Sorry, Mr. President, But It’s Our Country, Not Your Private Fiefdom.

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During the government shutdown the administration has gone out of its way to create the maximum amount of pain possible for the citizenry. It’s a crass political move to make the opposition look bad and get people angry at the Republican controlled House of Representatives.

One of the most egregious abuses during this time was the erection of barriers around open-air national monuments. There is some argument to be made for closing national parks on safety grounds, but putting up barriers around national monuments that were previously open 24×7 is just mean-spirited. It hit a crescendo when Barrycades were put up around the World War II monument in Washington, D.C. The White House locked elderly veterans out of their monument. A monument that was put in place with private funds. I ought to know, I ponied up for a piece of the action years ago.

The Obama administration has said, in effect, Dogs and Sailors Keep Off The Lawn.

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Sunday, across the nation, veterans marched and protested. I attended the protest in Minnesota. The local press showed up exactly long enough to film one person and leave before the rally began. I later saw a single still photo in the newspapers. The media has decided that this will be a non-event locally. There was an almost insulting lack of coverage given the issue at hand and the people involved. Vets don’t usually get together to protest. But on Sunday we did.

The video is below. I apologize for the spectacularly bad sound. For some reason the blue-tooth didn’t connect to the camera. That and I have no idea who the bearded fat guy is… On second thought, I’m looking more like Alfred Hitchcock in profile each day.

It is beyond the pale for President Obama, through the agencies of the executive branch, to threaten our veterans as he has in the past few weeks. In the past few days the next card has been put on the felt in an effort to win the poker game. But this is a bad card to play – the threatened suspension of Veterans Affairs benefits to the disabled.

Mr. President, I know you don’t care about the military. You’ve made your contempt for everything they stand for manifest over the course of your life. The only time you pay attention is when you grab the credit for something the special forces have done. You, Sir, are a pox upon the military the rest of the time. Your Secretary of Defense only crawled out of his hole and attended the ceremonies at Dover in the wake of your refusing to pay death benefits to the families of the fallen. You repeatedly use the military only as a backdrop for photo opportunities. I have not met a single member of the armed forces or a single veteran who has spontaneously said a nice thing about your treatment of my brothers and sisters in arms. Given the political persuasion of some of my friends, I would have expected someone, sometime, to glow about your love for the military. In the wake of this post I’m sure some of your followers will jump to the front and claim that I’m ignoring things they’ve said in praise of your military policies in the past. To steal a phrase from a younger generation, “Whatever.”

The pile of Barrycades stacked outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Sunday is both a warning and a promise: do not trifle with millions of veterans and attempt to hold our nation hostage. You work for us. You are our servant. We are citizens, not subjects. I hope that each and every reader of this blog will link it to their Facebook page today just before they call their elected representatives in Washington. I’ve got mine on speed dial. That call is important. Call and support those who pledged their all for this country.

Tyrants throughout the ages have underestimated the anger of the people. Usually just before they fall. In a republican form of government you’re safe until the next election. But you will find us an unruly, ungovernable group if you persist in mocking our elders, closing monuments we paid for with private funds, and humiliating the honored dead by refusing benefits on a legal technicality. If you cut off benefits to the disabled veterans, you invite impeachment. You, Mr. President, and your Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, can end this stalemate. It is in your court. The House has offered bills to fund the government. You have refused to negotiate. The burden is on you, not the House.

Mr. President, it’s time to turn the ship of state on a new course – we’re at the helm. Rudder commands to follow.

Sponsorship Sunday – Week Twenty-Three – Edwens

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Sponsorship Sunday is my favorite post of the week. The readers of this blog have done an amazing job in bringing joy to the children of Grace Village. Every week I have to work a little bit harder than the week before to find a child in need of sponsorship. You, the audience of this blog, are a big part of that wonderful dilemma. I hope you find it in your heart to reach out to Edwens this week and sponsor him as well.

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This week’s child is: Edwens.

Edwens

Edwens

Edwens is an active boy who loves to play sports, specifically basketball and soccer. Edwens dreams of someday becoming a pastor so that he can tell people about God. Edwens enjoys going to school at Grace Village Academy where his favorite subject is math. Edwens is interested in cars and would like to work on them some day, either as a mechanic or just for fun. Edwens’ prayer request is that he will be able to finish school.

Edwens came to Healing Haiti in October, 2004. Edwens is an orphan, both of his parents are deceased and he has no one to care for him.

Birth Info
Birthdate: June 3, 2002
Place of Birth: Cabaret, Haiti

It is my hope that one of you will find your heart touched by this child and take up a bit of Christ’s work by sponsoring them for an extended period. My wife and I are sponsoring a pair of sisters and we took on the commitment based on having to only gave up a fast-food dinner each day to change the life of a child. God came through with a very lucrative bit of voice over work for me that covered the bill that same day, but it really is as easy as skipping a value meal. Healing Haiti will do the right things for these children and I have full confidence in their work. I am not affiliated with them, they don’t endorse this blog, nothing like that at all. I just love kids (can’t be Santa and not love children) and know that Grace Village is the difference between life and death for many of these children. Please open your heart and prayerfully reflect on the opportunity God’s giving us to sponsor these children. Some of them have come out of slavery and have some of the toughest lives you could imagine prior to Grace Village.

Just click the link and it will take you directly to the page where you can sponsor this week’s child. And if God is particularly good and that child is sponsored when you get there, please grab another smiling face and change their life instead. My goal is to put Sponsorship Sunday out of business as quickly as possible and take that day off each week. Thank you. God bless you for your generosity.

Flash Fiction – The Maiden Voyage.

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Today’s blog is the first in a sporadic series of flash fiction events. Every week (or two) I will present the first few paragraphs of a flash fiction story on the blog. The rest of the story will be available only to the subscribers. Yes, it’s a shameless ploy to build subscriptions.

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How do I come up with the fiction? I will pick a random topic and write for one hour on that topic. Facebook, phone calls, dog trips to the yard, all will interfere in the hour but at the end of it I will have a finished story. This forces me to be more concise and crisp in my writing. How do I pick the topic? I’ll type a nonsense word in to the Google search engine. I will hit the image tab and spin the mouse down and take the picture at the bottom of the page. Yup, fairly random.

If you like the first two paragraphs below, make sure you subscribe today. I’ll be emailing the complete story out to the subscribers within 48 hours. Many thanks in advance.
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The noise was deafening. Mike’s heart wanted to skip a beat but it was pounding too fast to take a break. To an observer, the ATM didn’t make a sound when it flashed TRANSACTION DENIED on the screen and spit out the slip of paper showing a balance of $18.00 in his account. Inside of Mike’s skull it was as though a bomb had gone off.

He backed up and crashed down on the stool in front of the slot machine. He’d tapped the card a few times this weekend, but there’s no way that he’d wiped out $7500 in just two days. He looked in his wallet and pulled out the wad of crumpled receipts. They totaled just over $6800. He scoured his jeans and found another wad of slips that added almost $500 to the total. Take into account a couple of meals at the casino’s restaurants and it was like the screen on the ATM writ large in his head.

Subscribe now (box on the right margin) to read the rest of the story.

30 Pound Heart Surgeon.

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There has been a great deal of attention paid to an article in the New York Times this past week about dogs having emotions. I think that sells dogs short. They not only have emotions but they have personalities, skills, and interests. Some might say they are healers. I fall into that group.

Eleven months ago I suffered a debilitating, and seemingly intolerable heart injury. My girl Maisie was going downhill fast and I knew that our time together was going to be very limited. The ache in my heart spread throughout my body and threatened to claim my creativity and joy as well.

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God, however, had different plans for me. He provided a 30 pound heart surgeon to take care of my wounds. But there was a condition – I had to heal her wounded heart as well.

Doctor Stormy.

Doctor Stormy.

During the past nine months the two of us have been on a journey of exploration, healing, and growing love. For a very long time she avoided me. I got it, she had been wounded at some point by a man. Whether it was from lack of love or abuse didn’t matter. She feared me.

Over many months I proved my trustworthiness to her and she slowly opened her medical skill bag and tended to my heart. I now know that the love I had with Maisie isn’t a realistic goal with Stormy. Instead, and perhaps even better, we have a mutual trust building that will continue to blossom. Is it love? I think so. She comes for pets, she sleeps on the bed with me or waits outside my door when I’m sleeping during the day. She bares her stomach and her tail falls limp on the floor when she asks for a tummy rub. The tense, fearful, sad little dog that came to live with us a few days before Christmas has morphed into a skilled heart surgeon who’s putting the final stitches in my wound.

That wound will always leave a scar. The scar will be noticed from time to time. But the doctor stands ready to treat me when the need arises.

I’m not going to run out on the limb with some others and say that dogs and cats are the equals of humans and need to have legal rights just the same as ours. That strikes me as rather silly.

However, the requirement levied upon us by God to treat the creatures as our dominion weighs heavily on the human race. We are entrusted with their care and well-being. It is a sin to be cruel to animals. It is a waste to not love them when they love us. Once we understand that our lives will improve as will theirs.

Some questions arise out of all of this – the main one being the issue of animal testing. I think that part of that dominion that God gave us includes using animals to better our lives as food, companions, working beasts, and test subjects. The need to avoid wanton cruelty is paramount. I know that will not settle easily on some minds. It does mean that some animals will be lost in an attempt to make human life safer and longer. Like all things in this world, we will discriminate and rank the importance of those animals on a scale unique to each of us. And to God we will answer on the final day.

For now, I’m just glad to be under the care of a sentient being known as Stormy. She’s providing the medical treatment my heart needs after losing two of my closest friends in under a year. She’s a good doctor. And I hope that I’m treating her wounds properly as well. It seems that I am: that tail wags once again after a long period of dormancy.

Dogs have emotions. People have emotions. And if we care for one another all of us are that much better off in the end.

Do you share that heartfelt love with a companion animal? Is there a 30 pound heart surgeon in your life?

It’s Time For Some Flash Fiction.

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For those of you who are not familiar with the concept, flash fiction is something dashed off on short notice. It’s a popular exercise at writer’s conferences and writing classes. You show a picture of Cinderella on the screen and ask for a paragraph written about it in your genre of choice.

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Here’s an example from a recent conference when that picture of Cinderella popped up on the screen. This was written in about one minute:

Scanning the room was a waste of time. Rella wouldn’t see the bomb until it blew and thrust the diplomatic corps into chaos. She made the smart move and checked faces for stress signs. Bingo. That could only be Omar under the cheap rug. He’d be the one holding the trigger.

Time to punch his ticket.

Thus you see how much fun this can all be. And I’m going to go out on the limb and do this once a week (time permitting) for the next few weeks, perhaps longer.

And this is where all those posts about subscribing come to bear – you’ll get the first paragraph or two in the blog and then only the subscribers will get the full draft. Yes, it’s free to subscribe. I’m building that email list for the day when the books come to press. But up until now there’s been limited incentive to follow through on subscribing.

So, toddle on over to the bar at the right and subscribe today. The first flash fiction will come along later this week and it’ll be sent out to subscribers 24 hours later. If you don’t subscribe you won’t get the prose.

Thanks in advance, I look forward to the challenge.