A review

 So.  A few years ago, I bought a copy of Office '03.  It had five uses.  I used my last one on my last laptop.  

Which died last April.  Well, started dying, probably in March or so.  

My laptop is my livelihood.  I do everything on it: writing, publishing, budgeting, household accounting, planning, communicating with the kids' school, checking their grades...everything.  I can't do that with a dead laptop.  I mean, sure, I can use one of the desktops, but there are times I'm not physically capable of working at a desk, but the work goes on.  

I ordered a new one from Amazon.  And a thumb drive (well, pinky-fingernail drive--a 500 GB one the size of a dongle) to put all my files on.  The drive arrived the last day of April, and I was able to copy everything onto it before the old laptop gave up its last gasp, and the new laptop came in on the first of May.  

It had a year of Office 365.  So, I pulled it up and started using it.  Finished the final draft of Certified Public Assassin on it, and pulled the trigger on publishing...

...and something about the newest Word threw tantrums about working with older Word.  To the point of breaking even LibreOffice.  Oh, the electronic copy of Certified Public Assassin worked okay, but I could not get the print version to fly.  No, Word insisted on fucking up with the margins.  It did not matter what I did, I could not get the print version to work.  And I hacked away at that, on and off, for six fucking months.  

So, my Office subscription runs out at the end of next April.  I could re-up for a hundred bucks a year...every year.  I could. 

But I don't wanna.  It's a cheat.  I don't replace a laptop every year.  I don't pay for a new computer every year.  Why should I have to rent my software every year? 

I figured I'd have to switch over to LibreOffice at the end of the year, when my subscription ran out, when I bought the laptop.  

And then...a miracle happened.  I've made money, this year.  Not a lot, but double what I did last year.  And I'm producing again.  

That changed the dynamics a bit.  And changed my mental dialogue a lot.  I mean, if I'm actually making money,* shouldn't I have tools to make money with?  

Keep in mind, I'm categorically opposed to renting software.  I talked it over with my other half, and when Black Friday deals hit, I purchased a new writing/formatting software: Atticus.  

On a whim, I uploaded Certified Public Assassin, and put it through the formatting.  And then, I uploaded the file to Amazon, and looked at the internals. 

Lo and behold: the text stayed within the margins.  Everything looked good. The cover took some extra work, but everything worked.  Everything worked.  I could publish a print version.  Atticus fixed what rented Word broke.  And Certified Public Assassin is now available in hardback!

So I can definitively state that it works as a formatting tool.  It's worth the (one time) cost for that alone.  

However, that's not all it does: it works quite well as writing software, and allows you to set writing goals, too.  And uses reminders to keep you  on task when you sit down to write.  Something Word does not help with.  It also keeps track of your word count by chapter as well as by book file.  Yeah, it takes some getting used to, but it really is intuitive, and a good bit easier to use than Word.  Your screen's less busy, less distracting, you're only looking at one chapter at a time; while yes, that means you have to dig into it to look at how your entire document is looking, you can get a page estimation by the trim size you want to use for the project you're working on.  It shows you previews of your project by how it'll look in print, or in any of several e-book readers/reader software on a tablet. 

I would say that this is probably one of my best investments into my career as a writer.  I am honestly blown away by the sheer awesome.  I mean, maybe there's better writers' software on iThing platforms, but this is, I think, perhaps hands down the best one out there for anything else. 

I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

*Double last year's income is a bit under half what I made in my first year teaching for MSSU.  A hair under a semester's pre-tax income, in  other words. 

A thought.

Something occurred to me, late last night, as I was drifting off to sleep.  I've often referred to the tantrum-throwing left as toddlers...and that connected with all the kids pretending to be anything other than what they are.  

This is a normal stage in human development.  

Both my imp (now 16) and my pixie (soon to be 14) threw tantrums.  I showed them through being firm and consistent with consequences that tantrums would not only not get them what they wanted, but would get them the opposite of what they wanted.  

Unfortunately, we've got eighty years of protests of varying levels of justice and violence demonstrating to a lot of these overgrown toddlers that yes, tantrums do work.  Unfortunately, it's going to take a lot of harsh consequences, fairly and consistently and constantly applied, to undo that lesson.  

Both of my children had phases of pretending to be an animal--a dog, a cat, a dragon, a dinosaur (oh my gawd the dinosaur was Pixie, and she jumped on Imp and bit him.  Because "dat's whut raptors do. I a dinosaur! RAWR!).  I...put a stop to the dinosaur stuff, but not because I stopped the imaginative play, but because I did not need them biting each other. 

They sort of still play make-believe, but via Minecraft, now.  Other than that, they've grown out of it. 

Leftists...haven't.  I'm not sure if it's because they didn't engage in imagination play as toddlers/preschoolers (kind of hard when they're overscheduled for every second of every day by parents that didn't want to parent their kids), or if it's because they're told that they're bad for being born white/male/cis het/rich/poor/female or whatever.  But whatever the reason is...

...leftism looks, from the outside, like a giant case of Peter Pan syndrome.  Delayed development.  Socially-enforced retardation.  

Call it whatever you will, they need to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and let the goddamn grownups actually run the country.  Because trying to enforce kindergarten rules on a grown up world has backfired spectacularly.  If your cunning plan depends on "if people will just..." it won't work.  Because people will not "just." 

I'm personally tired of putting up with behavior that should have been met with a spanking before the little 'tards hit kindergarten age.  

I vote we start calling the behavior like we see it--socially-enforced retardation--and treat them like toddlers: ignore them, up until the point their behavior crosses a line and must be corrected.  

Because that's the other thing about toddler misbehavior: they're doing it for attention.  If we stop giving them the attention, some of them will stop acting out...and some will earn the richly deserved slap-down.

Bugger. I'm an idiot.

So.  I had a health issue that drove me to the doctor, earlier this week.  While I was there, I asked her to switch me back from artificial thyroid replacement hormones (T4 and T3) back to natural (desiccated porcine thyroid gland).

I took my first dose yesterday morning.  And I woke up.  Woke up for the first time in months. 

I had been sleepwalking through life without realizing how bad it was getting.  I just knew that some of the other hypothyroid symptoms that I had had under control were coming back.  I was (and still am) always cold.  My hair was dry and I was shedding like a nervous cat.  I was struggling to slow weight gain on 900-1100 calories per day.  Not stop it, not lose weight, slow the gain.  

So I asked to go back on what I'd felt better on: the natural stuff. 

I still am limited in physical energy.  I'm still stiff and sore in the joints, with jolts of pain if I push too far. 

But I can think.  My brain's working again.  

I feel like an abject moron, putting it off for so long.  

(and now, back to my scheduled writing)

Old Fashioned Lard Biscuits

2 c all purpose flour*
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 c lard**
2/3 c milk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients, and cut the lard into the dry ingredients until everything resembles coarse meal.  Stir in the milk until a sticky dough forms, sprinkle flour on a flat surface and turn the dough out.  Knead until it's elastic and no longer sticky--probably about twelve turns.  Maybe fourteen.  Roll out, cut biscuits by pressing straight down, form the remnants into another pat of dough and keep cutting until you've not got enough left to cut and make that last biscuit, and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 12-15 minutes. 

Now.  That's the standard recipe.  

Here's lard biscuits for those who have to be gluten free:

2 c all purpose gluten free flour--I don't recommend almond flour for this unless you like eating hockey pucks
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 c lard
2/3 c milk***
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the lard--this version of the recipe works better if the lard is COLD lard.  Beat the egg into the milk, then work into the dry ingredients.  Add more milk if needed by teaspoons.  Fold and press four or six times, to make flaky layers in the biscuits, then sprinkle flour over the top, roll out, and cut.  Mash the remnants together and roll out and cut a couple more biscuits.  Continue until dough's all on the cookie sheet.  Bake until golden brown. 

These are, hands down, the best gluten free biscuits I've made.  BEST.  They turn out like soft wheat biscuits--the Southern style ones.  They hold together for butter and honey or jam; they also work really well under sausage gravy.  Best thing of all?  They don't end up so dry you feel like you're choking down formed sawdust. 

It truly doesn't take any longer to mix these up and cut them out than it does for the oven to preheat.  And it costs a lot less than biscuits in a can. 

*I haven't made these with standard all purpose flour, but I can't imagine them turning out anything but good, considering how good they turn out as gluten free biscuits.

**You can use room temperature lard, but cold lard turns out better biscuits.  And cold lard isn't nearly so hard to cut in as cold butter is. 

***You can leave out the egg, if you're allergic, but be aware you're going to need more milk--start with 3/4 c milk, and add more by teaspoons if you need it. 

Budget recommendations

My budget just got a lot tighter.  My son hit sixteen, and there's now a small truck to insure.  

So.  It's time to sort through and figure out where I can tighten things down a bit more.  I'm really, really thankful for my aunt helping me buy a WonderMill last spring--that is an enormous budgetary help.  One 25 lb bag of white rice from Sam's Club costs the same as 4 lbs of rice flour.  4 lbs of flour that I grind and mix costs about the same as a 5 lb bag of all-purpose wheat flour.  

If you have to eat gluten free, get a grain mill.  It makes a huge difference.  You will break even in the first few months, I promise. 

My particular all-purpose blend* is a combination of white rice, sticky rice, and brown rice, with corn starch and xanthan gum added.  I use corn starch because it's a) locally available, and b) much cheaper than a lot of other starches.  I usually mix two batches of flour to keep on hand and cook with. 

I have successfully made gluten free bread, biscuits,** gravy,*** and a couple of desserts (wacky cake and cookies) with this flour.  It's an excellent blend.  The most expensive part of it is the sticky rice, but it's well worth it.  The sticky rice flour makes an enormous difference in how well your gluten free breads and bread-ish things hold together. 

The biggest difference in cost is that mill.  When you can buy the rice and grind and mix it yourself, you're not paying for a massive commercial mill, and you're not paying labor and convenience costs.  And trust me: both add up.  Fast.


*2 c white rice flour, 1 c sticky rice, 1 c brown rice, 1.5 c corn starch, 2 tbsp xanthan gum

**Best biscuit recipe is actually lard biscuits.  Butter ones are...okay, but mildly disappointing.  The lard biscuits turn out spectacularly good, and they brown.  

***Gravy is one of the things that actually turns out better using gluten free flour: no lumps.  (The other thing is breaded and fried foods.)

It's alive!

 Liquid Diet Chronicles book 4 Meals on Wheels is live, and ready for borrow through Kindle Unlimited, or purchase (or first one, then the other, if you're inclined). 

New foods!

It is like pulling teeth to get my Imp to try new foods.  I think I've found the trick though: he's more likely to try something if I tell him it's spicy.  

Case in point: we got him to try pad thai, recently, by calling it "spicy spaghetti."  He tried it, and liked it well enough to ask me to learn how to make it so I could teach him.  

Last night was another new food: buffalo chicken dip.  I started with a recipe found online, but ended up modifying it a little bit.  I'll probably half the recipe, more or less, next time I make it, and will just make it on the stove top.  

Hot Buffalo Chicken Dip

2 cans chicken, drained
2 bricks cream cheese (I used reduced fat, and thank God I did)
3/4 c shredded cheddar (grate it yourself so the dip doesn't turn out gritty if texture bothers you)
1 c ranch dressing
3/4 c buffalo sauce
1/4 c Louisiana hot sauce (optional--if you need more heat to be happy with it)

Drain chicken (my cats demanded some of the chicken water, so I drained a little into paper bowls for them), dump in crock pot, break up a bit.  Dump in cream cheese, cheddar, ranch, and buffalo sauce, and turn the crock pot on low.  Go back in an hour or so, depending on your crock pot (mine runs way too hot on all settings), and start the process of mixing it up.   It's ready when it's fully incorporated and hot all the way through.  It's good with Freetos, tortilla chips, celery sticks.  Probably would be good with club crackers, but I can't vouch for that, since I can't have those anymore. 

The picky kid ate probably a cup of dip, last night.  He only stopped because it was starting to make him queasy (as much cheese as is in it, I'm not surprised).  I had maybe half a cup...and a bottle of hard cider to mitigate the gallbladder attack I knew would follow.  

It was worth it.  This recipe turned out good.

Derp. Forgot to annouce.

 Light Up the Night dropped live on Wednesday.  It's available to purchase, or to borrow through KU.  

Eggs...and abject stupidity

 So.  

Eggs.  

They're something of a staple.  You use eggs for breakfast, for making cookies, for adding into recipes.  Eggs are just...they're ubiquitous.  They're in a lot of things.  They're supposed to be some of the cheapest protein out there.  

We use a lot of eggs in this house.  A lot.  Spouse eats French Toast egg muffins for breakfast on work days; Imp eats fried egg sandwiches with hot sauce for school day breakfasts (and on Sunday before church).  I make cookies, cornbread, and gluten free bread--all of which use eggs.  Two of them, each time.  I also have a recipe that uses four to make a can of spinach palatable (basically turns nasty, slimy canned spinach into spanikopita filling).  So, yeah--we use a lot of eggs in this household. I get them in the big boxes (5 dozen) from Walmart about every three weeks or so.  

I got groceries Friday.  The box of eggs had jumped from $10/box to a bit over $18.  Yeah.  Major jump.  I got them at Sam's Club instead, for a bit more than $13 for the same size of box.  (That had gone up, too, just not as much as Walmart.)  

Yesterday, I ran across a news story about yet another food recall.  I'm sure you'll remember the great lunch meat recall for listeria?  Back in July?  Where they went screeching that lunch meat would kill you because of this particular bacteria? 

Yeah.  When I got pregnant for the first time in 2008?  I was cautioned that lunch meat can carry listeria, and that since I was pregnant, I would be particularly susceptible to it.  And that I needed to take lunch meat I got and heat it to steaming in the microwave, then put it in a new, clean container, before I put it back in the fridge.  And then it'd be safe.    

There was no need for a panic and recall.  It's stupidly simple to mitigate the risks.  All that was really necessary was a public service announcement.  

Back to the eggs.  They're the current recall.  Because salmonella.  

Wait just a damn fucking minute, here.  Eggs have always risked salmonella contamination.  It's one of the reasons you're not supposed to eat raw cookie dough.*  I have never been unaware of the possibility.  And I've never had a case of salmonella from eggs.  Wanna know why? 

I wash the fucking eggs.  And then I cook the fucking eggs.  

Again: a recall is not necessary.  All that should have been done was to draft a PSA.  Here, I can do it for them: 

Attention: this is a public service announcement from the FDA and CDC.  Recently, there has been a multi-state outbreak in cases of salmonella food poisoning that has been linked to eggs.  Salmonella is a dangerous food-borne illness that can be controlled with a few, simple steps.  Step one: wash the outer shell of the egg with soap and warm water before you crack the eggs for use.  Step two: cook the eggs until the yolk is set.  These two steps will prevent you from contracting salmonella from eggs.  We will not issue a recall for egg-borne salmonella.  Thank you.

Then...leave the eggs alone.  Leave them on the shelves.  Stop fucking treating the American public like toddlers.  If people ignore the PSA's instructions and end up killing themselves with salmonella?  Awesome.  Each easily avoidable death is one fewer stupid fucker voting.  And breeding.  And encouraging the government to treat the rest of us--you know, the ones with brains in our heads--like toddlers.  

Stop issuing food recalls for things that the consumer should be responsible for mitigating for ourselves.  Save them for the arsenic-tainted apple juice, or the metal-shavings-tainted chicken nuggets. 

Incoming!

Got a new novella dropping live, next month.  On the 18th.  Light Up the Night. You can preorder now, if it looks interesting:

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

When it drops live, it'll be available to borrow Kindle Unlimited. 

There will be more announced in coming weeks, too.  Cheers!

School is back in session.

 Last week was a half-week.  Monday saw "Back to School Night," where the kids take their supplies to their classrooms/lockers, and pick up their schedules (for secondary).  Pixie (who's now much taller than me) is in 8th grade, this year, and Imp...Imp is in high school.  

I'm really, really proud of that.  

I actually wrote this past summer.  Yeah, the housework went to shit, but I wrote.  I finished a short novel, a novella, and am about 2/3 of the way done with another collection of short stories.  

And since school has been back in session, I managed to get the revisions done on the short novel and get it sent out to one of my beta readers.  The novella?  Beta reader finished it, and I've got it up for pre-order.  It'll pop live in mid-September, at which point it'll be available to borrow KU.  

I'm thankful the kids are back in school.  They've got their own friend groups that they hang around with in school, and they don't spend their time abrading each other's nerves...and mine.

Milestones

The kids are hitting them.  They're both teens, now, which means I've gotten them into the adulthood-training stages.  I'm actually really proud of them.  They are, by and large, really good kids, even in the throes of puberty hormones. 

Imp has his learner's permit, and Other Half is working on teaching him how to drive.  Yes, he's really that old, now.  And is going into high school next year, with a couple of ideas of what he wants to do with his life.  He wants to learn welding.  I think it suits him, because it's as much art as science, and it's a skill that will support him quite well.  He also wants to learn to make pizza.  And run a food truck with a friend or two.  We're...working on that.  I've got him started on learning to make pizza from scratch, since that's what I do for them on Fridays anyway.  He can assist me, then take over when I think he's ready.  It'll probably be slightly before he thinks he is.  

Pixie is also a teenager, now.  She's working on learning how to cook from scratch, too.  She can make from-scratch oil biscuits, helps make bread (both in the bread maker and my gluten free bread), cookies, and wacky cakes.  She's still not sure what she wants to do for a job, but that's okay--she's only thirteen.  She's positive, though, that she wants to get married and have a family.  

The kids have four and five more years, respectively, of learning to run their own households, then some more time paying rent in mine* before they'll be moving out.  

Next month is Other Half and my 20th anniversary of marriage; we've been together for longer than that.  

Next February--so, eight months and a bit from now--will mark ten years that I've been on a wheat-free diet.  I routinely test that, hoping that the intolerance will clear up, but...yeah, it really seems like that isn't going to happen.  Last year, I started working on learning to make bread with rice flour.  And then, I started grinding rice for flour, starting with my blender.  Then I got a manual grain mill, and recently, I got an electric one.  I've learned a lot about gluten free baking, mostly in the last two or three months, since flour isn't so very expensive, now.  

Five years from now, we won't be having to save every single penny we possibly can to just be able to pay tuition; at that point, there's a lot I want to do for my house.  Yeah, our tax returns will be less without the child tax credit available...but that has always gone to pay tuition, from the time they started school.  Once it's gone, I won't really miss it because I've never really had it. And while yes, we are planning on donating some to the school to repay them for the years they've given us a tuition break, it won't be on a deprivation level like tuition alone--even the discounted tuition--keeps us on. 

*The rent the kids pay to me will go into a separate savings account, so that they can afford to move out: First and last months' rents, deposits, utilities deposits...it actually costs in the mid four digits for people to be able to move from their parents' home...or from one apartment to another. 

Well. *That* happened.

Monday.  Woke up feeling stiff and achy; day got progressively worse from there.  Doctor's appointment right before picking the kids up from school, got there barely in time to park before Imp was climbing into the back seat.  

Evening went like they always do, and then kids went to bed, and I got a LARGE bourbon.  Because I wasn't going to sleep without help.  The storm hit around the time I went to bed, and hit in earnest about the time I managed to drift off, just before midnight.  

And then the power went out.  And the sirens went off.  We got the kids and pets gathered up and huddled  in the bathroom, listening to a battery-operated transistor radio until the all-clear sounded about half an hour later.

Shuffled the kids back to bed, and Other Half took a flashlight and went out to see if anything had damaged the roof, as best he could.  Still no power--all of the local lights were out.  We could tell we'd lost some limbs from the trees, but not how many.  

Went back to bed, and slept for the rest of the night, until the alarm on the cell phone went off.  

Still no power.  But we had light--the sun was starting to come up.  The driveway had a limb across right behind the cars, and there were limbs laying on the roof.  And on the fence into the dog's yard.  And...yeah.  

Other Half got a text that there would be a delayed start for the kids' school day, and let me know.  Then he headed to work.  I waited, then took the kids to try to get them to school...and the road was blocked.  "Road closed."  And I could see why (both for the road block, and for the lack of power to the area): there were no poles left standing as far as I could see down the north side of the road.  

Turns out, that storm?  The sirens?  Was an F1 tornado.  It went through between the little side road that connects our street to the next big east-west artery through town.  Lots of trees down along that little road, too.  Went down it, around the next street, then up the north-south back street that the college backs onto.  

...and there was a road closed sign preventing a left turn.  No way to get the kids to school.  Dog was out of food, so we went to Walmart to grab a bag.  Went home.  

School closed, Imp's band concert postponed.  Road--and school--stayed closed through Wednesday.  Power came back about lunch time on Wednesday, or maybe a little before.*  Still no internet.  Cable co-ax had been taken out with the power lines. But the power was back, and the city had semi-opened up the road around the school, so...the kids went back yesterday.  Internet came back yesterday right before I had to go get them.  

I'm glad I'd left five minutes early--the city'd closed the street between us and the school again, and I had to go the long way 'round.  

So, yesterday and today have been spent scrambling to get caught up on what I didn't get done Tuesday (dishes and some housework) and yesterday (the admin stuff for the household that requires internet access...and the admin stuff for writing that also requires internet access). 

Since May started, I'd estimate we've probably had about four or five inches of rain, going by the standing water in the low spots in the yard, where the saturated soil just couldn't take anymore.  We're supposed to get some dry time...but not much.  It's supposed to start back up Sunday night.  

Missouri in severe weather season.  Fun times.  Be sure your radios have batteries, your cell phones are charged, and your generators (should you have them) are ready to go. 

*Wednesday afternoon, there was another nasty storm system move through; however, the tornadoes that one spawned were south of us. The kids, pets, and I still spent a good chunk of the afternoon huddled in the innermost room without windows, thankful it was a bathroom not a closet. 

Musings: On complications

So, last week in our discussion on charity and the direction the church should be taking, we discussed how complicated charity actually is.  

Better, it was acknowledged that there were different types, different levels to charity work.  And that it was really difficult to figure out in the moment which type of help was needed.  

The lesson broke it down into three levels: relief, rehabilitation, and development.  

In short, relief is what you do to get someone through the initial crisis, the rehabilititation gets them back on their feet, and development helps them move forward. To further clarify, we used a huge example that we were all familiar with: the F5 tornado that ate Joplin thirteen years ago in May.  

Relief was the initial response: when one of the two hospitals was picked up off  its foundation and set down three feet to one side, relief was the rednecks rushing in to help evacuate the building before it fell down.  Relief was the sick and wounded transported en mass in the beds of  pickups a few blocks to the other hospital, and room made at the other hospital.  Relief was digging people out of the rubble, digging storm shelters out of the rubble to rescue people that managed to get into them.  Relief was the initial rescue.  

Once that was done, we moved on to rehabilitation: the day after the tornado, there were people walking through, and shifting rubble out of the streets so that vehicles could get through.  Rehabilitation was getting the rubble cleared  out enough to get insurance companies in.  Rehabilitation was getting what was left of people's lives pulled away so that rebuilding could start.  So that people could get back on their feet.  Rehabilitation was Walmart cancelling the remodeling and upgrades on Supercenters statewide to rebuild the one that the tornado destroyed, so that people could get back to work, and pay for what their insurance wouldn't--or rather, couldn't, given the volume--cover.   Rehabilitation was Home Depot putting up a tent in their parking lot, opening for business before Walmart had even gotten their lot cleared, and bringing in the bones of building materials for people to cover broken windows when their houses were otherwise livable.  

After that comes development: some businesses didn't come back.  We built new ones.  Some streets had to be totally torn out and redone.  The mall--left more than half-empty by a few anchor stores going bankrupt years earlier--took in the high school while the city built a new one (in partnership with a local community college and technical school...which turned out to be good for the city, the high school students, and the tech school).  Yes, the city made some really stupid choices, but that's par for the course.  A lot of good was done, too.  

When we turned it from city level to individual...things got a lot more complex.  How do you tell which step you need to be on?  How do you get the person you're trying to help to buy in, to cooperate?  The last two steps are hard, folks.  And yeah, accepting "relief"--handouts--is easy.  And a lot of people won't try to get back up on their feet.  

How do we as a church figure out who wants help up and out of the hole, and who just wants food packages and comforts added to the hole?  It's hard.  

It takes getting to know people.  It takes building a relationship.  Once that step is in place, it's a lot easier to tell who actually needs help, and who wants to coast on no effort expended.  

Relief is easy, because it's in the moment, and it's instant gratification.  Boom--done.  It's as easy and tempting for the helpers just as much as it is for the helped.  Rehabilitation is a lot harder.  It takes more time, it requires a lot of effort from both sides, and progression isn't always linear.  Development is the hardest of all, because the helper has to step away.  And yeah, the person being helped is going to stumble, and probably fall a couple of times.  But it has to be done.  

But first of all, the church has got to get the relationships built.  And that isn't easy, either.

Musings: on charity

Faith.  Hope. Charity.  All are key Christian traits.  

Sure. 

But what is charity?  Is it a meal when someone's hungry, clothing when theirs is thread-bare? Money thrown at the problem?  

If that was all, then we wouldn't need to worry--welfare throws money at the problem all the damn time.  However, it's done nothing but make things worse.  

What is charity, then, if not a handout?  

Say you're walking along, and you find a deep, deep hole, with somebody at the bottom, yelling for help.  How do you help them?  Do you make them comfortable in their hole? Toss down food, water, blankets?  Maybe a pillow or two?  No.  You pull them out.  You get a rope or get a ladder and toss it down to them, help them climb.  

Throwing money at the problem is proving to do nothing but make them content enough to not climb out.  No, not totally content, but content enough that it seems better to stay put than to struggle.  

So, how do we do that?  How can we, as a group, help people?  

The hard truth of the matter is that you can't help some of them.  They don't want help, they want to lay in their hole.  They just want a minimum of comfort while they do.  

As for the rest...it's even harder.  You have to get to know them.  Without knowing who they are, you can't know what they need.  You can't know what they're struggling with that put them in the hole to start with.  You can't help someone who wants help if they're addicts by just pulling them out of the hole--they'll just fall back the second you let go.  And you don't know if that's what put them in the hole if you don't know them.  

Some people that want out of poverty need help with addiction, yes.  Some need help with other things: learning to budget, learning to do some things for themselves to free up some of what income they have, learning to feed themselves--dear God, do you know how expensive it is when you can't cook???  

A lot of us have forgotten that we have to know people to be able to help them.  

Before I was born--hell, before my mother was born--that used to be the responsibility of the church communities.  They'd pitch in and help: they took care of widows, orphans, helped those injured in their work (because almost all the jobs were heavy, dirty, dangerous work)...they knew their people, and knew who needed the hand up, and who needed support through a rough spot with a few months of handouts.  They knew who wanted out, they knew how they fell in the hole to start with...

...and they knew who were just lazy bastards that weren't worth trying to help, because they wanted the minimum for comfort in their holes, not help out.  They'd help their kids, but not them.  

We need to do that again.  We need to build community.  We need to be open, we need to pull people in.  We need to get to know each other.  

Because without that, all we can do is offer handouts and hope for the best.  

That way, though, leads to apples and sandwiches abandoned on street corners.  I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.  

And I'm tired of trying to help and getting my hand slapped for offering because I'm offering help instead of money. 

Musings: on poverty

Other Half and I attended a...well, a class, of sorts...at our church last night.*  The class was the first of a six week series on poverty, charity, and how the church should participate.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting a lot, but it triggered a couple of thought cascades with a couple of the questions. 

First question: What is poverty? 

The answer the group came to was...wrong.  "A persistent, day-to-day lack of resources" isn't  poverty.  That's being broke in a big way.  But it can turn into poverty in a twitch. 

The pastor suggested it was a sense of shame, powerlessness, helplessness, of being invisible.  Again, no.  Those people aren't there yet.  Those feelings of shame?  Poverty isn't that.  

So, what is poverty?  

It's a series of habits and patterns of thought that keep people broke.  People who are broke can slide into true poverty scarily easy: all they have to do is apply for government help. 

Welfare/food stamps are a nasty fucking trap.  Regan was entirely correct when he said the scariest words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."  No.  They aren't.  They're there to remove your agency and your choices.  They're there to take control of your life by miring you into poverty. 

I said poverty was a series of habits and patterns of thought.  And that government "charity" systems force people into those patterns, but I haven't defined what they are.  

First, people get so mired in today that they don't think about tomorrow.  This is something that starts to take shape when someone goes broke.  It's like addiction: all the addict thinks about is where their next hit is going to come from, but the broke person's worried about paying the next bill.  And then...then, they start making choices that look stupid from the outside (and, frankly, are stupid)--"There's money, so I'm going to get this small thing I want."  Dumb, but human.  Broke can't afford wants, but society's trained people to believe they should prioritize wants to be happy.  But that money could have/should have gone on needs only.  Because that couple dollars spent on a soda? That five dropped at Starbucks for a coffee?  Might have been the difference between being able to pay the next bill, or...not.  

This is one of the forks that separate the person that's broke from the person sliding into poverty.  The broke person looks for ways out.  Might start regretting getting that little stupid thing that is already gone.  Will be focused on "up and out." The broke person probably does feel shame. The person about to slide into poverty...sits down in a flood of self pity. And stops feeling shame, and starts feeling entitled to more.  

And...they complain.  They complain about not being able to afford things (news flash: most people can't afford everything they want).  They complain about always being broke.  And they start looking around for how to get money.  Not how to make money, how to get their hands on money.  

Broke isn't lazy; poor is.  Broke isn't characterized by an over-developed sense of entitlement; poor is.  

Broke isn't scared of bettering themselves.  Poor is.  

Because those who become mired in poverty?  The ones complaining about never having enough, never getting what they want?  The ones saying they deserve more?  

They apply for welfare.  And often get it.  

Welfare, as I've said before, is a trap.  A nasty, pernicious trap.  Sure, they hand out money...but only a little bit.  And there are strings and rules attached.  First string: you have to stay poor.  You can't get an income stream going--or they remove the money they give you, and tax the income stream.  And new income streams are rarely sufficient to needs.  And then when taxes are added in...they were getting more via their welfare checks.  Second string: your kids are not allowed to have jobs without getting the household check cut off by the gross amount.  And yes, they track.  I can't swear to it, but I am convinced that this is to make it a generational thing--if the kids don't develop a habit of work, they'll end up on welfare, too.  

Welfare is a root cause of generational poverty.  It alleviates nothing.  It does nothing but teach those mired in it that they're helpless to improve themselves and their lot.  

Broke is often frustrated with their lot, and look for ways out.  Poor believe there is no way out, and refuse to do more than look for ways to be comfortable.  Broke is angry; poor is depressed.

In a couple of days, I'll talk about the other question.

 

*Last summer, the church broke away from the Methodist hierarchy, and hired the guy currently preaching as an interim pastor, partially because he'd been a pastor there before and they knew him, and partially because he's retired. The interim pastor has taught a six-week course last fall, over Nehemiah.  We'd get dinner, and a sort of a college level lecture, every Thursday for the six weeks.  He's doing another over poverty and charity, and what we as a church should be doing that we're not, and maybe what we are doing that we shouldn't.  

Life goes on.

Mom made bread.  Mom made bread often.  Not as often as Grandma used to, but she made a lot of bread.  

I...made a mistake.  The Tuesday after Mom passed, I was going through the motions and I threw ingredients into the bread machine Odysseus got me for my birthday, last year.  No, not gluten free bread.  Regular bread.  

As soon as the house started smelling like bread baking, I started leaking tears and could not stop.  

I didn't make bread last week.  We took that last half loaf from the previous week and turned it into garlic toast to go with the pasta bake I'd made.  And, since that was the day after Mom's service?  If I hadn't had bread on hand, I'd have asked Odysseus to just pick up a loaf.  

Today was pasta day again.  The "start bread" alarm on my laptop went off...

...and this week, I didn't leak tears.  

Not while I was smelling the bread baking, at least.  I still randomly leak tears (I'm sure y'all understand), but that smell of fresh bread didn't trigger it for me, today.

Life does go on.  It took my mom a little while after Grandma passed before she could make bread without bawling.  Guess it was my turn. 

Yesterday

Yesterday was Epiphany.  Liturgically when the Magi found their way to the Christ child. 

Yesterday was when my mother found her way home.  

Friday night, my sister told me that Mom had lost consiousness, and she couldn't wake her, so called the ambulance.  She was taken to their local hospital, and they discovered she'd had a massive brain bleed.  She passed at 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning, never having woke up.  

It was fast, and hopefully painless.  Which was more than I'd hoped for.  

I'm going to miss her so much.