Journal of daily reflections on the progress of my home-based agriculture experiments, mixed with observations about life, peace, justice, faith, family, community and friends.
Hug a Cow! - Thursday, September 04, 2008
Hug A Cow!Last weekend we went to my oldest son and his family’s house in Shawano County. Part of the reason we were there was to attend the Shawano County Fair, where my two grandsons display their 4-H projects. Sunday at the fair one of the first places we went was to the Cow Barn where their neighbors, across the highway on a Dairy Farm, displayed their cows. When we were there a little girl, a complete stranger, came up to me and asked me to pet the black and white baby calf that was on display in front of the barn. My first response was to ask her to repeat her request. She again told me to go out and pet the calf in front of the barn. Then her dad told her to stop bothering me and she was gone. After finishing my conversation, I went to the front of the barn to look for the girl and the calf. The baby calf was there but the girl was nowhere in site. I did not think much about the incident until the next day, Monday, when my daughter-in-law asked us at dinner if we noticed that the black and white calf in front of the barn was gone. She explained the calf had gotten ill of heat exposure the day before and had either died or been taken back to the farm. She said that the calf was male, and because of the high cost of feed, baby male calves were going for about $5. She had been told there was a shot that could have been given the calf that was dehydrated, but that the shot cost $15, three times the value of the baby male calf. We do not know if the baby calf was allowed to die or given the shot. Did the girl know that calf was dying when she asked me to pet it?
See the full list of articles in the Diary of a Worm.
Quotes
Various quotes
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. This new type of criminal … commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.” — Hannah Arendt
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” — Feodor Dostoevsky
I find it strange that the last place I can really quote Jesus these days is in American churches. They don’t want to hear ‘overcome evil with good.’ They don’t want to hear ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword.’ They don’t want to hear ‘if your enemy hurts you, do good, feed, clothe, minister to him.’ They don’t want to hear ‘blessed are the merciful.’ They don’t want to hear ‘love your enemies’.”- Tony Campolo quoted in Christian Week magazine
“If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going.” — Irwin Corey (Corey is an American comic and actor who is perhaps best known as “The World’s Foremost Authority.”)
Jokes
Super New Cell Phone
For those who find yourself depending more and more on the cell phone here is one for you. Super Cell Phone
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WARNING: DANGEROUS VALUES ARE BEING TAUGHT AT MARQUETTE
St. IgnatiusLast October a student wrote in the Marquette Tribune (1): “A man with what appeared to be a military rifle ran past the first-floor windows of Lalumiere Hall around 7:45 p.m. on Oct. 10”. The student ran upstairs to find out what was happening. “On the mall, I found my gunman and seven or so more. Another platoon was conducting similar maneuvers across the lawn. They marched, they huddled around platoon leaders’ orders, and they aimed at air and yelled, ‘Bang’!” It was just ROTC students playing ‘war games’ on campus but it was still a “frightening and disturbing experience”.
The reality behind the “war games” on campus is the fact that Marquette is teaching ‘war’ to students from nine local colleges and universities in the Milwaukee metro area for the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force.
More dangerous than the ‘war games’ at Marquette are the teachings of these four military departments that are contrary to Christian values. For example, whereas the Army manual (2) teaches that Army values take priority, the Christian faith teaches: “The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel.” (3)
In the ‘60s during another ‘immoral and unjust’ war the Christian spiritual writer Thomas Merton wrote: “It is absolutely clear to me that we are faced with the obligation, both as human beings and as Christian of striving in every way possible to abolish war.” (4) In 1968 after successfully waging a campaign to rid Marquette of “institutional racism,” Marquette students turned their attention to stopping the teaching of war on campus. Inspired by the nonviolent action of the Milwaukee 14 in September of 1968 Marquette students and friends began a 40-year campaign to end military training at Marquette.
Now forty years later it is up to us—citizens of Milwaukee; people of faith; students, staff, teachers, and alumni of Marquette—to renew the movement to follow Gospel values at Marquette. This time the movement is not for racial equality but for peace.
(1) Marquette Tribune, Oct. 10, 2007 (2) Army Field Manual, [FM 22–100, Chapter 2–32], (3) Catechism of the Catholic Church 224 (4) The Hidden Ground of Love by Thomas Merton
Ever since I visited the Holy Land in the 90′s I have been concerned about the plight of the Palestinian Christians in Israel and in the occupied territories of Palestine. This story about Bethlehem’s Wall illustrates the discrimination Christians suffer in this land of the birth and life of Jesus. As the author states: “The wall is strangling Bethlehem and the Christian population. It will come down only Christian public opinion in the United States awakens to the fact and issues an S.O.S. for the birth town of Christianity putting pressure on Washington to enforce international law.”
Can U.S. Christians help revive the sacred city?
By Austen Ivereigh | SEPTEMBER 1, 2008
“America” Sept. 1, 2008
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10991
For the first time in many years, there is some good news out of Bethlehem. The pilgrims on whom the town’s Christians depend have begun to return; their number has increased by at least 50 percent from last year, which was in turn better than 2006. One can still sit in one of the chapels in the Basilica of the Nativity, the world’s oldest church, without being disturbed—impossible in Jerusalem’s holy sites. But now you need to wake up early to seize solitude in the little grotto of Christ’s birthplace, time enough to touch the metal star embedded in marble and to ponder the divine eruption—before the Greek Orthodox priests throw a rug down the ancient steps and bark at you to get out so they can say Mass.
Behind the Wall
Yet because so few tourists spend much time in the town, it remains shuttered and depressed. The reason they stay away is the 30-foot-high concrete wall the Israelis have been building in fits and starts since 2002, which has severed Bethlehem from its sister city, Jerusalem, only a 20-minute drive away. The justification for the wall is security, to protect Jerusalem from suicide bombers. But the path it follows makes clear its real purpose: to consolidate the illegal Israeli settlements, which now flow down from Jerusalem almost to the borders of Bethlehem, on land seized from the town’s Christian farmers. The wall is gray, chilling and spreads a fearful message. The Archbishop of Canterbury described it as “a symbol of all that is wrong in the human heart,” when he visited at Christmas in 2006. So the pilgrims who come are disgorged from their coaches into the basilica and sent quickly around the Shepherd’s Fields in nearby Beit Sahour, before they hurry back to Jerusalem—spending little, hearing little and passing up the chance to learn from one of the world’s oldest Christian populations.
They miss out on the reasons why that population’s future is under threat. Bethlehemites have long depended on the Jerusalem economy, yet they can no longer pass through the checkpoint without a special permit that is seldom granted. Some 345 square miles of land around Bethlehem, mostly owned by the town’s Christian families, have been confiscated by the Israelis, because the territory is in the “seam zone” area under military control. Two-thirds of the governorate of Bethlehem, which includes the adjoining hill suburbs of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, has been declared a military zone from which Palestinians are barred. Beit Jala has lost half its land, central Bethlehem a quarter and Beit Sahour a third.
Bethlehem has become a ghetto, severed from lands to the north and west by the wall, and to the south and east by settler-only roads. On land confiscated from Christian Arabs, Jewish-only settlements such as Gilo and Har Homa have been erected. Unemployment in Bethlehem is above 50 percent, and 3,000 Christians have left in the past few years. The shops lie idle, and the Christian olive-wood traders use increasingly desperate means—paying coach drivers huge commissions to snag the tour groups—to achieve sales.
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