One Nation Under God

 Built into our constitution, our founding fathers built a foundation of freedom. From the beginning, Christianity was not the law of the land.  Christianity was the principle behind the law of the land. One undeniable fact: At its core, the United States of America is a Christian nation.  A noble and significant quality embedded in the Christian faith is freedom for the religions to compete in the public arena of ideas. Americans have the freedom to change their nation from a Christian nation to any other type of their choosing. The majority will decide. While giving us this freedom, there were warnings given by our founding fathers.

You Go Girl!

  I have the coolest family tree!  Full of rebels!  Mercy Jones, born in Massachusetts in Sept. 1654 was arrested at age 19.  Court records show the following:

The colonial laws regulated the subject of extravagant dressing.  In September 1673 the court recorded:“Diverse women at Springfeild presentd at ye Courte in March last for that being of meane estate they did weare Silkes contrary to Law vixt Goodwife Labden , Goody Colton , Goody Morgan , Goody Barnard , Mercy & Hephzibod Jones , Hunters wife ; Daughter ;Abell Wrights wife, & warned to this Courte the six former app’ring in Courte they were admonisht of their extyravagancyes & dismist.


Her sister was arrested as well, and with her name I can imagine she needed to do some fancy dressing to get beyond that moniker. What a cool family!  Besides Mercy Jones, my ancesters include the following:

• King Edward I, aka Longshanks, my 21st Great Grandfather
• Patrick Henry is my cousin, 8 generations ago
• Charles Martel (born in 676 AD) 39th Great Grandfather "Were it not for Charles Martel perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. . . . From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of one man." Edward Gibbon: History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Volume 5, page 156 - 157
• Hugh de Courtenay IV, Pirate of the high seas in the 1460s, my 16th great grandfather
• My 37th great grandfather, Charlemagne the Great
• Princess Diana, 21st cousin by marriage
• Prince William and Princess Kate, 22nd cousins by marriage
• Vladimir "The Great", Grand Prince of Kiev is my paternal grandfather of wife of grand nephew of the wife of my 30th great grandfather.
    (note to self: you might need to take a break now...time to step away from the computer...)

After King Edward I, my family tree follows a line through his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who married Humphrey De Bohun, Earl of Essex.  The royal blood line thins as it reaches the 1700s and then I find I'm related to commoners after that.  When it gets that far away from Royal blood, at some point, does it turn into a rumor? Anyway, I think I'll send an invitation to Will and Kate for the next family BBQ.  They must have, what... a mere 540,000 22nd cousins?

QOV awarded to a veteran

 I have the honor and privilege of longarming Quilts of Valor for both our local sewing group and for the national foundation.  I was happy to receive photos from the award ceremony of one recent quilt.  This quilt was awarded to Army Veteran Master Sergeant Christopher Pfahl.  His military service began in 1997.  He went into the Army reserves after two enlistments and has been deployed twice to the Middle East, once as recently as last year.  

Thank you for your service Master Sergeant Pfahl!

 

Did you know?

 In July of 1839, a group of Africans illegally taken into slavery from Sierra Leone, carried out a mutiny on a Cuban ship called The Amistad. Not knowing where they were headed, the Africans landed on the shores of Long Island where they were imprisoned on charges of murder. The case eventually made it to the United States Supreme Court where former president, John Quincy Adams, defended the Africans' right to liberty, leaning on the words of the Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal.

Today, I think of my great, great grandfather, who fought in the Civil War on the Union side from start to finish. If you'd like to see his story click on the Civil War link at the top of this page. I'm very proud of our nation. We have fought for injustice since the beginning in 1776. Slavery was abolished and freedom is guaranteed every person no matter their color.

Happy 4th of July

 

Did you know?

For all the fans of “It’s A Wonderful Life” and Jimmy Stewart. Just months after winning his

1941 Academy Award for best actor in “The Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart, one of the

best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name

movie star to enlist in World War II.

An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots.

Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted.

Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps' top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it.

Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit.

But his wartime service came at a high personal price.

In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When he returned to the US in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming (in one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally).

He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over.

As one of Stewart's biographers put it, "Every decision he made [during the war] was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.”

In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The rest is history.

Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on filmed for potentially millions to see.

But despite Stewart's inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and loved actors in American history.

When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, "This country's conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we'll have to fight.”

This holiday season, as many of us watch the classic Christmas film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” it’s also a fitting time to remember the sacrifices of Jimmy Stewart and all the men who gave up so much to serve their country during wartime. We will always remember you!

Postscript:

While fighting in Europe, Stewart's Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him.

Jimmy Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89.

-- Ned Forney, Writer, Saluting America's Veterans

r

Such a beautiful tribute to a quilter!

Reid Chamberlain, war hero

It is Memorial Day weekend and I'm thinking of a cousin of mine who died fighting on Iwo Jima in 1945, Reid Carlos Chamberlain.  He is a war hero.  He was a 1st Lieutenant in the Army and could have stayed stateside but he wanted combat so he resigned from the Army and joined the Marines.  He was a Sergeant when he was killed by a sniper on the island of Iwo Jima.  He was buried in a trench and his body has never been found.
Thank you just isn't enough, but I will say it to all those who lost their lives fighting for the United States.

 The Pain of War And Remembrance
By Alvin M. Josephy Jr. columnist & author
Published: December 25, 1999 in the New York Times

During World War II, I served as a Marine Corps combat correspondent on Guam, Saipan and Iwo Jima. When I came back to America after Iwo, I was riddled with guilt that although I had survived, I had left behind many brave friends who would never return home.
One of the men buried on Iwo was my foxhole buddy. He was a quiet, self-effacing sergeant named Reid Chamberlain who had a war record almost too melodramatic to be true. A career marine, he had been in the Philippines at the time of Pearl Harbor and had fought under Gen. Douglas MacArthur at Bataan and Corregidor.
When Corregidor finally fell, Reid escaped to the Philippine island of Mindanao, where, commissioned as an Army officer, he led a Filipino guerrilla band behind Japanese lines. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps told his mother that he had died at Corregidor, but she refused to believe it, insisting that one day he would show up at her front door.
After a year and a half, suffering from jungle illnesses, Reid was taken from Mindanao in a submarine. Back in the United States, he was accorded a hero's welcome, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross. He returned to his mother's home, just as she had known he would.
Although he could have spent the rest of the war stateside, he resigned his officer's commission in the army, told his mother once again that he would come back safely, and re-enlisted in the Marines.
He ended up in my outfit in Guam. By the time we left for Iwo Jima, we had become close friends, and once ashore, we shared a two-man foxhole, one of us asleep while the other kept watch at night for infiltrating Japanese.
One morning he and I were walking across an open area that we thought we had secured. Some shots rang out, and Reid fell dead, hit behind the ear by an enemy sniper hidden among some rocks. In an instant, the Japanese had claimed one of America's best men.
When the Marines once more informed his mother of his death, she refused again to believe it, and when I visited her after the war, she was still certain that he would eventually be coming home. A year or two later, when Congress authorized the return of the remains of servicemen buried overseas, Mrs. Chamberlain asked for Reid's body. During the battle, however, he had been buried near the Iwo beachhead in a long trench, and the Navy informed her that it could not find his remains. For years, Mrs. Chamberlain saw this as proof that Reid was still alive.
Meanwhile, like many other combat veterans, I found I could no longer talk about the war with anyone who had not been in combat. I could not reminisce about my experiences, even with my family, without great pain, and my eyes would become teary. So I became silent, too.
For long years, the generation of World War II veterans lost its public voice, and the patriotism and sacrifices of the war were largely forgotten by nonveterans.
Again and again, one could hear the common complaint at the funeral of a veteran: ''Our father never told us anything about his war experiences.''
Inevitably, some sort of a reversal was due, and it began, I believe, five and a half years ago with the attention paid to the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landing. Family members traveled to France with fathers, uncles, brothers and others who had been in the inferno of the D-Day landing, and in the military cemeteries they saw the aging veterans finally break down and weep at the graves of remembered comrades and then talk for the first time proudly and openly of their war experiences.
In a 50-year anniversary observance in the Pacific, I saw similar scenes in Guam. Though it came late, the sudden willingness of the World War II veteran to talk was a beneficial development.
Remembrance can still be painful and perhaps will always be so, for it continues to tap a deep feeling of guilt in those of us who survived while others never came back. But it has a good side, too.
With the willingness of the veteran to tell of his experiences, the younger generation, the one that will lead us into the 21st century, has come to understand and better appreciate the sacrifices made in World War II by Americans like Reid Chamberlain. After all, they gave everyone the right to live freely, which was possibly the noblest achievement of the 20th century.
___________

The article from the New York Times tells only a small part of Reid's World War II involvement.  You can read more about him here:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56117554/reid-carlos-chamberlain

Smile for the day

"For fun, he hit's people..."



Jack Mook is a tough detective working at the Pittsburgh Police Department. He met brothers Josh and Jesse through his volunteer work at the Steel City Boxing Gym and one day they turned up missing. When he found the older brother, the startling truth he discovered set up a chain of events that changed these boys’ lives forever. This man is a true hero.

Noses are on sale, if you can make to the store!

My readers up north are getting slammed by a blizzard today. It is a reminder of the blizzard of 1978.  I remember that one. We had a snow drift that covered the south side of our house for a month.  I was on the farm in Iowa then.  North Carolinians have no idea what a real blizzard is like.  If there is a rumor that it might snow, I make my appearance at the store, to perform my southern duty to help clear the shelves of milk and bread.  Not because I have to, I am a northerner after all.  But you do what's expected of you when you live down here.  Neighbors expect to see their neighbors at the store for a chat, and if you're not there, they wonder if something is wrong at home.

The blizzard of 1978 lasted 3 days and the snow came down sideways.  Our farm was in town, believe it or not.  When I want to impress people, I tell them "Yeah, our farm bordered most of the town I grew up in".  What I don't tell them, our town had a grain elevator and one street lined with a grand total of 12 houses.  That's it.  One of the driveways on this street was our lane, which was 1/4 mile long.   We'll just keep that between you and me, all right?

My grandfather worked for the railroad during the blizzard of 1936.  That was the blizzard to beat all blizzards. He drove a road grader, a machine with a large blade to resurface or "grade" a gravel road.  This was done to fill in ruts or holes, and to move the gravel back to the center of the road

On February 6, 1936, a blizzard stopped all activity in the region.  Temperatures dropped to 25-below-zero and the train was held up in Worthington, Iowa for nine days.  There was no relief in sight from the snow and high winds for days to follow.  It filled up valleys and produced huge drifts that blocked roads and even had the railroad at a halt.  This caused depleted supplies and many families had to risk walking into town to get needed supplies that may or may not be available.  Schools were shut down indefinitely and shoveling produced snow piles ten to twelve feet high in front of businesses.

Doctors couldn't get to ill patients and the farmers organized to drive in shifts to get the doctors around.  Getting the doctor from place to place took thirty-eight men and twenty horses just to go eight miles in the blizzard. The horses and men simply got mired down trying to get through such harsh conditions. 

When the trains were finally moving 2 weeks later, with plows mounted to the front, they had to barrel through the drifts at 35 to 40 miles per hour to get through.  The depot had to board up windows to prevent them from breaking when the trains blew through.

Early on in the blizzard, my grandfather heard news that 3 men driving snowplows on Hwy 69 were buried in snow, trapped and no one could reach them for rescue.  He worked his road grader for nearly 2 days, with no sleep, to reach the men. Iowa Governor Clyde Herring honored him for the extreme measures he took to save his co-workers from certain death.


My grandfather was a great man.  He was humble and quiet, and when he spoke he usually had something good to say.  In fact, I had him in my life until I was 29 and never knew he had been honored by the governor of Iowa.  The story was told at his funeral, to the astonishment of all his grandchildren.  I wish I had spent more time listening while he was still living.  Perhaps he would have said more.

Blizzard of 1936 - Iowa 

Well, I should sign off now.  There's a rumor going round that it might turn to sleet tonight and I have an appearance to make.  I need to do my makeup and hair.

God Bless America!

Your thoughts?

“The America Republic will endure until
the day Congress discovers that it can bribe
the public with the public’s money.”
 — Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831

Poetic justice!

I was following this $70,000 SUV this morning and thought I'd take a pic.

The message on the back window is a little blurred. The acronym is G.R.E.A.T. which stands for
Gang Resistance Education And Training. It's a $70,000 SUV with tricked out wheels
(not seen in this shot), the kind pimps and drug dealers buy,
bright chrome wheels that keep spinning while you sit in traffic.

One Nation Under God

Built into our constitution, our founding fathers built a foundation of freedom. From the beginning, Christianity was not the law of the land.  Christianity was the principle behind the law of the land. One undeniable fact: At its core, the United States of America is a Christian nation.  A noble and significant quality embedded in the Christian faith is freedom for the religions to compete in the public arena of ideas. Americans have the freedom to change their nation from a Christian nation to any other type of their choosing. The majority will decide. While giving us this freedom, there were warnings given by our founding fathers.

On April 29th, 1607, the birth of a nation began.  Sea-weary Englishmen landed at Cape Henry on the shores of Virginia and lay the foundation for what would become the most powerful country the world has ever seen. What was to be the United States unfolded that day, America's destiny and purpose were sealed at Cape Henry.  All that would follow hinged on the single proclamation that this land belonged to Jesus Christ. In the Mayflower Compact of 1620, the Pilgrims reaffirmed the mission set forth by the original Virginia settlers.

The Puritans carried the Cape Henry legacy further. On the deck of the Arbella, halfway between England and Cape Cod, leader John Winthrop declared, "We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world."1

This is the heart of America, 'the city upon a hill,' and the core of what America's been all about since day one. The basis for American life, at that time, was to be committed Christians who were to so let their light shine to one another and then to the whole world, that the world could see that as an example.

More than 100 years later, America set off on her own course towards independence, the Godly foundations laid in Virginia established the character of our Revolution.  "Before God, I believe the hour has come," said John Adams of the Revolution. "My judgment approves this measure and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, all that I am and all that I hope in this life I am now ready to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now and independence forever."2

John Adams wrote:

“Statesman, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but 

it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles 

upon which Freedom can securely stand. 

The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired 

into our People in a greater measure than they have it now, 

they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, 

but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”

George Washington's reverent, Christian heart, Benjamin Franklin's call to prayer and John Adams' reverence for the will of God symbolize the undying commitment of our Founding Fathers to the creation of a nation which would glorify God. The American character was born in Scripture and nurtured by the Holy Spirit, yet today, our national heritage is under siege.

Four hundred years have passed since America was first conceived at Cape Henry, and respect for our roots is growing cold. Yes, one undeniable fact will remain: At its core, the United States of America is a Christian nation... with the gift of freedom. Americans have the freedom to change their nation from a Christian nation. Christianity is not the law of the land.  Christianity was the principle behind the law of the land.

James Madison warned of a risk in 1795:

"The moment that religion, the pure and undefiled religion, loses its influence 

over our hearts, from that fatal moment, farewell to public and private happiness. 

Farewell--a long farewell--to virtue, to patriotism, to liberty."

John Adams wrote in June 1776: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people."

Yes, our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.  And the people have the freedom to change.  Place that constitution into the hands of an immoral and unreligious people and you see the America of today.  The moral and religious people of yesterday laid down their right, choosing comfort rather than politics.  They turned a blind eye to difficult topics, and chose topics that were pleasing to their ears.  And like a frog in a pan of water on a stove, morality and religion was shed slowly, without realizing it was happening.  It happens.  Layer by layer until bare bones and stark reality hit.

What will you do?  The bright light that shown to all the world is dimming.  Will you continue laying down, rolling over to change the view... choosing the more comfortable scenery of your pew?  Your soccer field? Your quilt guild meeting? (Please fill in the blank here)  Did the founding fathers die for nothing?

You have the freedom to change this country... or not.   Ezekiel 33:8

My thanks to David Norris for contributing to this article.

Rewriting the constitution

"Socialized medicine is the keystone for the establishment of the socialist state"

 - Vladimir Lenin

It's Wednesday!

Their hump day is a little different

WWII Veterans

Remembering today

12 years... a terrible, terrible day.

Home school was somber today.  My son and I watched the emotional video on Fox News, coverage of events I watched 12 years ago, as I rocked my 6 month old son.  He had many questions, "Mom, what was the Pentagon?  A pentagon is a shape in my math class."  "Mom, what was the World Trade Center?"  "Mom, If a building were falling on me I would crawl under a car to protect myself", and I responded, "there were firetrucks, ambulances, cars and trucks people did get under, and they were crushed flat."   But when the people jumping from windows came on the screen, he was too stunned to speak.

No words to describe this

Repeal the Bill of Rights?