we have to turn onto the highway. Even the highway is devoid of traffic. It always is on these early Sunday mornings. I go through.

The final light is at a more major intersection and it has never been traffic free, even at that godly hour – godly, for it is Sunday. I never disregard that one and wait patiently like to good, law-abiding bloke that I am – every day except early on Sunday.

I do wonder if a cop were lurking in the weeds whether I would be given a ticket. I imagine so, but I would explain that on such a morning, I treat a red light like a stop sign, look very carefully, and proceed with utmost caution. My likely futile hope is that the officer would nod, pat me on the head, and tell me to stop it because the next cop might not be as understanding and friendly as he or she is.

Remembering the NYE Fireworks

Perhaps over the next little while, I will post photos that have been languishing in my Blogger folder. Of course, you will remember that I posted of the New Year's Eve fireworks several times back then, but there are some that didn't make the cut at the time. 

Fireworks go quickly, so once I get my camera in place, I leave it these and make click after click. So, the set never changes, just the bursts. I can't remember now, but the first two may be composites, or fake double exposures as it were.

Experts recommend getting your pictures early while the sky remains relatively free of smoke, but I deliberately took a very smoky one at the end. I quite like it.

For two years, the Canada Day fireworks have been cancelled due to you know what, but I'm pretty sure that they will go this year on July 01. If possible, I will be there.

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Briefly, in current news, of which there is precious little to report, we have begun to do a little garden cleanup. Begun. Little. Yesterday I weeded out back for an hour or less.. It was only 10C/50F, but it was sheltered and sunny back there, so I was comfy in shorts. I recalled double-digging a flowerbed in clay soil just over 25 years ago. Now, an hour of weeding is enough for the old guy.