Moments

An acquaintance of mine told me, "When we look back at life, we won't remember people, we'll remember moments. Moments make up life."

The moment I keep coming back to, the one I want to rewind time for, relive and savor over and over  was when I sang and took a stage bow with someone I love very much.  Doing what I love with someone I love, feeling both grounded and soaring so high, more than ever before. I thought to myself right then: "A moment like this is worth a life at the Met." It was the best moment of my life.

The Dark Horse (The Tower Journal, Spring 2013)

See the dark horse stand tall

Against the plain, unsuspecting horizon;

See its strange and singular beauty,

A silhouette it knows it cannot hide.

This is the dark horse that will start to buck

Just when you were sure you broke it,

Right after you’d been sitting pretty—

Cool, calm, and high--

On its back for the longest time!

The dark horse that will come up

From way, way behind—Surprise!

And run on by, with determined mind,

To the head of the line!

Because just as sometimes

You have to almost die in order to survive,

Sometimes you have to see yourself

Totally lose and be left behind

Before you have the fight to win                                                                                        

This is the dark horse you’ll never

Be able to predict, bewitch, or own—

Because its soul is totally in control;

This horse is me—this horse is many.

Intimate Confidantes on Linkedin

I saw a woman on Linkedin whose profile listed her profession as "Intimate Confidante," and displayed a  photo of herself with a very seductive expression and her wild mane of red hair streaming all around her as if blown by a photographer's fan, lol.  "Intimate Confidante" sounds like a grandiloquent way of saying  being a prostitute or call girl, a job type which is now plentiful on Linkedin. In these modern, amoral times, old professions like hooker, thief, etc., are now respected professions.

The world just gets dumber and sicker every second.

Women in Combat

Most women cannot even open a new, sealed jelly jar without assistance, so what are women doing in combat? Recently, national news reported that most female US Marines cannot do the minimum 3 chin ups, even without their equipment back packs on; failing to have the strength to do a chin up represents failing to pull yourself or your comrades out of a ditch or ravine. Women are lowering crucial combat effectiveness. In hand to hand combat, or any extended ground combat, the army with fewer women or no women will be the one that wins.

While it may be true that some women have excelled in flying fighter planes, this feat requires mainly hand eye coordination skills that differ vastly from the brute strength,  physical stamina and endurance needed for infantry ground combat. In addition, women in every branch of the US Military have been subjected to cowardly sexual assaults by their own fellow American soldiers, even in peace time. If their own comrades are so unadvanced as a human species as to sexually violate them for kicks and fun, what will the enemy male soldiers do to these female soldiers when they fall behind enemy lines?  We have already seen in the news how Indian and Middle Eastern men frequently rape women with such force--often employing foreign objects in the violations-- that the victim women die or become comatose. Soldiers from these geographic areas will be no less gentle to female soldiers in captivity.

To wit, in addition to lowering the combat strength of their fellow troops, women in the military can   trust neither their own comrades nor the enemy not to violate them sexually, often with the very real consequences  of fatal injuries. Women's presence in the military is a mistake, as they frequently incur serious injuries to their body, psyche, and combat morale via being  raped, as well as causing a deleterious effect on combat readiness by nature of their inferior physical strength. No one wins by having women in the armed forces:  it is a lose/lose situation.

Myself at my wedding, offering the Eucharistic wine; my family at wedding/reception

                                                        My mother bustling my dress

                                        Offering Communion wine to my Aunt Nancy

                                                          Talking to my Grandmom

                                           My maternal Grandmom Anne and Aunt Nancy

"Ist dies etwa der Tod?" ( translated: Is this perhaps death?)

This is the last line of Im Abendrot, (at sunset), the fourth of  Richard Strauss'  Vier Letzte Lieder, or Four Last Songs. It is also a good metaphor for what I see happening around me.

My Scots-Irish ancestors arrived in the US in 1847,and my German family arrived in 1852, yet I am no longer proud of being American . America is run by Satanists. God strengthen anyone who opposes Satan.  I feel something like what Jesus felt, with everyone disowning  me.

Stille (www.loomofdreams.com)

Gänse schwimmen nach.

Winter-Wasser klarste blau.

Heilige Stille.

(translation)

Geese are swimming by.
Winter water clearest blue.
In sacred stillness.

by Catharine Otto