WARNING: These thoughts are somewhat tempered by the fact that my grandson, Zach, is visiting my blogging launch pad, and sitting right next to me and my computer, while playing his PSP and shooting an annoying question or two when bored...!!!  

Zach is my oldest grandchild, son of my oldest child, Kelly Ann, and her husband Gil, who is our director of operations...!!!  

You can tell Zach is the son of our director of operations by his desire to know everything about everything in fifteen minutes or less...!!!  

Patience is a virtue, but rarely found in the Gaspari family...we all seem to have a 'need to know' everything...and pronto...!!!  

Anyhow, back to the weekend...  

In line with our President's constant call for 'transparency', and feeling the need to act rather than provide mere 'lip service', here's what we are looking forward to this fourth of July weekend...  

***The Holley family (Zach, Madison, Mikaela, and the crew) are going to the National Aquarium in Baltimore...  

***The rest of the Gaspari family will be mowing grass, felling a large but dead tree, burning our huge twig and debris pile, cooking out, flag flying, catching some fireworks, and assorted other fourth of July freedom celerbrating activities...  

***Hopefully we'll all spend at least a few minutes in solidarity with the many tea parties occurring throughout our nation by engaging in prayers of thanksgiving for the great nation that God has bestowed upon us...!!!  

Happy Fourth of July Weekend to all...left, right, liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, and any other true blooded patriotic American or freedom loving citizen...!!!

 

 

 

Whatever has become of the 'Generation Gap'...???  

I first heard the term in the seventies, 'The Generation Gap', and it basically referred to the differences in musical tastes, fashion preferences, hair styles, and colloquial conversation between the generations...  

Unlike the days when everyone in the family 'worked' the farm, and families, including grandparents, interacted daily with one another, society has created a comfort zone of isolation, which has served to widen the 'generation gap'...until today we no longer experience a 'generation gap'...but, in fact, a 'generation chasm'...  

A WE generation has become a ME generation...  

In fact, this chasm has become so wide, that over half of all marriages fail, children are seen to have extremely small if any attention spans, and family members spend little time developing social skills with one another...  

Now, lest you think I am pointing fingers from inside my glass house, let me reassure you that I and my family have not been immune to this social disease...it exists, alive and well, in my family and social circles...  

Let me cut to the chase and relieve my brain from the thought that is nagging to get out of it...  

And that is this: LOVE is an action...not a noun nor a reaction...but a real honest to goodness action...a real honest to goodness DECISION...and it has one source, and one source only...  

WE NEED TO BE SPREADERS OF THAT LOVE AND DOERS...  

The love of God is accessible to every man, woman, and child...He is Our Father, and since He is Perfect, unlike us earthlings, He cannot refuse His Love to anyone of His children who ask...  

When we figure all this out, we must then begin to use this gift of LOVE, not only to eliminate the generational chasm, nor only to shrink the generation gap, but to BEGIN TO BUILD solid relationships with one another...  

After all, if we call God, Our Father, indeed then, we are all brothers and sisters...  

I, for one, need to be about restoring all things in Christ...that is my mission...that is my focus...!!!  

Spend some time with your kids this weekend...have a great day, and a great fourth of July weekend...!!!

 

 

As a 'convert' to conservatism, and a patriotic American believing in highly respecting the office of President, and firmly convinced that all 'legitimate' authority comes from God, it has taken me quite some time to dissect the mind of our President to come up with an understanding of the direction in which he plans to take us...  

And all this is not without much prayer, tolerance, study, reflection, and insight...!!!  

First of all, Scripture is clear, "...by their fruits you shall know them..."  

In other words, lemons come from lemon trees, oranges from orange trees, acorns from oak trees, apples from apple trees, milk from cows, wool from sheep, etc...  

In fact, for the person of faith, it is relatively easy to judge another's actions by observing this time tested formula...!!!  

And since I am very fond of analogies, I'll give you a simple one...one that places into some perspective, President Obama and his somewhat hidden, if not clandestine, agenda...  

First, a word about CAPITALISM...all societies and civilizations thrive on CAPITALISM...it isn't a dirty word...it merely suggests that in order to acquire any material goods, including food, shelter, and clothing, you must either work, barter, or pay for them...even if they were to be graciously given to you (material goods) without cost, someone would have had to 'pay' for them...  

Now back to our analogy...  

Now, pay close attention...this will come quickly...!!!  

My favorite ice cream flavor is Butter Pecan, with Chocolate a close second...in fact, if I'm really in the mood, I like a generous dip of each on a sturdy cone...  

Baskin Robbins caters to ice cream lovers...they offer more than 31 flavors...true artistic capitalism and merchandising in action...virtually everyone can find a flavor they enjoy there...!!!  

My father, when he was alive, would only eat Vanilla ice cream...period...!!!  

If President Obama controlled the ice cream industry, he would offer no more than four flavors...Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, and Butter Almond...suggesting that four is plenty to choose from, and 31 would be extravagantly wasteful...!!!  

The Obama/Biden model is just the opposite of The Baskin Robbins model...  

You see, it is not 'freedom' that is the goal, but conformity to a predetermined set of standards agreed on by a select few 'intellectuals'...  

*******END OF ANALOGY*******  

For those who wish to dive further into this topic...read this, written nearly a century ago, but very apropos to our present times:      

"We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on these faces there is no smile..."

"Upon dissecting it we discover the "Modern Mind" to contain three main ingredients and to combine them through the force of one principle. Its three ingredients are pride, ignorance, and intellectual sloth; their unifying principle is a blind acceptance of authority not based on reason. 

Pride causes those who suffer from this disease to regard whatever they think they have learned, whatever they have absorbed, through no matter how absurd a channel, as absolute and sufficient. 

Ignorance forbids them to know with any thoroughness what men have discovered about these things in the past, and how certainly.

Intellectual sloth forbids them to examine an argument, or even to appreciate the implications of their own assertions." 

-Hillaire Belloc Survivals and New Arrivals

Most of my neighbors in Amity Township spent the weekend cleaning up the damage caused by an intense storm which swept through our area on Friday evening around the dinner hour...  

According to the weather 'experts' no tornado was seen to touch down by local radar...  

Except Amity is literally within a valley surrounded on all sides by substantial hills...in fact, I'm always kidding my children by saying we live in a former volcano or a large meteorite-caused crater... and lest I'm mistaken, radar, is only able to detect line of sight occurrences, and the damage to our area was focused mainly on low lying areas, particularly those in heavily clustered treed areas and densely wooded areas along creeks and gullies...  

Hence the term 'flying under the radar' typically applies to this one hour duration, mile and a half wide, catastrophic storm...  

Our home suffered a screen panel torn off our french doors and two major limbs brought down on two trees...even though our Star Spangled Banner continued to wave atop its twenty foot mast, unmolested by the ravages of Mother Nature, attesting further that we live in the home of the brave...  

Only by the Grace of God were lives spared and damage to residences kept to an unbelievable minimum...  

In any case, tornado or no, Amity residences are counting our blessings, and thanking God that the powerful winds and bigger than golf-ball sized hail didn't damage our most precious possessions...our family members...!!!  

In just a few days, no one but us will know that anything unusual and so devastating occurred in our resilient and lovely neighborhood...!!!  

Amity lives...!!!

 

 

It was odd that yesterday's post, dealing with my self proclaimed wish to become the King of Gotcha, occurred on the same day that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, passed away...!!!  

Michael was certainly an American, if not an international, icon...  

His contributions to pop music, pop culture, and pop dance can never go unacknowledged...His signature 'moon walk' will always be a classic way to relate to him...  

Hollywood itself has suffered several losses in just a few days...a sure sign that even our celebrity heroes and heroines are extremely human and mortal...as are our other political, literary, scientific, educational, and social mentors...  

In the final analysis, our faith in God is the only thing that lasts, and the only thing that cannot let us down...  

I guess The Bank of Heaven is the only investment house that doesn't need 'tarp' money or bailout help...!!!  

Have an enjoyable 'faith-filled' weekend...!!!

 

 

For some odd reason, all my life I have aspired to be funny...!!! To be applauded by the masses as a great practical joker...or a great stand up comic...or the witty businessman....   

I'm not sure whether I have been driven by my need for acceptance or my desire to be famous...or a combination of both, but all I know is I almost always try to see the lighter side of things...after all...  

Sometimes, life is too serious, or maybe it's not 'life' that's too serious, but the way we choose to live life...  

So, I ask you, is comedy just another way to disguise reality, to mask the truth, or is it a genuine gift to be used to defuse tense situations...  

I suggest that we cultivate this virtue, but moderate it in such a way that it becomes USEFUL, IN GOOD TASTE, and MANNERLY, and in no way becomes offensive or degrading or abusive...  

Think back on some of the funniest humor you rolled over on the floor laughing at...wasn't it about real life and real life situations...and how to see the humorous side to an otherwise serious topic...  

Yes, there is also debasing humor...which serves no good purpose except to demean and tear down either a particular person, ethnic background, race, gender, or other group...  

When I get this type of humor in e-mail, I usually delete it, so it ends with me and doesn't perpetuate itself...  

You see, I still want to be the King Of Gotcha...but I want to rule as a good king...!!!

 

 

We live in a world that supports and votes for a candidate that espouses CHANGE...even change that is unspecified and intolerable at times...  

Fact is, as a society, we are just never satisfied with the status quo...the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence...  

Soooo...in keeping with the 'American Way'...I too felt it necessary to develop a list of things with which I am dissatisfied, in the hope that someone somewhere will bring about CHANGE...  

In fact, in keeping with our 'Wordless Wednesday' theme, I'll keep the list short.......  

***I would like to see peace everywhere in the world  

***I would like to see an end to abortion  

***I would like to see prosperity for everyone  

***I would like to see people helping people instead of full scale selfishness  

***I would like to see all politicians, no matter what party affiliation, speak the truth  

There you have it...!!!  

You know...on second thought, maybe I'll accept things just the way they are and give thanks to God for the green grass he places in my life right here, right now...!!!

THE AMERICAN WAY:

THE CONSEQUENCE...???

I'm wordlessspeechless...!!!

Have a pleasant Wednesday...!!!

Late Sunday I was compelled to post a video concerning abortion as seen through the eyes and mind of a twelve year old young lady...  

If you are at all interested in learning more about the atrocity we call abortion click here...!!!

If you think that the abortion issue is at the periphery of politics and is just a 'passioned side issue'...YOU ARE GREATLY MISTAKEN AND ALREADY IN DENIAL...

Abortion is at the very heart of all that ails this nation...!!!  

On that post and subsequent comment thread you will find an open and honest discussion about the subject of abortion...!  

In fact, I have been so touched by the comments and responses, both against and in favor of abortion, that my heart and soul have been moved to sadness, such that I am incapable of posting another post at this time...  

Do not be overly concerned, however, I will again be posting just as fervently and regularly as before, but my spirit needs additional time to mourn and process the great and diverse proliferation of feelings affecting it...!!!  

I live in a world where some seriously deny the Holocaust...an event which took place in my lifetime...that reality causes me to greatly question history and historians themselves...and...  

Lest...history continue to be unfair and biased in favor of progressive liberalism...  

Let it be known by this post and this blogger that the extermination of 6 million Jews will not go unheeded or unnoticed...and...  

The same evil root which was at the heart of that Holocaust has brought about another holocaust, not as historical, nor written about, but nevertheless, just as savage and brutal...  

And that is the holocaust of abortion...  

You see, the taproots of evil run deep and are hard to exterminate, and they keep sending out offshoots which crop up all around us...  

To ignore their existence is to be in denial...and being in denial prevents us from positively dealing with the crisis...  

Just some thoughts I wished to share with you today...!!!  

Thanks for stopping by...!!!

In my life experience, WISDOM usually comes with age, however, if we are not open to WISDOM, from wherever and whomever it comes, we ourselves become foolish and unwise...!!!  

There are certain fundamental eternally tested truths which in our day and age have become eroded by modern day progressive thinking...

Listen closely to this twelve year old, and make up your own mind...!!!

Don't be mislead by the title to this post...it's far from being about baseball...!!!  

In fact, baseball can be heavily impacted by the content of this post! It's all about the weather...game or no game...!!!  

Not whether or not, but weather, as in rain or shine...  

If you've lived in Pennsylvania this Spring, you are no stranger to RAIN...all kinds...light showers, thunderstorms, downpours, deluges, and even hail...

Who would have thought that, in North Jersey, our neighbor to the east, in the middle of June, they would be shoveling snow...4 to 6 inches of the white stuff, in fact...  

Nevertheless, we can't change the weather...it is what it is...and so...  

Looking at the long term 7 day forecast, I saw very little sunshine or summer weather...but...hey...everything is as green as can be, the flowers and gardens are well hydrated, and when the sun finally appears...June will be busting out all over...  

And another thing...the weatherman is only right half the time...  

So, there is still great cause for HOPE...