JERKWATER TRAIN

On Mother’s Day May 10 th , 2020, my beloved mother died after a short battle with ovarian cancer. She was 77 years old. She had 38 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; and she’s survived by 36. She died at home surrounded by most of her children, grand-children, and daughters-in-law. The room was so packed with her loving family. It was her wish to die, quickly, at home surrounded by her children and lots of prayers. And for that we are grateful. She was graceful and died with peace and love in her heart. Our hearts are full of sadness and our tears are still wet, but we are joyful that she didn’t suffer for too long. Her final hours on this earth were graced with calm, love, and prayer that sealed her well-lived and eventful life. This is part of her story. Amina Khelah, my sweet mother, was born in Yafa, Palestine in 1943. She was five years old when she and her family were displaced as a result of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. She became an internal refugee and s...

Her voice strikes me as a rainbow of complex emotions, sad and yearning yet hopeful and reassuring. ... Thanks.

Trurh matters, for without it we have nothing.

 I believe in the inherent dignity of every human being. I believe in freedom of expression and freedom of worship. I believe in human rights and equal rights for everyone: women, ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, LGBT, and the disabled. I believe BLACK LIVES MATTER. And I defend the constitution and the separation between church and state. The America I know and love is good, compassionate, tolerant, and fair. And that is one vision.

We are here to heal, not harm. We are here to love, not hate. We are here to create, not destroy. God is love, not hate.

My friends are whites and blacks. I am not color blind. They're mostly uppermiddle class. They are wealthy in material and in spirit. They embody the Midwestern values: down to earth and ready to lend a hand. They don't complain about paying taxes. They don't complain about Obamacare, though they don't benefit much from it. They don't judge others. They don't single people out based on trifles. They're not selfish. They're Atheists and Christians and Unitarians and straight and gay. The men I know respect women (a prerequisite to hang out with me). But what binds them all is their belief in the principal of human solidarity and the inherent dignity of everyone and the American values. I tip my hat. And am lucky to be in their company. The political waters are choppy and turbulent, but I still believe we are that shining city on a hill. Don't ever lose hope, and don't dim the lights of our beloved village. America.

We must unite as ONE human race. Our DNA is 99.9% the same. We must evolve to save ourselves on this tiny blue dot. We are so alone in this enormous universe. I want to think that there are more of us who want this than don't. We must not allow those powerful political and religious forces to tear us apart.

Never in the history of humankind when society rejected science and reason that things had gotten any better. Tell me.

I try to stay apolitical on here. But ... It's a grave error, rather bigotry itself, to label every person who voted for Trump a racist, a hater, or a bigot. This is the same country that voted twice for Obama. Democracy is about political dialogue and meaningful discourse. But when that discourse makes some people feel unsafe, then I believe all fair-minded people should reach out to their fellow humans.

"Truth speaks not to those perverse beings:--her voice can only be heard by generous souls accustomed to reflection, whose sensibilities make them lament the numberless calamities showered on the earth by political and religious tyranny--whose enlightened minds contemplate with horror the immensity, the ponderosity of that series of misfortunes which error has in all ages overwhelmed mankind. To error must be attributed those insupportable chains which tyrants, which priests have forged for most nations. To error must be equally attributed that abject slavery into which the people of almost every country have fallen. Nature designed they should pursue their happiness and by the most perfect freedom.--To error must be attributed those religious terrors which, almost every climate, have either petrified man with fear, or caused him to destroy himself for coarse or fanciful beings.  To error must be attributed those  inveterate hatreds, those barbarous persecutions, those num...

There is legal justice and there is moral justice, and killing police officers is neither. Man needs to respect man. Police present in the park. Charge or no charge, respect is a must between EP man and police. Expose those who do harm to people in park. Witnesses or no witness, do the right thing. Eden prairie news is free and available at starring lake park to read, and I don't care for that paper. Goodbye.

"Religious faith should stop being considered a virtue. I define blind faith as choosing to believe in something absolutely, without doubt or openness to change, and without proper scientific evidence – i.e. wishful thinking. Though blind faith in itself need not be religiously affiliated, this type of irrational thinking is very common in religious institutions and almost unanimously supported by them. So I will use the terms religious faith, blind faith, and blind religious faith interchangeably. Religious faith is not a trait to be considered worthy of praise because it blinds those who carry it to live a life that is less responsive to changes. It is unopen to seeing mistakes in its own ways of thinking in order to find new and better ways of living. It is a fundamentally dishonest trait as it does not seek to reconcile belief with reality, and there are consequences to this. It is comparable to driving a car and only being able to see out of the front windshield. Though ...

"Fundamentalism presents real dangers to the lives and liberties of all Americans. It is not merely an acdamic problem or a problem for people who find fundamentalism a little strange or irrational. At risk are women, children, fair elections, society as a whole, the rights of Americans to reproductive choices, their freedom to choose sexual partners, freedom of religion, the freedom for all kinds of dissent, and their rights to privacy and to die with dignity." --The Fundamentals of Extremism.

"A mob of 10,000 whites took Sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl's uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man's innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind, most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called "Judge Lynch.") Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from brutality as we'd like to believe." Life. 100 photographs

This morning my wife cracked an egg, and to her surprise, there was no yolk.  Being a woman with good judgement, she tossed it. Have you ever seen that? (not the woman-with-good-judgment part, the egg am talking about) ... And what are the chances of that? I am curious. The chances of an egg with double yolks are 1 in 1000. So I googled around and found a few entries:  Eggs without yolk are called "dwarf" or "wind" eggs. Such an egg is most often a pullet's first effort, produced before her laying mechanism is fully ready. In a mature hen, a wind egg is unlikely, but can occur if a bit of reproductive tissue breaks away, stimulating the egg-producing glands to treat it as a yolk and wrap it in albumen, "membranes and a shell as it travels through the egg tube. This has occurred if, instead of a yolk, the egg contains a small particle of grayish tissue. This type of egg occurs in many varieties of fowl, including chickens (both standard and bantams), guinea...

A glorious spring day here in the heartland, and you know you made it through another long, dark, and harsh winter. The birds are chirping, and have returned after a long, arduous journey to assure us that the circle of life continues. Whatever your cares are, Nature seems to suggest, they shall pass and everything will be OK.

Music is the most beautiful thing humans ever created. Music transcends all divisions and heals the soul and uplifts us all. It has the power to connect us in the most tender and loving way. What beauty. Zachary Khalil Khelah good EP man!

Propaganda is not an exclusive property of the conservative right, but also the liberal left. Well, you know I am not impressed by the human specie.

Jihad means to wage ware against the infidels in the name of Allah. This is based on the Quran, the teachings of Muhammad and conduct and conquests, and ample history. In fact, according to the salafi school of thought, which is ubiquitous thanks to the petrodollars, it's the sixth pillar of Islam. This is not an opinion, but a fact. Euphemism will not help liberal and decent Muslims against the fanatics, but honesty might. Islamic scholarship at the highest level need to delete jihad from the books. Will they ever? No that optimistic ... The elephant is in the room. When most Muslims view the Quran as human literature about the divine, and NOT divine literature about humans, and therefore should be subjected to scrutiny and careful critique like any human literature, then we won't be having this conversation. Jihad is EVIL! Must stop.

Waldo writes on Fate "And though nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a " Declaration of Independence," or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act ..." Trump or Hillary, Sanders or Cruz, like it or not, are us in the mirror. Trump is a symptom of our sick society, riding high on anger and disappointments and illusions, however misplaced.