Religious tolerance and Mohammedans

It seems the Swiss citizenry has voted not to allow minarets on mosques. Mosques will have to go unmarked by their traditional emblem of violence, the crescent moon of the scimitar.

The Swiss, who DO live in a country with state recognized and supported churches and do practice toleration of non-recognized churches and their adherents, are largely Christian, with 88% reporting that they are Christians of some flavor. Apparently the citizenry there recognizes the swelling Mohammedan population as a distinct threat to their religious freedom and their social values.

However, the really droll part of this is the remarks being made about the Swiss by various Mohammedans.

"The Swiss have failed to give a clear signal for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights," said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was "grief and deep disappointment."

Mr. Al-Rawi is Iraqi - Iraq being a country where members of the Christian and Jewish faiths have been persecuted diligently for centuries. Where women are and historically have been, treated as legal inferiors of men. Let's talk about diversity, Mr. Al-Rawi, shall we?

"It's a sad day for freedom of religion," said Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organization. "A constitutional amendment that's targeted towards one religious community is discriminatory and abhorrent."

Mr. Shafiq is a Briton, born to Pakistani parents. Pakistan - that beacon of religious toleration, where Sharia is the law and where waves of anti-Christian pogroms and violence have swept the country repeatedly since 1971.

For a Mohammedan to complain of lack of religious toleration is as silly as hearing a Daley of Chicago complain about political corruption or hearing Hugh Hefner complain about a lack of chastity in the community.

Bravo for the Swiss. They've got more sense and more courage than most of Europe.

Sheepish

Last week at the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market, Charlie and I were quite tickled to see Karen Fincannon and her sheep. Well, Charlie is always delighted to see anyone who will scratch his ears and tell him he's a handsome boy - which is nearly everyone.



Anyway, Karen www.karenfincannon.com had a fresh crop of sheep and a new flock of chickens.




Ms. P suspects a few will become presents for friends this year. Karen's work is charming and a good part of the charm is that every one of her animals has a face that is very much its own and not a carbon copy of the next sheep or chicken.

Falling into Autumn

Although we had an early first frost, autumn has been a bit on the slow side. We've had a few warm days, but mostly, the weather has been normally cool. A couple of frosty mornings, with rime on the car windows, but not yet a blast of bitter cold. So the leaves have mellowed slowly, at least up until Sunday morning. Saturday, this is a tree that struck me speechless as we rounded a turn on the way to The House At The Top of The Hill.



And then there was this beauty on the grounds of the condo complex:



Sadly, Saturday was the only pretty day. By dawn's sullen light on Sunday, the sky was pewter and blasting down a cold, bitter rain. When Ms. P came in with Charlie from his morning walk, and the poor little devil was soaked and shivering so that we threw him in the tub and sluiced him down with warm water before popping him into his crate with a clean towel.

Weather like that was, however, ideal for Ms. Packratty's major projects - sorting through junk and making soup.

There are 2 soups Ms. Packratty loves to make and feels she makes well - one is leek and potato soup (with bacon) and the other is ham and bean soup. There's only one trouble with ham and bean soup. You need a ham bone to make it. And generally, the only way to get a hambone is from a ham. That means eating the ham. Which is simply not a practical matter for Ms. Packratty who most of the time is cooking for one. So she was delighted to discover mention that HoneyBaked Ham stores that have attached cafes use their own hams to make sandwiches and then sell the resulting bone. So a week ago, while erranding, Ms. P nipped into the Sandy Springs HoneyBaked and purchased 2, depositing one at Marleen's house.

Well, such a deal. The bones cost $5 and they were hardly mere bones. Ms. Packratty sliced off ham sufficient for 2 sandwiches, a large batch of ham salad, breakfast for 2 and then tossed the bone in with 2 large packages of assorted beans (having found some bagged beans that included the beloved chickpea)and put them in the nice Calphalon pot with the dome lid and put it on the very lowest of simmers. There were also a couple of onions and a few other oddments tossed in, but other than that, all it got was a long slow cook. Sunday dinner and Monday lunch came from the pot and there are now about 12 serving either in the Packratty freezer or waiting to go to Mar's downstairs freezer. Total cost for about 18 servings of good soup? $8. Ms. Packratty is also very pleased with the inexpensive set of food storage items purchased at Ikea, although she figures she will toss at least 2/3 of the teeny-tiny containers and their lids. Typically, she does not need to store 4 tablespoons of anything and anticipates that keeping track of the teeny tiny containers and their lids will be an exercise in futility and a waste of space. At $5 the set, Ms. P can afford to keep only the sizes that please her and toss or give away the rest. The tiny containers would indeed be ideal for someone with a baby to feed, but that is not the case at Chez P.
Deciding that it is OK to toss items that she will not use and which will just take up space and be annoying is a big step for the Packrat. Formerly, she would have felt compelled since they were new and MIGHT be useful SOMEDAY to try to hang on to them. Not anymore. She might keep 2, but not 6. And the set is still a bargain even with the discards.

Ms. P also tracked down a pair of pinking shears and stuck them in the laundry where she has already used them to turn several t shirts and a nightgown that were too holey to wear into cleaning rags. Putting the scissors in the sewing basket might make more sense for most folks, but for Ms. P, having them at immediate hand when she decides to render something into rags is far more likely to be sure it happens. Sometimes you have to work with your quirks instead of trying to iron them all out.

Veteran's Day

Thinking about tomorrow - Veteran’s Day - I started remembering the July 4th and Veteran's Day parades of my childhood.

When I was a very little girl, perhaps 4 years old, there were plenty of World War I veterans. By and large, they were men in the late prime of their lives – a few years older than my grandfather, who came of age just as the war ended. Men who had fought and returned and worked through the Great Depression. Of course, to a child, they were elderly, but now I realize they were just men in their 60s, by and large. They were sturdy men, most of them, having survived the rigors of war and then the Depression.

I think I even remember having a few superannuated veterans of the Spanish-American War pointed out to me.

The ranks of the WWII veterans were immense – these were men and women just a few years older than my parents.

By the time I was a teenager, the Spanish-American War veterans were gone and the WWI veterans were showing their age – by 1970, most of them were in their mid 70s or older, but they’d still straighten their uniform caps with age-gnarled hands and
march. In turn, the WWII veterans were starting to grizzle – lines and gray making their presence known. And a new bunch of veterans – the Korean War vintage – had joined the parade.

By my 20s and 30s, it became rarer and rarer to see the occasional WWI veteran – by now, they were withered men, propped up in wheelchairs or tucked into a convertible, waving feebly or simply staring basilisk through thick glasses. Now, out of the millions who served in the military during WWI, there is only one former Doughboy left in the US and no actual combat veterans. In Britain, there’s not a Tommy left from WWI, but one sole naval veteran, now living in Australia, survives. He would, therefore, be the last combat veteran alive from that war.

Now it is the turn of the WWII veterans – their ranks thinning by the day. My high school principal was a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge and dozens of the officers just a bit older than my father had fought across Europe and the Pacific. Grey Wyman, who flew bombing raids across eastern Europe, night after night. His brother, Austin, a pilot lost on a mission he never came home from. Oscar “Ozzie” Duttweiler, fought his way up the spine of Italy with the 10th Mountain Division and
later married Valeria Fulvio. They were heroes, but everyday heroes. One of the unique aspects of growing up as a military brat is that you grow up surrounded by quiet, everyday heroes. Our WWII vets are in their 80s and 90s. Many, like Grey and
Ozzie, have died and left memories in their place.

Honor them tomorrow and remember that in a very few years, they too will have shuffled off this mortal coil. And pray for us that we have other generations as brave and disciplined as they to follow.

I have a little list, they never will be missed ...

Add this mook to the top of it. Someone with a Barrett and good aim needs to deal him out of the game.

WASHINGTON – The personal Web site for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero.

The posting Monday on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Anwar said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."

And I'm thinking that mosque in Virginia would look sooooooo much better after a bulldozer treatment - preferably with all the devout gathered inside, if this is an example.

And, yes, I *am* a bigot. I despise Mohammedans and their degenerate, violent and woman-abusing creed.

Damn Political Correctness and "commitment to tolerance"

That commitment to tolerance just got people killed and it will get more killed in the future.

This paragraph from the Associated Press says it all:
Dr. Val Finnell, a classmate of Hasan's at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, attended a master's in public health program in 2007-2008. Finnell says he got to know Hasan because the group of public health students took an environmental health class together. At the end of the class, everyone had to give a presentation. Classmates wrote on topics such as dry cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, but Finnell said Hasan chose the war against terror. Finnell described Hasan as a "vociferous opponent" of the terror war. Finnell said Hasan told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second."

Did you read that? A Muslim first and an American second? Uttered by someone in the US military to OTHER members of the military in a US military educational institution and he wasn't summarily bounced out of that medical school and sent off to Alaska to break rocks for 10 years? And his classmates who heard this didn't report it? Or has the military become so "tolerant" that it too has abandoned common sense?

Fort Hood - another consequence of political correctness

Can we please just make all the Mohammedans into martyrs? All of them. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that we can't trust them as part of our society and institutions.

They need to hang this Nidal Malik Hasan. For murder and treason. For violating his oath and betraying his citizenship. And while we're at it - the family who raised this serpent whom we have sheltered? Deport them. The penalty for any immigrant's child taking arms against this country should be the explusion of the clan, entire. Root and branch.

And to hell with the idiots on the tube calling him the "alleged shooter".

Atlanta Bizarre

Last week, while checking out the future relocation site of one of Ms. Packratty's favorite restaurants, she was flabbergasted to see this at the intersection of Buford Highway and Clairmont Road.

Ms. P reminds any readers that Atlanta is a good 5 hours from the ocean and notes that this "vehicle" appears to have wheels - not just be trailered.

One wonders. Deeply.








The restaurant in question is a planned reincarnation of the beloved and massively shabby Havana that formerly occupied a bright yellow/green building on the lower end of Buford Highway. Since junior high in Tampa, Ms. P has retained a great fondness for Cuban food and when the Havana burned down last year, and the owners announced they were not rebuilding, she was sad. Other allegedly Cuban restaurants have been found lacking and it was a joyful day for Ms. P when she checked The Blissful Glutton and discovered that the Havana was to be reborn.