Hard Week

Today my sister is going in for a scan. I believe it’s a CAT scan. The purpose is to find out whether chemotherapy and radiation have put her in complete remission. This doesn’t mean “cure.” It means the cancer is too small to be found. Sometimes people in complete remission are cured, but that’s not the rule.

The sad fact about cancer diagnostics is that negative test results mean very little, while positive results are highly conclusive. When doctors fail to find a cancer, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. When they do find it, barring unusual circumstances, it’s definitely there.

If the cancer is still there, it’s a big problem. There is a limit to what chemotherapy and radiation can do. I’m not sure if it would be possible for the doctors to continue trying to destroy the tumors. I know that it won’t work very well in the future, should she have a relapse. This cancer develops a resistance to treatment, so the first try is the only real shot you get.

If the cancer can’t be found, she’ll be a candidate for prophylactic cranial irradiation. This means they’ll irradiate her brain to prevent brain tumors, if she accepts the risks of the treatment. The best possible outcome is that, combined with the earlier measures, this will completely cure her of cancer. The only reliable test is time. If she’s here a few years from now, she’s probably cured.

We should have the results tomorrow or Thursday. Do me a favor and pray the scan will be clean, and that God will help her to improve her relationship with him.

Ham for the Holidays

I decided I needed a ham. You know how that is. So I went online to look for one.

My cousin Wade says Col. Newsom’s hams are the way to go, and the one I bought back when I was writing the cookbook was jim-dandy. That’s why I recommended Col. Newsom’s. But their prices are out of whack now. They want $89 for a ham.

I found a couple of interesting options. First, I looked at a Tennessee company. When it comes to ham, I like Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina. I know Virginia is famous for ham, but I’ve never had any Virgina country ham that I thought was worth eating. Tennessee, I have no problems with.

The company is called Benton’s, and they have a very tempting offering. They sell two types of hams. First, relatively young hams. Second, hams aged until they get a little funky. This is what real country ham is. A ham aged six months or less is a fake. It won’t have the complex flavors and the acidity an old ham has. Benton’s sells hams aged 12-18 months. They run around 15 pounds, and they cost $65.

I thought I might give that a shot, but then I came across Scott Hams, in Greenville, Kentucky. Their hams keep winning prizes at the Kentucky State Fair and other festivals and what not. The fair is held in Louisville, which is practically the same as New York by ham standards, but surely there must be a few people there who have a clue. I called them up, and they told me their hams go a year. They said they would be happy to pack the ham the way I wanted it, which means sliced and bagged, with the hock in its own bag. The ham’s price is $48.50, and that’s a 16-pounder. You can’t beat that deal with a stick. I placed my order. I may try Benton’s eventually, regardless.

I just called them again. I was looking at their site, and they sell good Kentucky sorghum molasses. This stuff is nothing like the nasty molasses most people eat. And they’re selling it for $8.00 per quart, which is very reasonable. I put that on my order.

I just did some Googling, and I learned something interesting. The reason most molasses is no good is that it’s real molasses. The stuff they make in Kentucky is made from sorghum. True molasses comes from manufacturing by-products or something. Stuff they sweep off the floor at sugar mills. It comes from sugar cane and sugar beets. Okay, whatever. I guess what I like is actually “sorghum syrup,” although I have never heard anyone call it that.

Kentucky ham producers have gotten smart and started selling their own versions of prosciutto. I’ll bet it’s excellent.

In a couple of weeks I may have to make me a Kentucky breakfast, with fried ham, redeye gravy, cream gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon grease biscuits, and molasses and jelly. And a big glass of tea. And fried apples. And a portable defibrillator.

I gave up gluttony recently, so I guess I’ll have to find a way to make really tiny biscuits.

More

I unpacked my meat grinder, and it has no impeller! My sausage plans must wait until I can get to Northern Tool.

Cancer is Not Simple

I don’t blog about my sister’s illness much, but it’s a big factor in my life right now. I’ve been trying to help her make decisions about treatment. I’ve learned a few facts that might help other cancer patients. The doctors didn’t explain all this to us, and yours probably won’t explain it to you, either. It must be difficult to treat patients efficiently while simultaneously educating them.

Four things (that I know of) can affect your mental abilities when you have cancer:

1. Chemotherapy
2. Cranial radiation
3. Paraneoplastic problems
4. Brain tumors

Depending on the breaks, you can get memory loss, difficulty moving, hallucinations, mood problems, headaches, blindness, and a lot of other stuff.

Chemotherapy-induced cognitive problems have a label: “chemo brain.” That’s what they call it. It may increase with the dosages you receive. You may forget things and have difficulty concentrating. The effects may last six months, or they may last ten years. You need to prepare for this, and you need to develop ways to compensate. Buy a calendar and so on. I read about a treatment for it, but I believe it involved antioxidants, and if you’re getting radiation, your doctor may tell you not to use antioxidants, because they diminish the effect of the therapy.

Prophylactic irradiation of the cranium (PCI) is an option for small-cell lung cancer patients who go into complete remission as a result of chest radiation and chemotherapy. “Complete remission” isn’t a cure; it means the cancer is too small to be found. If you reach this stage, cranial irradiation will make you much less likely to get brain tumors if the cancer relapses. It will also improve your odds of making it to various time milestones. The improvement is significant but not great. Some people who receive cranial irradiation have memory and other cognitive problems. You have to weigh this against the small likelihood that it will lead to a complete cure, and you have to consider the suffering you will endure if your cancer goes to your brain.

If you combine PCI with chemotherapy, it raises the odds that the radiation will damage your brain. On the other hand, it’s very important to do PCI early in order to maximize the benefit. So once again, you have to balance the risks and make a decision.

Paraneoplastic ailments are problems that arise in conjunction with cancer. Some involve the brain. One is encephalomyopathy. If I understand it correctly, it’s caused by your body’s efforts to attack the cancer. Healthy tissue suffers as well. You may have memory problems, loss of sensation, seizures, paralysis, and a wide variety of other symptoms. It’s somewhat like multiple sclerosis.

In some people, encephalomyopathy clears up once the cancer is gone, but there is no treatment, and it’s usually permanent.

Encephalomyopathy can be detected with a blood test. Most patients aren’t diagnosed until after they find out they have cancer. The mental symptoms are likely to predate the cancer diagnosis.

Brain tumors are a problem for cancer patients, because chemotherapy doesn’t get into the brain the way it gets into other tissues. You can imagine the problems they cause. Any part of your brain, no matter what it does, can be damaged or destroyed. So you may end up blind, deaf, unable to move, insane, or demented. If you get brain cancer, you are likely to end up hospitalized and completely dependent on others during the last months of your life.

I can’t promise you all of this is correct. It’s what I remember after reading up.

If you smoke cigarettes or use smokeless tobacco, you need to know about these possible consequences. You may think cancer is simple, like a wart, and that it’s just a matter of killing it or dying peacefully after months on morphine. It’s not always that easy. I remember walking into the room of a patient who had cancer in his brain. He was playing with his own feces, and he had smeared them on his head, and when he tried to communicate with the nurses, he just made inarticulate sounds. You might beat the cancer relatively easily, or you might succumb without too much suffering, but you might end up like the guy I saw. I know addictions are hard to beat, but God really does deliver people.

I have to call her and tell her what I learned. Pray we’ll work well together and choose the best course.

Please Overlook our Founder’s Little Faults

This morning I was reading Larry Huch’s The Torah Blessing, and I was somewhat startled by some quotations he produced.

Martin Luther said the Jews were “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine.” He also said, “We are at fault in not slaying them” for avenging the crucifixion.

“Avenging”? We’re supposed to punish them for the single most beneficial act that has ever occurred? An act God himself put in motion? An act for which every sinner (including Martin Luther) bears responsibility? Maybe we should also “avenge” the parting of the Red Sea or the provision of manna in the wilderness.

I will never understand this idiotic line of reasoning.

I don’t know why the Lutheran church continues to use the name “Lutheran.” Surely it’s obvious that this man was not worthy of honor. Isn’t uniting in his name a little like putting a sign in front of your church which says, “We hate Jews”? If I were a Lutheran bigwig, I’d be agitating to drop his name from the church. The church is the bride of Christ, not the bride of Martin Luther the Jew-hating loony.

Why don’t Christians talk more about this? This twisted, corrupted character should be unceremoniously removed from the pantheon of honored Christian thinkers. A certain amount of error can be excused, but saying we are sinning by not exterminating the Jews is beyond any realistic hope of rehabilitation. Maybe he was right about some things. But then Hitler was right about Volkswagens and superhighways.

The problem with defending this miserable, benighted person or hiding his faults is that we’re the only ones doing these things. I’m sure the Jews are highly aware of his bigotry and hatred. I doubt they run around making up excuses for it, the way we do. How can we build bridges between Jews and Christians if we’re not willing to let embarrassing idiots go?

To me, this is like the Confederate flag. I’m a Southerner, and I used to think the flag was neat, and then I thought about what it represented: a regime that supported slavery. Whatever the merits of the Confederacy might have been, there is no way to excuse resisting abolition. You can’t say, “Well, it’s okay that we flogged the flesh off other human beings, bought and sold them, broke up families, and held them captive…because we also wanted tax reform!”

So I’m on the side of people who want to take that stupid, shameful flag off of state buildings. If you’re determined to celebrate your Southern-ness, make yourself a flag with Elvis on it, or maybe a bucket of chicken.

Luther wanted to confiscate Jewish property. He wrote a book called On the Jews and Their Lies. Continuing to use this nut’s name is a great way to help Jewish anti-missionaries. Without even checking, I’ll bet he is featured prominently in their materials. I’d be all over that, if I were an anti-missionary.

Huch cites other anti-Semitic Christian figures. We need to renounce these buffoons and their poison. Jesus died a Jew, as did the Apostles. Our faith is fundamentally Jewish. It’s strange that some people who claim to be sincere and knowledgeable Christians feel entitled to slander and threaten the root on which we were grafted.

Most non-Catholic Americans don’t really know much about the older churches. We don’t know the more vile and disgusting parts of their histories. We don’t know about their ongoing failures to renounce the disgraces of the past. I feel certain religious Jews know about these things. Those of us who belong to denominations that recognize our debt to the Jews should make an effort to distance ourselves from the bile and excrement certain Christians have exuded or embraced in the past. It’s harder to ask this of people who belong to older churches, but they need to get with it, too. God has told us that in order to approach him, we have to make things right with other human beings. He won’t answer a husband’s prayers if the husband doesn’t love his wife. He won’t receive an offering from someone who deprives a creditor or mistreats a parent. He won’t pay attention to communion if we don’t forgive and seek forgiveness. How, then, is he supposed to work unhindered in a church that hasn’t repented of slandering Jews?

We like to use the words “Antichrist” and “anti-christian” all the time. The Antichrist is a figure who will arise and persecute the church. “Anti-christian” refers to the broader phenomenon of the persecution of God’s people.

This stuff is based in the spirit realm. Satan and his subordinates cause these things to occur. They sow the seeds. They fan the fires.

What most Christians don’t realize is that the same spirits that drive the persecution of Christians drive anti-Semitism. It’s all about thwarting prophecy and preventing God from carrying out his plan. Various Old Testament villains tried to destroy the Jewish race, as did Hitler. Pharaoh tried to prevent the birth of Moses. Herod tried to prevent the birth of Jesus. The Romans murdered Christians as though they were roaches and termites. Sooner or later, someone will try to kill off the Jews so the 144,000 mentioned in the Revelation can’t be born. It’s all the same thing. There is no difference between anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Christian hatred, because to Satan, we’re all in the same camp. The fact that he often gets us to fight each other is irrelevant. That’s just part of his program; it’s always a good idea to get your enemies to save you work by attacking each other.

Christian anti-Semitism is driven by anti-Christian spirits. If you persecute the Jews, a spirit of antichrist is in you. If more of us realized that, we would be a lot less eager to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for being clever enough to recognize the true Messiah. What fools we are, to think we are inherently superior. Our forebears conducted the Inquisition. If we’re so smart and so righteous, how did things like that happen?

Thinking we are smarter or more righteous than the Jews, who gave us everything that matters, is shockingly arrogant and moronic. It is completely contradictory to the obvious evidence before us. We’ve done a great deal of evil. We have nothing to crow about. Every good thing we have done happened because the Holy Spirit overrode our natural inclinations, which are as malevolent and misguided as everyone else’s.

I don’t know if I would endorse everything Huch says. I haven’t finished the book yet, and it seems to verge on legalism, but the bit about Martin Luther really grabbed my attention.

Tires!

Here’s a snippet from an email from someone I know who travels around and meets a lot of Christians:

I’m north of Atlanta and I also met 4 ladies yesterday here in GA.
Again – Guns and God and preparation! And it’s not just talk now.
People are doing it. Amazing.

What on earth is going on? People aren’t conspiring to make this happen. It’s not deceitful, contrived, Obama-style Astroturfing perpetrated by professional liars. This is the real thing.

Yesterday my dad started talking seriously about moving north. A long time ago, I told him I was considering moving out of this seedy and unpleasant county, and he said he thought that was a great idea, so instead of looking for a relatively small place for me to buy, we started looking at a bigger place for him to buy. A compound! Now the plan is back on the table.

We’ll need razor wire. Motion sensors. Rottweilers. Soap cannons and deodorant mines to repel hippies. I have shopping to do.

I’m going to see if we can get out of Miami in the near future and look at some properties. There is nothing here for me. Most of my friends have left town. I no longer have an office. My only important connection is my church, and I could move eighty miles north of here and still be able to attend. Or I could find a new church.

I would absolutely love to move to south Tennessee or northern Georgia. I could never get my dad to do that, however, and I think he needs to have family nearby, so I can’t very well do it without him.

I stuck new tires on the truck today. Very nice. I could swear they ride smoother and more quietly, but that could be my imagination. They seem to track better. The old ones seemed to make the truck ramble around a little. Now I’m prepared for SHTF driving.

They didn’t charge me sales tax. Can’t figure that out. Maybe today is a tax holiday.

For a couple of years, Perry Stone has been predicting heavy-duty economic problems for the US. He doesn’t claim to know the day when it will hit, but he thinks food will be scarce. Back in 2008, he said he thought people who owned their homes outright would be better off than everyone else. I guess that’s always true.

I’m going to start canning sausage, and I have to think about other stuff that would be good to have around if the power went off. You can always buy prepackaged food, but why not have things you actually enjoy? Shuck beans! Pickled beans! Dried apples! Country ham! Live better on your survival rations than you do when you use stores.

What else do I need? Maybe another crate of ammunition for the K31. Unbelievably, I can buy GP11 locally.

I keep thinking a nuclear blast or WMD attack on US soil is on the way. The Fort Hood incident proves we are not doing enough to thwart Muslim kooks. We’re spending lots of money, but a huge percentage of it is wasted harassing harmless non-Muslims for the sake of political correctness. If an Army doctor can place calls to Al Qaeda and repeatedly announce his anti-American sentiments without even getting reprimanded, Muslims can bring an atomic bomb into New York harbor. Sooner or later, we’re going to reap the harvest of self-hatred and empty liberal grandstanding. We’ll turn on our televisions and see a smoking ruin that used to be the New York Stock Exchange or the US Capitol. Then the real recession will start, and the only people who will get through it without eating their pets and drinking from puddles will be the Bible clingers and home-schoolers out in the woods.

When people who should know better do unbelievably stupid things over and over, it means there is a spiritual cause. I believe that. I believe this is what caused the real estate collapse. A monkey could have seen it coming, yet brilliant investors and financiers could not. Now the people who are supposed to protect us are clamoring about a nonexistent anti-Muslim backlash instead of screaming about our failure to take action against domestic terrorists. Media “experts” are moaning about Nidal Hasan’s imagined “pre-post-traumatic stress syndrome” when they should be noting his Muslim fanaticism. When people behave this stupidly, the supernatural is at work. Our guard is being taken down by occult forces so we will be open to an attack a sane America would have prevented as a matter of course.

This shows how weak the flesh is when God is against you. We think we can take care of ourselves, but without his protection, we are as stupid as lemmings.

I hope I’m not here when things really start popping. I want to be at least a hundred miles away, with my shelves loaded with tasty home-canned grub and my Saiga 12 loaded with law-enforcement-only buckshot.

Chabad Meets Fantasy Fest

I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed I found a bunch of VHS tapes of overweight Chassids preaching like old-time Baptists while wearing black G-strings.

Note to self: ease off on the cherry peppers before bedtime.

I Can Wear Long Pants

Cold weather is coming. I’m excited beyond words.

By “cold,” I mean below 80°. That’s sufficient as far as I’m concerned. It means I’ll be able to go outside for more than three minutes without worrying about my shirt sticking to me when I come back inside.

We had a hot September and August. Al Gore would be thrilled. Now we’re getting weather in the lower 80s, and it actually feels cool.

Yesterday I was able to load manure in the truck and put it on the fruit trees. I could have done this in the summer, but heat, broiling sunshine, streaming sweat, and airborne manure and fertilizer were not a combination I wanted to face. I put manure, fertilizer, epsom salt, and Ironite on the mangoes, bananas, plantains, and some of the other trees. I replaced my dying impatiens with new victims and manured the flowerbed. I feel like these were major accomplishments.

We are told to do stuff like this as though we were doing it for God himself. Arrgh. Okay! Okay! I’ll do it. But…arrgh.

I didn’t fully understand how high my truck’s bed was until yesterday. I had to stack big bags of manure in it, and the tailgate was at chest height. That’s not very convenient. I looked around on the web, and I found that some people lower their beds. Evidently, you don’t need to have your bed way up in the air unless you’re towing. Futhermore, I would guess that Dodge makes the bed higher than it has to be, for the strange people who jack their trucks as high as possible.

I don’t understand the truck-raising fad. It makes a truck less safe to drive, and it makes it hard to get in and out. It makes the bed hard to use. If you don’t use the bed, why get a truck? I think you have to be out of your mind to get a truck and then modify it so you can’t use the bed. Talk about expensive and totally useless fashion accessories. It makes a $10,000 Chanel suit seem like a good buy. If your truck is primarily a toy, and you like customizing it like a Harley, more power to you. I just want to be able to use mine. I already have a Harley. From a functional standpoint, it’s pathetic and useless. The footboards drag when I turn. I don’t need any more silliness in my life.

I don’t know anything about four-wheeling, but I have seen people claim that raising a truck makes it more suitable for going off-road. Is that really true? The ground clearance doesn’t change at all. The axles don’t rise with the truck. You can add axle height by using ridiculous oversize tires which don’t really work with your suspension. I don’t know why I’d want to do that. It effectively lowers the final drive ratio, and the tires are expensive, and it looks stupid.

When I was a kid, I rode in what I thought was the ultimate off-road vehicle. It was a dune buggy made with VW Beetle parts. This thing would go places a truck or Jeep could never go. It was just a cage with two seats. Two-wheel drive. You could go straight up the side of a hill with it. You could drive it straight into a curb a foot high and barely feel the bump when you went over it. Wonderful vehicle. I think if I had a desire to drive around in the dirt, I’d get something like that instead of ruining an expensive truck and getting inferior performance.

My truck has four spacers in it that raise the bed. You can take them out from between the rear springs and axle and put them above the springs. This drops the bed over an inch. I may do that. It’s reversible. It would be great to have the bed three or four inches lower, if there’s a cheap way to do it without causing problems when there’s a load on the springs.

People who lower their trucks get a lot of ridicule from people who raise theirs. Common sense has a way of drawing hostility from those who lack it. I would have to be demented to take this gigantic truck out in the mud and try to use it as an all-terrain vehicle. It will never happen. It would be like using an ocean liner to go bass fishing. I am never going to have to worry about rocks hitting the underside of the body. Might as well bring the bed down where I can use it.

When I was working on the truck, installing Nerf bars and a rear-view camera, I was amazed at how easy it was. I could lie on the ground under the truck and reach up without bending my arms much. The T-bird, on the other hand, was so low I couldn’t get a low-profile jack under it. I wouldn’t want to go back to T-bird ground clearance, but I don’t need two feet or whatever it is that I have now.

Last night I watched Robert Morris again. He did a sermon on faith. He says we should not have faith in things happening. I may be phrasing that wrong. Charismatics tend to venture into a practice called “name it and claim it,” in which they pray for things in the name of Jesus, state that they have them, and then wait for God to hand them over. I believe he was criticizing this.

He pointed out that we sometimes pray for things and believe we will receive them, only to be disappointed. That’s true. He said we should learn that we’re supposed to use our faith to bring us close to God. He pointed out that lots of faith-filled believers have been martyred and tortured and so on, and that they did not lose their faith. Surely they prayed to be spared. The point of a faith-filled life is not to make God do stuff for us. It’s to get close to him and know him and receive grace to submit to him and do his will. Bad things will happen to us, and it doesn’t mean we’re failures as Christians. If we have faith, God will make these things work out to our benefit, even if we don’t receive that benefit in this life. I think I’m summing it up fairly well. Maybe not.

Anyway, he said we often believe for things that are not God’s will, and that when we do that, we’re effectively exalting our will above his.

Here is where I come down on this. I think he’s absolutely right, as long as you don’t read anything extraneous into what he said.

Our lives are supposed to be victorious, but not without suffering. Even the two witnesses in the book of Revelation–extraordinarily powerful prophets–will be slaughtered. Many men of God have been tortured and killed. Paul was flogged over and over. Stephen was murdered by an angry mob. It only makes sense that the rest of us should sustain painful losses from time to time. On the other hand, I know for a fact that it’s often possible to claim something God has promised to you and to maintain your faith and receive it. This has happened to me; I was miraculously healed back in 1987, and I actually saw the guilty spirit leave my body. The 91st psalm says, “His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” I believe this refers to standing on God’s promises.

I think the important thing to consider is whether you have any right to what you’re claiming. Don’t ask for things that will distance you from God. For some people, even ordinary, reasonable blessings like a steady job and a reliable car can be causes for forgetting the real source of prosperity. And you have to ask yourself whether there is anything in your life that will prevent you from receiving what you ask for. I think repentance and fasting and casting out spirits are very important. Paul said receiving communion in an unworthy manner could cause you to be sick or die; I think that shows what failure to repent can do.

I also think that a truly mature Christian is likely to receive warning when he faces adversity that God will not remove. The Jews in Babylon were told to build houses and get jobs, because they weren’t going home any time soon. Paul was told he would be imprisoned. Jesus knew he would be crucified. I believe Peter knew he would be executed, although I can’t say for sure he didn’t hear it from human beings. I suspect we are headed into an age where we are in closer touch with the Holy Spirit, and people will receive more information from him. There is a spiritual gift called the word of knowledge, in which God comes right out and tells you things. I think we’re going to see it operate more often in the future, as our knowledge and obedience increase. As persecution increases, I should add.

I hope I’m right or at least close to it.

To my knowledge, so far, I’ve experienced five of the gifts of the spirit. I can’t say I’ve experienced the word of knowledge, but Robert Morris says every gift is available to every believer. He says the idea that some people get this and other people get that is incorrect. If so, I suppose a word of knowledge will come if I ever need it. It would sure be nice to know better than to pray for things that aren’t going to happen.

Ultrasound of 12-Week “Fetus” Exposes the Lie

Today I came across the Huckabee interview of the Planned Parenthood executive who quit after watching an abortion on ultrasound.

It’s amazing that anyone would object to forcing abortionists to show ultrasound videos to potential clients. It’s illegal to sell a candy bar in the United States without printing the ingredients and nutritional information on the label. What possible rationale can we have for failing to provide a mother with full disclosure when she is contemplating abortion?

Here is a three-inch-long baby. It’s an ultrasound someone posted on Youtube. This is what three months looks like. Obama wants to abort babies at 9 months. He voted to let babies die of starvation and cold when they survived abortions. Imagine killing this tiny creature with a suction tube, and then imagine how much worse it would be if it were several months older and lying naked on a stainless steel table, groping for an embrace that would never come.

How can any woman abort a baby without fear of God? How can she think he won’t see what she has done, or that there won’t be consequences? Is adoption really so traumatic that it’s worth taking a chance on God’s wrath? Surely not.

Bad acts bring curses, and curses last up to four lifetimes. When we do wrong, we may bring punishment on our great-grandchildren as well as ourselves.

I don’t care if the video upsets people. It should upset them. If it helps someone make the safe and moral choice, a little offense is justified.

Help is out there. Here’s a link to Care-Net. They help pregnant women who want to do the right thing.

I Have Cut the Cord

I am in torment. Okay, not really. But I’m a little disturbed.

I haven’t had a cigar since 2007, unless my memory is faulty. Which it is, but still, I think I’m right. I don’t think smoking a cigar is a sin, but they started keeping me awake at night, and I found it harder and harder to find convenient times when I could smoke them, early enough in the day to avoid sleeplessness. Months without a cigar turned into a year. Tobacco-free time piled up, and now it has been nearly two years.

Once I realized it had been a very long time since my last smoke, I felt a motivational barrier between me and my stogies. I just could not reach for one. Sometimes I got them out of the Rubbermaid storage box, but I always put them back.

My sister was diagnosed with lung cancer. My mother and my aunt died from it. Two of my great-grandmothers died from it, although neither smoked. My uncle died from stomach cancer which was probably related to tobacco use. All four of my maternal grandfather’s daughters smoke or smoked.

My family has grown a lot of cigarette tobacco, and I have been against it for decades. I suspect that our addiction and cancer problems are spiritual blowback related to selling a poisonous addictive drug. We’ve killed a good number of people, and we haven’t made much money from it, so we don’t even have the excuse of financial incentive.

For a while now, I’ve felt that it was hypocritical to have cigars around. They’re not addictive, and they won’t make you ill. Not unless you suck on them night and day. But tobacco is a horrible drug. Probably the worst drug man has ever encountered. If I keep it around, I’m going to feel like I’m giving Satan his own little place in my closet. A foothold.

Perry Stone notes that a minor error in one generation of a family can become a major sin for the next. It’s an interesting point. Grandpa smokes a pipe. Dad smokes cigarettes. Junior smokes dope and cigarettes. Junior’s son smokes crack. Things like this really do happen. It has happened in my own family. A family’s morals tend to move in one direction or the other. If I have cigars in my house, wouldn’t it be easier for the young people who see them to accept cigarettes?

Spirits follow families, and they are associated with objects we possess. No sane Christian would own a Ouija board or a Hindu idol or a stack of porn magazines. It’s important to keep a clean house, morally as well as physically. That’s indisputable. So is it okay to keep a big pile of expensive cigars in your closet? How can I pray for my sister to get over her cancer and her addiction when I keep tobacco for myself? Besides, while cigars in moderation don’t cause cancer, they do fill you with nicotine, which renders your body less capable of fighting new cancers that arise from other causes.

Charles Spurgeon smoked cigars. I read about it while making this decision. But Charles Spurgeon didn’t know everything.

My cigars are sitting by the side of the road right now. I have to apologize to Aaron, because I was planning to donate them to his study group. He gets together with other Jews, under the authority of a rabbi, and they talk religion while enjoying good stogies. I wanted to send the cigars to him, but I can’t rationalize taking something questionable out of my house and putting it in someone else’s. So I put 19 boxes of delicious smokes–most of them Cubans–out in the trash heap. It’s like throwing out a stack of twenty-dollar bills.

I feel like I left a baby out there. Oh, my poor stogies. I think I’m having heart palpitations. But the reality is, I am never going to smoke them. Tell me I’m going to survive this day.

Here’s a prayer request:

Steve,
I am having arthroscopic knee surgery tomorrow. It is on my “good” knee. The other needs total replacement but we are trying to save this one from going down that road. I got up this morning with extremely high blood pressure, probably from anxiety, stress and pain, but I know they won’t do the surgery tomorrow if it is still this high. Please prayer for my anxiety to cease, my blood pressure to be normal and for a good outcome of the surgery. The surgery I am confident of, but I need that BP down. Thanks for your prayers for me and for the many others you intercede for.
Ruth

Hop on it while I weep for my smokes.

Bring me More Free Stuff

I got appalling news this morning.

I got up and got on the scale and got a very pleasant reading. I weighed myself again a few minutes later to confirm it, and I got the same reading. Before getting in the shower I removed everything I was wearing and weighed myself a third time, expecting a slightly better result. The weight shot up seven pounds! I reset the scale and tried again. No difference!

Looks like my scale is crazy. I have since weighed myself on a balance scale, and it looks like I am seven pounds fatter than I believed. So my recent weight loss has been merely fantastic. Not shocking and extreme.

I can live with that. Fantastic is not bad. I may have to amend my weekly McDonald’s breakfast order, though. I don’t care. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean to me. The good Lord has made portion control extremely easy, so I guess I can do whatever I have to.

Time to toss the electronic scale. I thought they were more reliable than that. Seven pounds is a huge error.

It’s wonderful to know I don’t have to worry about rebound weight gain. For the first time in my life, I don’t have to think about that. What happened to me is better than having the weight disappear instantly. If that had happened, like virtually every dieter who ever lived, I would be a fat person who was temporarily thin. Instead, I was permanently cured of fatness. That means that now I’m a thin person who is temporarily fat. That’s incredible. Once the fat is gone, it can’t return unless I invite it back.

I was thinking about grace this morning. What a hard message to preach. For centuries, we’ve been telling people they were bad because they did wrong, and we’ve been condemning them and even wishing punishment and failure on them. And we thought we were right. “God helps them who help themselves”; isn’t that what we’ve been told? It sounds evil and self-indulgent to say God will fix your behavior for you. But it’s absolutely true.

Think about it. How did Adam live? He was the first person God created, so presumably, his lifestyle tells us what God intended the rest of us to have. What did Adam do for a living? Did he plant corn? Did he slop hogs and cut hay? No. His job consisted of reaching up and picking fruit off trees God had grown for him. That, quite literally, was his livelihood. God did not want him to work, in the sense that we “work” today.

We are not supposed to earn things. We’re supposed to cooperate and obey and have faith. We’re supposed to go to school and get jobs. We’re supposed to try to be good. But it’s not supposed to be drudgery. The work of our flesh is not supposed to make heroes and martyrs of us.

If you earn things, what does it mean? It means you don’t owe them to God. It means you did it yourself. If that describes your belief, what are you? What word describes you? “Righteous”? No. “Proud.”

On the other hand, what if God gives you the strength to behave, and he gives you peace, and he allows you to prosper without working yourself to death? How are you going to feel? Grateful. Unworthy. Somewhat ashamed. What word sums that up? “Humble.” Doesn’t the Bible tell us over and over that God likes humility? Is there anything it condemns more than pride?

God would rather give us things and have us humble than make us earn them and have us proud. I’m sure of it. How else can you explain the crucifixion? God could have given us tasks that would purify us, but he didn’t. He insisted on making it a gift.

God wants us to have his nature. That’s why he wants us to give all the time. God has a compulsion to give. Generosity is a fundamental aspect of his nature. No sane Christian would deny that; it would be blasphemy. If that’s true, aren’t we obligated to humble ourselves and receive? How can God give if we won’t take?

Am I saying God would spoil us? No. What you give people doesn’t determine whether they’re spoiled. Their attitude determines that. Abraham and Job were obscenely rich. Were they spoiled? I wouldn’t dare say so; it would be a slander. On the other hand, we have poor people in America who are horribly spoiled. They wait for the eagle to fly instead of going to work, they do nothing for others, they vote for people who give them other people’s money, they indulge every unhealthy desire they have, and they still say the system is unfair to them. You can’t hurt a humble, grateful person by giving him stuff and doing things for him. On the other hand, an ungrateful, proud person can only be hurt by gifts. That’s why God often withholds things from people he cares about.

I don’t deserve to be thin. I don’t deserve the other types of deliverance God handed to me free of charge. I will never deserve these things. I have sometimes felt that I had to respond to these gifts by trying to be worthy of them, but that’s stupid. I can’t be worthy of them. I still have to be good, but the purpose isn’t to earn anything. It’s to show my gratitude and to acknowledge that sin and iniquity (evil inclinations) can bring these things back on me.

I am a charity case. I am not a hard worker who earned a just wage. I am receiving welfare and food stamps from God, because I am incapable of taking care of myself. I have nothing to be proud of.

I’m politically conservative, but you could call me socialist in my religious beliefs. Man’s socialism, imposed by governments, is evil. It’s a vile mimicry of the pure, right socialism of the kingdom of God, which is based on voluntary participation by individual believers motivated by the Holy Spirit. I resent giving money to wasteful government programs that addict the poor to handouts and teach them to be proud and weak. I am grateful for the opportunity to donate to the church and religious charities. The money is not the issue. The issue is whether a charity is secular or God-guided. The second type is a fountain of blessings. The first is a money toilet.

Look, Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. Was he a liar? Seriously, would he lie to us about that? Am I supposed to go on pilgrimages, crawling up and down the streets with bloody knees and a cross on my shoulder? Should I abstain from marriage? Should I beat myself with a flagellum and wear a hair shirt? I don’t think so. I think actions like those are rooted in pride, regardless of how they may look on the surface. I think I’m supposed to be thrilled with what I received and that I should try to help other people receive it. I’m supposed to enjoy the good things I get, without letting them become more important than the one who gave them to me or the other people he wants to help.

If we spend our time yammering at people who misbehave (as I have), telling them how awful they are, we hold ourselves out as superior, which is wrong and counterproductive. The way they are now doesn’t matter. It passes away when they accept Jesus and get filled with the Spirit and begin to get free of their demonic bondages. We need to be telling them that their problems are caused by sin and lack of faith, that they are surrounded by invisible enemies much stronger than they are, that they can be fixed right here on earth, and that it doesn’t matter what they’ve done in the past.

The Bible compares us to unfired pots that have been marred. You wouldn’t throw one out; the clay can be reshaped. It’s stupid to fixate on the defects, because they’re curable and have no relationship to the quality of the final product. And when the repair process begins, you don’t get upset over setbacks. You don’t worry that it takes time, and that it’s a gradual process. You know it will work, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not instantaneous. These things are true, so how can condemnation be a good idea? Warning, sure. Condemnation? Probably not.

It’s so easy for the enemy to fight this message. Our consciences agree with him. They tell us we can’t expect to be spoon-fed and pampered. It feels so righteous when we claim we need to work real hard and bleed and suffer and deny ourselves. But there’s nothing righteous about it. It’s evil. You are not supposed to obey your conscience. It makes mistakes. You’re supposed to obey God.

Many times, God commanded the Jews to ignore their consciences. He forbade them to pity the people he had selected for death or punishment. Under Joshua, the Hebrews had to slaughter children and pets and old people. What you think is right isn’t what matters. Fortunately, we don’t have to do things like that any more. But we do need to give up the idea that we have to earn things from God, using our own strength as the primary means. God is like power steering. We provide a little bit of strength–in faith–and he provides the rest. Admit your faults, repent, fast, and pray. Fight your demons God’s way. They will lose, and you will change.

The enemy hates this message because it provides acceptance and hope, and because it’s based on the reality that evil spirits exert control over most people, not just a few. We can run these spirits off and experience greater self-control and happiness; then we’ll be able to help others do the same things. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Jesus told us to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. If you’re casting out demons, you’re overthrowing Satan’s kingdom. It’s a revolution, and Satan is being deposed. He’ll do anything he can to shut this message up, and he has pretty much succeeded for almost 2000 years. I believe we are now seeing a reawakening, and that grace–God’s unearned help–is going to set hundreds of millions of people free from sin, disease, and curses in the coming years. I think the war has resumed in earnest.

One test of the validity of a doctrine is the anger it stirs up in well-meaning Christians who cling to error and live in failure. If you don’t make the blind guides furious, your message is probably just making things worse. The enemy has always killed and persecuted those who told the truth. He doesn’t usually crucify his servants. He loves opposing the truth from within the church. Many prophets have been killed by believers instead of heathens. Believers tried to push Jesus off a cliff on the first day of his ministry. The Romans had no interest in him until some of his own people demanded that he be killed.

I can see why the Bible predicts increased persecution toward the end of the age. This message is getting more popular, and it has always drawn a violent response.

Rapid Fire no Fun

I’ve had a weird morning.

Today I was supposed to go to the gun range with some guys from church. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that my dad went. When he found out I was going to the range, he wanted to go, in spite of the fact that Christians would be there. How about that?

I wanted to go to Trail Glades, the outdoor county range I always go to, but John, the church volunteer leader who arranged the outing opted for an indoor range up north. This turned out to be a good thing. Trail Glades does not permit “rapid fire,” which means anything faster than once every five seconds. That means you can forget about three-shot drills. The range we went to is somewhat grubby and dark, but it has no speed limit.

I started out with the .45 and .38 Super, and I shot very nicely. Then I noticed that John was shooting faster, and I asked him about it. He said he was practicing shooting twice to the body and once to the head. We were using silhouette targets (another thing Trail Glades does not permit), so it was easy to see how the paper perp was faring.

I decided to try three-shot drills. It was pretty humiliating. Suddenly, I had to worry about target re-acquisition. I was using 5.5″ Caldwell Orange Peel targets over the heart and head of my victim, and when I switched to shooting three shots per burst, I started getting a lot of shots that were completely out of the black.

I noticed a few things. First, while my Glock 26 is great for slow-firing, it took longer to get on target when shooting fast. The results weren’t great. I tried John’s Glock 17, and the vast majority of my shots stayed in the black at about 25 feet. My .45 ACP 1911 also performed well. My 1911 .38 Super wasn’t that good, although it was the first gun I tried rapid shooting with, so it makes sense that I didn’t do well.

The other guy from church–his name is Joey–let me shoot a clip from his Springfield XD. I can see why people like them. The trigger pull is vastly superior to a Glock’s. And I shot it as well as the Glock 17. It was a short-barreled version in 9mm. Not sure which one.

My dad was shooting a bizarre 4-shot .357 he inherited. The brand name is “Cop.” He found that it didn’t always fire. No idea why. Good thing, I guess. Now he’ll know better than to rely on it. I let him shoot the Glock 26, and he really liked it.

On the way home, we dropped into a new gun store near me, and I priced a Glock 30. I think the thing to do is to get one, ditch the Glock 26, and practice rapid-fire drills. A laser now seems like a must. Why squint at tiny sights when you can look for a nice bright dot? Trying to use the sights is fun and challenging, but I don’t think challenge is a good thing when you’re ventilating an armed burglar.

This experience reaffirmed my faith in long guns. A pistol is way better than nothing, but a long gun with a green laser would be far superior to anything I shot today.

I think maybe I should give up on full-sized pistols. It seems like there isn’t much of a niche between compact pistols and 7.62mm carbines. A tiny Glock will do nearly anything a big Glock will do; if you need more oomph, you should probably reach for a folding carbine. That’s my guess.

After we shot, we hung around the front of the gun range clinging to our Bibles and bashing immigrants. Which didn’t go all that well, since one of us was born in Trinidad and another was Cuban. But we really tried. We felt we owed it to Janet Napolitano to prove how bigoted and ignorant Christians are.

Yeah, if there is one thing Yesterday’s events prove, it’s that Christians are the ones the government should be watching. I don’t know how we got a peace-loving Muslim to shoot up Fort Hood, but I’m sure Bill Maher could explain it.

“And Over There is Where the Garage Used to Be.”

Every time I crank up the ammunition press after a layoff, I find new ways to torment myself.

Let’s see if I can remember all the stuff that happened today. I was making .38 Super ammunition.

1. The plastic cylinder on the powder measure fell off twice. I finally taped it to the press. Perhaps I was wrong to use the Shop-Vac to clean up the spills, but after a while, when you make aggravating mistakes, you get so annoyed you would rather blow yourself up than be inconvenienced further.

2. I put the large primer feed tube on, but I was using small primers, which turned themselves upside-down in the tube.

3. Powder residue stopped up the primer feed slide and clogged up the tube to where I had to get a steel rod and force the primers out. Then I had to clean powder sludge out with brake part cleaner.

That’s all I feel like admitting.

It turns out No. 7 is a horror when you spill it. One or two microscopic grains can immobilize your primer feed slide. And when you spray it with Hornady’s expensive remedy, which is Hornady One Shot, it doesn’t really help. I think it may actually make it worse. It certainly doesn’t move the powder very well.

I was using pretty new Starline brass. This was a first. I suspect the primer pockets on new brass are tight. I had all sorts of problems getting the primers in. I had to squoosh a bunch of them in my bench vise. This may have had something to do with exposure to powder residue, though. I ended up priming and shaping the casings and then adding powder and lead in a second operation. Took forever.

Another weird thing: Starline .38 Super brass doesn’t seem to like the old-style Hornady Lock-N-Load shell plates with the spring around the casing bases. That surprised me, because everyone raves about Starline brass. I guess I won’t buy it any more. Maybe I should upgrade my press. But if I’m going to do that, I might give up and buy a Dillon. This thing is incredibly temperamental. Today I found two new design flaws, which I am too tired to describe.

If anyone from church asks to shoot my guns, I think I better tell them to buy their own shells. I have been known to manufacture questionable rounds, and I don’t want some noob shooting one round halfway down the barrel and then following it with a full charge.

I hate to waste my last boxes of factory 9mm ammunition, which I got for like $9 each. I know they’ll be that cheap again in a few months, but it’s irritating to shoot the last boxes I got at a decent pre-Obama price. That guy has killed recreational shooting. I assume. Surely people haven’t been rushing to the gun range with $25 9mm ammunition.

I’m pooped. Thank God I have piles of .45 ACP ready to go.

Bigger Pantry Needed

I guess people get tired of reading things like this about the food I make, but…the sweet pickles I made turned out to be the best I’ve ever had. Even better than my grandmother’s. I can’t believe pickles can be this good. After a day in the fridge, the salt and seasonings did their thing, and the result was magnificent. Now I’m worried about having these things around. Dills are virtually calorie-free, but sweet pickles are loaded with sugar. I was miraculously delivered from gluttony back in August, but that doesn’t mean I need to tempt myself.

I’d post the recipe, but it came from a cookbook, so you ought to just get the book. Besides, I’m sure there are a million similar recipes on the web. I omitted the onions from the book receipe, and I used white sugar instead of brown. Other than that, it’s exactly what you’ll find in Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken.

Church was amazing last night, and this morning, I got a startling answer to prayer. Unfortunately, I can’t describe it in any detail, because it involves another person’s private business. All I can say is this: when you know someone whose behavior is atrocious, and you want to change it, fasting and prayer will give you surprising results. People have free will; no doubt about it. But that doesn’t mean God won’t work his persuasive powers on them. Besides, some bad behavior is due to demonic oppression, and your fasting can clear that up in another person.

This morning it occurred to me that I should always attack problems spiritually before acting in my own strength. I can’t say all problems are rooted in spiritual causes, although maybe they are. I can say that all problems should be attacked via spiritual warfare before we step in and screw things up with our blind bumbling. I think maybe this was what Jesus was getting at when he talked about turning the other cheek and so on. It wasn’t so much that it’s good to be a loser. His point, I think, was that your first response to hostility or adversity should be spiritual, not fleshly. Maybe I’m wrong. Either God put this stuff in my head, or it’s wrong, and I came up with it myself.

Last night at church, I told my pastor and one other person that things are going so well for me now that I don’t have any real problems. I have relatively trivial difficulties, but nothing major. I said that these days, it’s the people around me who have problems. They’re the ones I think I need to apply the bulk of my energy to. I may have sounded arrogant when I said all that. I certainly hope not; I was trying to comment on God’s goodness to me.

Here’s a funny thing about Christianity. When you talk about the great things God is doing for you, other people may take it as boasting. We’re all trying to get our lives sorted out and walk in blessings, so when someone else does well, it may seem like that person thinks he’s a better Christian than you. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m just saying…this stuff is WORKING.

The Psalms say, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble [or ‘needy’] shall hear thereof and be glad.” That seems to indicate the intelligent and constructive way to receive another person’s good news. If someone else gets something good, the smart thing is to try to find out what they did right.

I guess I was wrong to get up and do the Church Lady Superior Dance during the altar call. That, I regret.

I forgive the lady who sacked me and sat on me until the ushers arrived with the wheelbarrow. I wish I knew her name so I could return her weave. I probably shouldn’t be using it to dust my CD collection.

One of the funny problems I have right now is that my weight loss has made my skin break out. The weight loss has irritated my gall bladder, and the end result is slight skin problems. I guess I can live with that. It’s not like I have leprosy. Fifteen or twenty pounds from now, the weight loss should stop, and then I’ll be at equilibrium, so the stress to my body should go away.

Gall bladders are catch-22 organs. If you get fat, you become susceptible to gall bladder trouble. If you lose weight, during the process, you’re likely to have gall bladder flare-ups. Your gall bladder wants you to stay fat so it never gets well. Presumably, when I’m no longer fat or losing weight, I’ll be just fine.

I started taking a disgusting daily tonic of lime juice, olive oil, and oil of oregano, and I feel a whole lot better. And it gives me a use for my gigantic supply of fresh limes. Oil of oregano is loaded with terpenes, which are supposed to be hard on gallstones. It amazes me that medical science has absolutely no effective treatment for gall bladder disease. They know virtually nothing about preventing it. They don’t even try. I guess jerking gall bladders out at $5000 a pop is just too easy. Medical science has decided God made a mistake when he gave us gall bladders. They used to feel the same way about tonsils and appendices, but that’s changing. Bodies are like cars. I trust the engineers who design cars more than a slackjawed mechanic who tries to fix them.

Week Shaping Up

Name something better than getting up in the morning and having nova and cream cheese on a toasted garlic bagel! Bet you can’t.

Every Tuesday, I go out to breakfast with my father. I quit eating eggs because of my gall bladder, so I always have one of two things: a tuna salad sandwich, or a nova platter. Today was a nova day. It was spectacular.

Even more exciting than nova on a bagel: being able to tuck my shirt in. I suppose I could have done that before, when I was wearing bigger shorts, but for fat people, shirt-tucking never really works well. The flubber jiggles around and moves the shirt out of the pants in random areas. Now, thanks to the grace of God, my flubber is sufficiently thin that it’s not a real problem.

The hazard of tucking my shirt in is that the tail no longer covers the pocket where I carry my pistol. I suppose a clever and nosy person could stand right behind me and spot the gun. A little bit of the grip can be seen. Is that a violation of the concealed weapons law? I hope not. I really don’t want to go to a fanny pack.

I need (I should put the second word in quotation marks) a new Glock. I sold my .40 S&W to Mike, and I shipped it off to New Hampshire. There were bad memories associated with it, and I also felt that I had been sold a bill of goods RE the ballistically superior .45 ACP. When I got the .40, I chose it largely because experts said the .45 was hard to shoot. That’s a total load. I love shooting .45s. I should break down and spring for a Glock in that caliber.

I have a 1911, and it’s a joy to shoot, but let’s be honest. As a tool, the Glock is superior. It holds more ammunition. It’s lighter. It’s a cinch to strip and clean. I hate to say it, because it’s butt-ugly, and everyone loves the 1911, but come on. Truth is truth. I got my 1911s to shoot at the range, and the pretty .38 Super would be a great carry piece under a suit, but if I were in the house with a maniac searching for me, I would be a whole lot better off with a Glock.

Of course, I would not use a pistol for self-defense if I had a rifle or shotgun handy. I may as well admit that. The Vz 58 with 30 rounds of 7.62 x 39 plus a laser and blinding flashlight is hard to top, as is the Saiga 12. You really, really don’t want to be in this house after sundown.

Maybe the Glock is a stupid idea. Maybe I’d be better off selling my Glock 26 and getting a small Glock .45, whatever the model number is. I can’t see carrying a full-size Glock, and when I’m not carrying, a long gun is the weapon of choice. The small .45 would be nearly as portable as my Glock 26, and the stopping power would be better. Eleven rounds of .45 ACP in a small, highly accurate, easily maintained, extremely reliable pistol would provide me with excellent security with minimal hassle.

People always tell me the small Glocks are too small for their hands. I think this has more to do with male ego than fact. Men love to talk about how big they are, and how it makes life difficult for them. I can only get two fingers around the grip of the Glock 26 (the grip only has two notches), and I shoot it more accurately than either of my full-size 1911s. In all likelihood, having your pinky on the grip reduces accuracy, because it tends to move when you use your trigger finger.

I’m fairly certain the small Glocks are nearly identical to the big ones, except that the barrels and grips are shorter. If so, a man who can shoot the big ones should be able to shoot the little ones. My hands are average-sized, but I wear a 13 ring, which is pretty big. Ring-size charts only go up to 14. If my fat fingers fit on the grip, yours should too, unless you’re a circus freak. Gaston Glock is said to have very large hands. It would surprise me if he designed a gun he could not shoot.

Weird surprise: a guy from church just called and asked if I wanted to go to the range later this week. Fantastic. Maybe some of the ex-military guys can give me tips on shooting. I better go make some ammunition.

More

Someone has suggested I try a Glock 30 before buying, but that may not be possible. Gun ranges that rent can be found, but locating that particular Glock would be difficult. The guy from church wants to go to an indoor range up north. I don’t know if they rent guns, but if they do, there is always a possibility that they might have a Glock 30.

As for accuracy, here are two targets I found on my hard drive. The first is a Glock 22 (.40 caliber, full size), and the second is a Glock 26 (9mm, very short barrel, short grip). As you can see, the compact gun shoots beautifully. I have no reason to think the Glock 30 would be any different.

More Peppers

Today I went to a meeting at church. On Saturday, one of the volunteer leaders invited me. I didn’t know what it was about, but I enjoy this sort of thing, and my morning was free, so off I went.

It was a meeting of the church’s leaders. If I understand things correctly, they have a practice of meeting on Mondays, and now they’re extending invitations to people who aren’t paid employees. I may have that wrong, but I think it’s about right.

I was relieved to see that they’re trying to communicate with people and organize them. I always complain about Christians using the Holy Spirit as a parachute. Don’t plan; don’t think. Just jump, and when you get in trouble, count on God to pull you out. The church is working to put together a hierarchy of volunteers with defined responsibilities, and it ought to make things run smoother.

On the way home, I picked up a copy of God’s Armorbearer by Terry Nance. This book was recommended to me when I indicated an interest in getting into the inner circle. I also got a copy of The Torah Blessing by Larry Huch. It’s full of stuff connecting Judaism and Christianity. I go through Christian books fast, so I figured one book was not enough.

Right now I’m canning Trinidad Scorpions in lime juice. What will I do with them once they’re canned? Danged if I know. But I canned those suckers. Oh, yes. They are canned. They’re not going ANYWHERE.

I want to dry apples so I can have dried-apple pies at Christmas. Is that too much to ask from life? I think not. But I don’t know how to go about drying them. If I had a junk car, I could dry them inside it, like my aunt used to do. I hate to spring for a dehydrator, but I probably will. It would give me a use for the tons of papayas I grow. Fresh, they’re not so hot. Dried, they’re excellent.