People are both legitimately interested in and giggling about a recent health story regarding potential health benefits of masturbation. Studies indicate that prostate cancer risk may be reduced if one masturbates.
I need to address this question, for both the legitimately concerned and the gigglers, as part of proper spiritual formation, since Catholic teaching prohibits masturbation.
The Bible prohibits it in the form of forbidding of the spilling of seed. So the Bible is not commenting about sexual postures or actions, but it is the wasting of seed that is the issue, by engaging in a sex act that is closed to life. Remember that God is instructing people to not engage in sex acts that result in a closure to life, and are separate from the human component of a committed couple. This is why God prohibits the "spilling of seed," and not because wanking is a "bad" position or act per se. If so he would have also stated that women should not masturbate.
As I've repeatedly taught, you need to understand God's context. God's context is always biased in favor of life, and always prohibiting actions that will take the human family, both as a species and as individuals, to spiritual and literal dead ends.
When the Bible was written God was speaking to people who, like animals, had sex that was not separated from the procreation of children AND had society that enforced that anyone who wanted to be married, which was virtually everyone, they would be matched and married. (This is one reason there was polygamy, so that no woman would lack a husband and provider even if war or disease had depleted the male population). Therefore, there was no such thing as "pleasurable" or "recreational" sex. You did not have sex until you were married, and then you were encouraged to have a lot of sex and bear many children. This is the way that is most positive for life, and for the continuation of the human species as a whole, and also the family as the center of life and spirituality.
"Spilling of seed" would have been viewed as a man who shirked being married. It's not the masturbation per se that is the problem (like I said, God would have said so if it were, and made clear that it would apply to women too). Notice that he does not. God, by prohibiting male masturbation was prohibiting gratification by a man outside of his marital family context.
Nowadays we are in a society that has shattered families, and mocked those who are without families, and without love. Obviously the Catholic Church is correct to continue to uphold God's word in all matters. Likewise, though, one can have charity in understanding that we no longer live in the Biblical society where men and women were virtually guaranteed a marriage, where loneliness and lack of sex would not be an issue. So anyone who is prideful on the subject of masturbation nowadays is sneering up the wrong tree, and show their lack of understanding of what God taught, which was plain as dirt obvious to his chosen people. God never prohibited female masturbation, and he specifically addressed the issue of the spilling of seed to men and their duties. In fact, because human women do not have yearly or only a few times of years estrous cycles, like the animals, masturbation for women, and for men, would not be a problem if this is done in the actual act of married coupling in order to achieve the fullness of the act. In other words, the seed is not "spilled," but it is directed properly in the spousal relationship. Men are not to develop a lifestyle where that is considered the norm, either alone or outside of the marital relationship. God is micromanaging the "yes" or the "no" to the married open to life relationship, not micromanaging where the hands are placed and what they are doing, so long as it is heterosexual sex in a married couple open to life family plan.
So to wrap up, the Catholic Church is correct to continue to heed all of God's instructions, which are eternal and not "updated" as society mores change. But likewise the faithful must use some individual consciousness, charity, and common sense about what God intends in his direction. The Catholic Church is not mind control; it is quality control. It maintains the instructions of God, but also has a mechanism for achieving a fuller understanding. The Catholic Church keeps its priorities correct, which is the Ten Commandments and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It does not want people to point and shout "wanker" to each other, when they don't even understand the pro-life and societal grounding of the culture of the Old Testament in the first place. I mean, use your brains please. God did not take Moses aside and say, "Oh, by the way, centuries from now humans will be so sinful that they will destroy the sanctity of life, the structure and heart of the family, and there will be lonely unmarried people, so write an appendix 'To be opened in the 1900's: it's OK to wank off if you are now trapped in a society where you cannot get a spouse.'" Sheesh.
I hope this helps.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Another personal story of being stalked by cults
Over a period of several years, back in the mid-1990’s, I wrote a fantasy trilogy book of over 1000 pages, just for my own outlet and for a handful of friends and colleagues to read. It was years later that I found that the cultists who had been stalking and harassing me had not only read these private writings without permission but worse, applied theological weight to what I wrote! I cannot tell you the damage that has been done as a result. The damage is unbelievable, severe, persistent, and has a very high cost of “missed opportunity” as people “barked up the wrong tree” as a result.
I’m mentioning this not because I want to wring my hands again over what has been done. I was reminded of it after watching the Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium, and my great pride in my faith. I mention it because it’s another good example of my latest series of blog posts, which is about how to have clarity of analytical thought and reasoning in a society that, to its dire peril, no longer teaches or values such a mindset.
Here is the example from my book. I wanted to write something strictly fantasy, but reflective of many of my secular concerns (child abuse, misuse of power, abuse of occult powers, unrequited love). Notice I said SECULAR concerns; I said nothing about wanting to write a fantasy book dealing with theology. I open the book with the protagonist, a woman, who has two friends, a man and a woman (who have a developing romantic relationship). In describing the man, who I called Daffyd (Welsh for David), I wrote that he had “lost his faith, and no one knew why.” I never again mention faith in the entire book! I describe a world that has magic and realms occupied by “lesser gods” and “goddesses.” But I never once mention an organization for religion, I never described any activity or location of worship or ritual, and I never describe even through the use of casual words any description of this fantasy world’s faith. Instead the action centers around malevolent lesser gods who seek to enter the regular physical world of earth in order to, basically, act out. They have specialized vices: the woman is depraved sexually, one man is evil through vanity, and the other is evil through thug power mentality. In fact, anyone with a Welsh dictionary could identify what qualities I was assigning to them, as I named them Welsh equivalents "strange" (Ystranc) of the lesser god also called “Peacock” (for the vanity) and “thug” for the thug. The woman I called Lili as a deliberate flip side of the Easter Lily and by implication, the virginity and purity of both Jesus and Mary. I spell it different to show that the depraved goddess represents human woman’s vice, while they still think they are erotic and “good.” Lili committed the most depraved acts (even the male “lesser gods” hated her) yet if MSNBC had been around to interview her she would have painted herself as some sort of love goddess.
The magic powers and the "lesser gods and goddesses" were not a theological structure for this fantasy world that I wrote about, and if I had ever adapted this for the “public,” I would have made it perfectly clear. In fact, one place I got the idea for the names of these evil/good qualities of "gods and goddesses" was from the classic movie "Children of a Lesser God." "Children of a Lesser God" used the word "god," but was about deafness. It had nothing to do with religions. Any moron can watch that movie and not miss the fact that the use of the word "Lesser God" in the title is philosophical (referring to a birth that is slighted in some way, due to the disability of deafness), not a theological statement. So I got the idea to call these good/evil qualities in humans "lesser gods."
The magic powers and the lesser gods and goddesses, and the creation mythologies that went with them, represented two things. One was a world where much of the physics of the world was based on magic. It would be, then, a pure science activity to study magic, not theological. This was how I structured the school that the protagonist ran: it was a “science” type of school, not in the least a theological school. The second thing the magic powers and lesser gods represented was the higher and lower qualities of humans that were of great concern to me in the mid 1990’s. And sure enough, child rapists and sexual depravity and slavery abound now in the 2000’s, just as I warned against and feared. Never once did any of my buddy readers ask about the actual religiosity and theology of the book. Not ONCE. Not even the egomaniac asshole that I learned Jungian analysis from (who I found out believes in reincarnation AND thought that OJ Simpson was found not guilty “because of the karma of all the unjust things blacks had happen to them in the past.”) Not even this genius of time and space once asked me, despite reading the book cover to cover, “What exactly is their religion?” I would have replied, “I’ve not said. “ The book was an outlet for me during the time of my maximum worry, and emotional anguish, about how the world has gone so very deadly wrong. A FICTIONAL OUTLET FOR A HANDFUL OF FRIENDS. Not the “New Age Psychotic Egomaniac’s BYBLE.”
So, fans of reason and faith, if the stalkers had actually wanted to understand my book, what should they have done? Yes, that’s right, they should have asked that question. “Hey, author, you mentioned that Dafydd ‘lost his faith and no one knew why.’ Yet he partook in the events that happened in the book. What exactly WAS his faith that he lost?” Gosh, what a good question that would have been. I could then have explained to people that this was, as I had repeatedly told them, an outlet for me about some deep concerns that I had. For example, I reference my concern about numerology. One of the gods (the thug) is arranging for people to kill each other to reach a certain quantity of number that would disrupt the boundaries between the realms. This was one of my earliest warnings about “counting down to Armageddon.” And sure enough, what do we have? Evil loony psychotic cultists, both pagans and “Christians” who try to count and enumerate events in order to actual hasten the “Final Days.” Imagine my horror when I found out years later that unethical psychos have been reading this book, mining it for “theology.” God forgive them, and may God help me to find ways to repair the damage that they have wrought. (By the way “God forgive them” is a charitable statement, not the issuing of any sort of forgiveness or open ended blessing on my behalf, since no one has yet even admitted to doing this, say nothing of apologizing for ruining my life and that of many others).
By the way, apparently the assholes figured out that I am still a practicing Catholic in the late 1990’s, when I stopped into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to pray, during a time when I had been under incredible spiritual (and physical) attack by these people for years and years. You’d think that this would have prompted some questions and rectification, but it actually seemed to have made things worse, since they still believed in that blasphemy of occult and New Age “reincarnation.”
I’m mentioning this not because I want to wring my hands again over what has been done. I was reminded of it after watching the Papal Mass at Yankee Stadium, and my great pride in my faith. I mention it because it’s another good example of my latest series of blog posts, which is about how to have clarity of analytical thought and reasoning in a society that, to its dire peril, no longer teaches or values such a mindset.
Here is the example from my book. I wanted to write something strictly fantasy, but reflective of many of my secular concerns (child abuse, misuse of power, abuse of occult powers, unrequited love). Notice I said SECULAR concerns; I said nothing about wanting to write a fantasy book dealing with theology. I open the book with the protagonist, a woman, who has two friends, a man and a woman (who have a developing romantic relationship). In describing the man, who I called Daffyd (Welsh for David), I wrote that he had “lost his faith, and no one knew why.” I never again mention faith in the entire book! I describe a world that has magic and realms occupied by “lesser gods” and “goddesses.” But I never once mention an organization for religion, I never described any activity or location of worship or ritual, and I never describe even through the use of casual words any description of this fantasy world’s faith. Instead the action centers around malevolent lesser gods who seek to enter the regular physical world of earth in order to, basically, act out. They have specialized vices: the woman is depraved sexually, one man is evil through vanity, and the other is evil through thug power mentality. In fact, anyone with a Welsh dictionary could identify what qualities I was assigning to them, as I named them Welsh equivalents "strange" (Ystranc) of the lesser god also called “Peacock” (for the vanity) and “thug” for the thug. The woman I called Lili as a deliberate flip side of the Easter Lily and by implication, the virginity and purity of both Jesus and Mary. I spell it different to show that the depraved goddess represents human woman’s vice, while they still think they are erotic and “good.” Lili committed the most depraved acts (even the male “lesser gods” hated her) yet if MSNBC had been around to interview her she would have painted herself as some sort of love goddess.
The magic powers and the "lesser gods and goddesses" were not a theological structure for this fantasy world that I wrote about, and if I had ever adapted this for the “public,” I would have made it perfectly clear. In fact, one place I got the idea for the names of these evil/good qualities of "gods and goddesses" was from the classic movie "Children of a Lesser God." "Children of a Lesser God" used the word "god," but was about deafness. It had nothing to do with religions. Any moron can watch that movie and not miss the fact that the use of the word "Lesser God" in the title is philosophical (referring to a birth that is slighted in some way, due to the disability of deafness), not a theological statement. So I got the idea to call these good/evil qualities in humans "lesser gods."
The magic powers and the lesser gods and goddesses, and the creation mythologies that went with them, represented two things. One was a world where much of the physics of the world was based on magic. It would be, then, a pure science activity to study magic, not theological. This was how I structured the school that the protagonist ran: it was a “science” type of school, not in the least a theological school. The second thing the magic powers and lesser gods represented was the higher and lower qualities of humans that were of great concern to me in the mid 1990’s. And sure enough, child rapists and sexual depravity and slavery abound now in the 2000’s, just as I warned against and feared. Never once did any of my buddy readers ask about the actual religiosity and theology of the book. Not ONCE. Not even the egomaniac asshole that I learned Jungian analysis from (who I found out believes in reincarnation AND thought that OJ Simpson was found not guilty “because of the karma of all the unjust things blacks had happen to them in the past.”) Not even this genius of time and space once asked me, despite reading the book cover to cover, “What exactly is their religion?” I would have replied, “I’ve not said. “ The book was an outlet for me during the time of my maximum worry, and emotional anguish, about how the world has gone so very deadly wrong. A FICTIONAL OUTLET FOR A HANDFUL OF FRIENDS. Not the “New Age Psychotic Egomaniac’s BYBLE.”
So, fans of reason and faith, if the stalkers had actually wanted to understand my book, what should they have done? Yes, that’s right, they should have asked that question. “Hey, author, you mentioned that Dafydd ‘lost his faith and no one knew why.’ Yet he partook in the events that happened in the book. What exactly WAS his faith that he lost?” Gosh, what a good question that would have been. I could then have explained to people that this was, as I had repeatedly told them, an outlet for me about some deep concerns that I had. For example, I reference my concern about numerology. One of the gods (the thug) is arranging for people to kill each other to reach a certain quantity of number that would disrupt the boundaries between the realms. This was one of my earliest warnings about “counting down to Armageddon.” And sure enough, what do we have? Evil loony psychotic cultists, both pagans and “Christians” who try to count and enumerate events in order to actual hasten the “Final Days.” Imagine my horror when I found out years later that unethical psychos have been reading this book, mining it for “theology.” God forgive them, and may God help me to find ways to repair the damage that they have wrought. (By the way “God forgive them” is a charitable statement, not the issuing of any sort of forgiveness or open ended blessing on my behalf, since no one has yet even admitted to doing this, say nothing of apologizing for ruining my life and that of many others).
By the way, apparently the assholes figured out that I am still a practicing Catholic in the late 1990’s, when I stopped into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to pray, during a time when I had been under incredible spiritual (and physical) attack by these people for years and years. You’d think that this would have prompted some questions and rectification, but it actually seemed to have made things worse, since they still believed in that blasphemy of occult and New Age “reincarnation.”
food talk: advice about emergency storage/hoards
I’ve heard a lot of interest in emergency food storage, modernly known as “food hoarding.” It’s a subject I have great interest in because it is a traditional skill that home providers grew up being very familiar with in previous generations. Here’s some quick background before my advice.
For all generations of humanity, until the past two generations, people generated much of their own food by farming, raising livestock, gathering, or buying in open air farmers markets. You need to realize that fields of vegetables, for example, only yield food during a very short time of the year. This is called the “harvest” time. It is the same with livestock. Most people kept livestock for the continuing giving of milk and chickens for eggs, and one or two animals would be a personal supply of the family’s meat. Obviously it takes years to have what would be a once or twice a year slaughter of an animal, and then the preparation of meat for both day to day eating and also for storage (such as salted meat, or sausages that are highly spiced for their preserving). So there is a time each year, or season, that certain foods become available, it becomes harvested, and then it is prepared so that it can last the family until the next harvest of that food. Potatoes and apples were prized, for example, because they could last up to a year in what was called “root cellars,” which were stone and dirt cool temperature cellars.
Every family who participated in its own food generation had someone who knew how to can food. While it’s called “cans” back then (and now) the cans are actually glass containers. Look up Ball containers on the web and you can see what they look like. I used to grow my own food and can it, just as my grandparents did. (It skipped a generation because my parents lived during the transition from living off their parents’ canned goods to finding all that they need in the grocery store). But I wanted to can goods so that I could have fresh, year around, access to food that I had grown myself. I made strawberry jam by picking strawberries at “pick yourself” farms. I grew tomatoes and canned them whole. I grew squash and learned how to can it, but typically kept it in frozen containers in the fridge for better flavor and freshness. I also made fantastic Concord grape chutney. Chutney is like a relish but with large chunks of fruit and vegetables. I also canned pickles from food I had grown. I even grew the dill that gives the dill flavor to the pickles. I also grew “cutting flowers” for having daily cut flowers for the table’s decoration. If you are going to have a food garden it’s a shame not to also have a cut flower garden in the same space. You learn to plant flowers that like your food come continually to bloom so you have a continual supply to harvest through each growing season. (And even during the winter I cut branches from evergreens and holly, or other ornamental plants).
The reason I describe my experience and how food storage traditionally worked is so that you can understand the reasoning behind the tips that I give, and how to adapt them to your own food storage or emergency hoarding endeavors.
1. Store food that is the exact same food that you would want to eat anyway. Do not waste your money on panic buying of either specialized “survival” food or on food that your family would enjoy eating only if they had a gun to their head. So do not buy green beans if everyone hates green beans. Buy what you would eat anyway.
2. Then, arrange your pantry or storage space so that you put the most recently bought food of each type toward one end, and the oldest stored food on the other end. So for example, if you buy tuna fish cans, you get in the habit of stocking the tuna in order that you buy it in a row along the shelf. This way you know at a glance for each food when you bought it and what it’s “shelf life” is, because you have it arranged from freshly bought to oldest bought.
3. Then, use your emergency food for day to day cooking, taking from the oldest bought end. This ensures that you are cycling through the emergency food and keeping it fresh, and not wasting your money on food that will rot in the basement if, God willing, the emergency that you are planning for never comes. This is why I tell you to buy only, for the most part, food that you would use in your regular cooking anyway. So whenever you make a tuna dish, you take the oldest can from your emergency supply and then make a note to buy a replacement can when you are next at the store doing your weekly grocery shopping. This is how people learned over thousands of years to provide for themselves and their families. When women canned food and when the men smoked the meat or harvested the food for storage, they arranged it in “oldest to most recent” order also, and women marked the actual dates with ink on the lids of the canning jars. I would eat the frozen or canned food that I had prepared also in order of eating the older food first.
4. You can involve the kids, and it’s a positive learning experience that is not like showing them a video tape of the world being destroyed by an asteroid and telling them that is “disaster preparation.” This is good stewardship and home making skills, and how to be a good provider. So when the kids are eating from their jars of peanut butter and jelly in their normal day to day lives, they learn how you took those jars from the supply, put on your shopping list to replace it, have them help you find the replacement jars in the store, buy them, and then put them in the right place in the pantry or storage shelves. There is an abundance of good learning and fun when kids learn to “keep part of the pantry stocked.”
If you are blessed to be someone with a great income and a generous heart, you could cycle your emergency food storage through your local food pantry. So instead of eating the food you have stored in your regular meals, you periodically take the older stored items to the food bank and replace the items through your personal shopping.
5. When selecting food that your family likes for inclusion in your pantry or hoard, remember that electricity and clean water may be a shortage during whatever emergency that you are planning for. Many people think that just stocking lots of water is the solution, but if you cannot heat the food in cooking, like bring water to a boil, it takes hours if not days to prepare some foods, even if you have filled water bottles. So my advice is to plan for foods that come in their own water, oil, syrup or other fluid and consider that part of your balanced diet (as you should anyway). For example, canned corn comes in nutritious storage water. If you are in an emergency, when you eat the canned corn be sure to also drink the water that it came canned in, because must nutrition is in the water anyway. The same with canned tuna. If you are in the actual emergency you will want to use the oil or water that the tuna is canned in also, and not drain and throw it away. Canned fruits, such as peaches, come in syrup that is good emergency “fruit juice” along with the eating of the actual canned food product. Soup is the obvious example, and chicken soup should be a “must have” for any emergency pantry.
6. Make sure that your emergency pantry has bags of salted chips and nuts and also cookies with real sugar. When you are in an emergency that is the time to forget about crazy diet schemes. Salt and sugar are essential to have in larger supplies than normal when under stress in an emergency.
7. If you have infants or young children, while you should of course store baby food and other food that is appropriate to their normal diet (and like I said, rotate the emergency food through your normal cooking cycle), think ahead of the adult foods that you have and how easy that, in emergency, you could prepare for infant or child appropriate food. It never hurts to research ahead of time (and even to test) how easy it would be to hand mash canned peaches, for example, if you had to provide adult food in an emergency to an infant. Read up on the Internet how people make their own baby food, not because you, God willing, need to do that on your own, but because it gives you rehearsal tips and tools that you might want to include in your pantry. For example, few homes have what every home used to have at least one of, and sometimes two or three of, which is a hand potato masher. People have food processors but no longer have the non electric hand kitchen utensils that every kitchen used to have. So if you imagine different scenarios, such as having to mash adult food into infant sized pieces or puree, and imagine having no electricity, you can think ahead to what utensils would be of great assistance. Most people bump into this problem when they have cans and no hand operated can opener, LOL. But if you want a real food hoarding and pantry system, you need to imagine a number of food provision scenarios and what kitchen utensils or tools you would need for each situation. Even if you don’t have an infant or child, what if your extended family or neighbors had to rely on your supply and then have one or more infants or children? Men and women of our previous generations knew how to handle each of those situations through experience, family lore, and planning.
8. Invest in sets of those ubiquitous home storage plastic containers with lids. But before you spend your money, think ahead of various uses. What if you have to leave your house and take your car to move your family and food to another location? Get storage containers that fit well in your fully loaded car, and practice in advance learning how much food you can pack in each one. If you really want to get organized, when you test what you can load into each container, keep a list that you write of type and quantity of each food and leave it in the storage container. Thus you will know in advance of the emergency that say 30 cans of tuna, 12 jars of peanut butter, 10 jelly jars, etc fits in say an 85 quart size container or whatever. So if you have to leave in a hurry, you open the plastic container and there is your checklist already inside of what would fit in it. Backpacks are great, especially if you imagine “being on foot running for the hills,” which is all very modern and science fiction, but it is easy to forget the baby food or pet food, or some other essential, if you are leaving because of fire, earthquake, natural disaster and so forth where you have time to organize but must move pretty rapidly. Some art supply containers are plastic, like giant shoe box sized, with handles. Those are great for the “backpack” scenario. One reason I prefer plastic boxes to back packs is that they can be floatation devices, while a backpack pulls you down, should you have to encounter water. So sure, have backpacks, but also have a plastic container for each member of the family.
9. I don’t want to jump ahead to non-food articles, but I would be remiss to not mention that each container should have a bottle of aspirin (whether you can tolerate it or not, other people will need it) and chewable Pepto-Bismol tablets. Pain relief (especially the anti-fever capabilities of aspirin) and diarrheal relief are essential to plan for in advance. When you have stress, a sudden change in food source and water, and possible contamination, fever and diarrhea are real possibilities and are more than just inconvenient. If you have children ask your pediatrician in advance that in a civil emergency, what dose of aspirin or Pepto-Bismol you could give to your under 12 child in such a scenario. If they have trouble imagining giving you open ended advice, give them the Katrina scenario. For example, say, “What if my family was one of the ones trapped for 5 days before rescue and my child got diarrhea? What dosage of Pepto-Bismol could I have given him or her in such a scenario where no medical aid is available?”
I could write a book, LOL, but I hope this is a good start for you. You are not crazy or paranoid to want to provide for your family and have an emergency supply. It is actually what homemakers used to do as part of their routine family life. But you need to plan for realistic scenarios and not for fantasy sci-fi hero scenarios, which, God willing, will not be required. And if they are, trust me; this country has not seen what war and panic will do to even the most well stocked family with food and guns. Dudes and chicks like to imagine that they can hole up in their house and fend off looters, but that’s just not what has happened throughout history. As Ben Franklin said, we stick together or hang separately. I think Katrina is a reasonable model for the type of situation that every family should plan for. It has both elements of possibly having to hold out without food or water in your home for weeks, or the possibility of having to leave home in a hurry in a survival type of mode. So while I’m not saying everyone should plan for a hurricane, I’m saying the Katrina model is a good imaginary template that includes lots of the scenarios that some genuine natural or civil emergency would contain.
For all generations of humanity, until the past two generations, people generated much of their own food by farming, raising livestock, gathering, or buying in open air farmers markets. You need to realize that fields of vegetables, for example, only yield food during a very short time of the year. This is called the “harvest” time. It is the same with livestock. Most people kept livestock for the continuing giving of milk and chickens for eggs, and one or two animals would be a personal supply of the family’s meat. Obviously it takes years to have what would be a once or twice a year slaughter of an animal, and then the preparation of meat for both day to day eating and also for storage (such as salted meat, or sausages that are highly spiced for their preserving). So there is a time each year, or season, that certain foods become available, it becomes harvested, and then it is prepared so that it can last the family until the next harvest of that food. Potatoes and apples were prized, for example, because they could last up to a year in what was called “root cellars,” which were stone and dirt cool temperature cellars.
Every family who participated in its own food generation had someone who knew how to can food. While it’s called “cans” back then (and now) the cans are actually glass containers. Look up Ball containers on the web and you can see what they look like. I used to grow my own food and can it, just as my grandparents did. (It skipped a generation because my parents lived during the transition from living off their parents’ canned goods to finding all that they need in the grocery store). But I wanted to can goods so that I could have fresh, year around, access to food that I had grown myself. I made strawberry jam by picking strawberries at “pick yourself” farms. I grew tomatoes and canned them whole. I grew squash and learned how to can it, but typically kept it in frozen containers in the fridge for better flavor and freshness. I also made fantastic Concord grape chutney. Chutney is like a relish but with large chunks of fruit and vegetables. I also canned pickles from food I had grown. I even grew the dill that gives the dill flavor to the pickles. I also grew “cutting flowers” for having daily cut flowers for the table’s decoration. If you are going to have a food garden it’s a shame not to also have a cut flower garden in the same space. You learn to plant flowers that like your food come continually to bloom so you have a continual supply to harvest through each growing season. (And even during the winter I cut branches from evergreens and holly, or other ornamental plants).
The reason I describe my experience and how food storage traditionally worked is so that you can understand the reasoning behind the tips that I give, and how to adapt them to your own food storage or emergency hoarding endeavors.
1. Store food that is the exact same food that you would want to eat anyway. Do not waste your money on panic buying of either specialized “survival” food or on food that your family would enjoy eating only if they had a gun to their head. So do not buy green beans if everyone hates green beans. Buy what you would eat anyway.
2. Then, arrange your pantry or storage space so that you put the most recently bought food of each type toward one end, and the oldest stored food on the other end. So for example, if you buy tuna fish cans, you get in the habit of stocking the tuna in order that you buy it in a row along the shelf. This way you know at a glance for each food when you bought it and what it’s “shelf life” is, because you have it arranged from freshly bought to oldest bought.
3. Then, use your emergency food for day to day cooking, taking from the oldest bought end. This ensures that you are cycling through the emergency food and keeping it fresh, and not wasting your money on food that will rot in the basement if, God willing, the emergency that you are planning for never comes. This is why I tell you to buy only, for the most part, food that you would use in your regular cooking anyway. So whenever you make a tuna dish, you take the oldest can from your emergency supply and then make a note to buy a replacement can when you are next at the store doing your weekly grocery shopping. This is how people learned over thousands of years to provide for themselves and their families. When women canned food and when the men smoked the meat or harvested the food for storage, they arranged it in “oldest to most recent” order also, and women marked the actual dates with ink on the lids of the canning jars. I would eat the frozen or canned food that I had prepared also in order of eating the older food first.
4. You can involve the kids, and it’s a positive learning experience that is not like showing them a video tape of the world being destroyed by an asteroid and telling them that is “disaster preparation.” This is good stewardship and home making skills, and how to be a good provider. So when the kids are eating from their jars of peanut butter and jelly in their normal day to day lives, they learn how you took those jars from the supply, put on your shopping list to replace it, have them help you find the replacement jars in the store, buy them, and then put them in the right place in the pantry or storage shelves. There is an abundance of good learning and fun when kids learn to “keep part of the pantry stocked.”
If you are blessed to be someone with a great income and a generous heart, you could cycle your emergency food storage through your local food pantry. So instead of eating the food you have stored in your regular meals, you periodically take the older stored items to the food bank and replace the items through your personal shopping.
5. When selecting food that your family likes for inclusion in your pantry or hoard, remember that electricity and clean water may be a shortage during whatever emergency that you are planning for. Many people think that just stocking lots of water is the solution, but if you cannot heat the food in cooking, like bring water to a boil, it takes hours if not days to prepare some foods, even if you have filled water bottles. So my advice is to plan for foods that come in their own water, oil, syrup or other fluid and consider that part of your balanced diet (as you should anyway). For example, canned corn comes in nutritious storage water. If you are in an emergency, when you eat the canned corn be sure to also drink the water that it came canned in, because must nutrition is in the water anyway. The same with canned tuna. If you are in the actual emergency you will want to use the oil or water that the tuna is canned in also, and not drain and throw it away. Canned fruits, such as peaches, come in syrup that is good emergency “fruit juice” along with the eating of the actual canned food product. Soup is the obvious example, and chicken soup should be a “must have” for any emergency pantry.
6. Make sure that your emergency pantry has bags of salted chips and nuts and also cookies with real sugar. When you are in an emergency that is the time to forget about crazy diet schemes. Salt and sugar are essential to have in larger supplies than normal when under stress in an emergency.
7. If you have infants or young children, while you should of course store baby food and other food that is appropriate to their normal diet (and like I said, rotate the emergency food through your normal cooking cycle), think ahead of the adult foods that you have and how easy that, in emergency, you could prepare for infant or child appropriate food. It never hurts to research ahead of time (and even to test) how easy it would be to hand mash canned peaches, for example, if you had to provide adult food in an emergency to an infant. Read up on the Internet how people make their own baby food, not because you, God willing, need to do that on your own, but because it gives you rehearsal tips and tools that you might want to include in your pantry. For example, few homes have what every home used to have at least one of, and sometimes two or three of, which is a hand potato masher. People have food processors but no longer have the non electric hand kitchen utensils that every kitchen used to have. So if you imagine different scenarios, such as having to mash adult food into infant sized pieces or puree, and imagine having no electricity, you can think ahead to what utensils would be of great assistance. Most people bump into this problem when they have cans and no hand operated can opener, LOL. But if you want a real food hoarding and pantry system, you need to imagine a number of food provision scenarios and what kitchen utensils or tools you would need for each situation. Even if you don’t have an infant or child, what if your extended family or neighbors had to rely on your supply and then have one or more infants or children? Men and women of our previous generations knew how to handle each of those situations through experience, family lore, and planning.
8. Invest in sets of those ubiquitous home storage plastic containers with lids. But before you spend your money, think ahead of various uses. What if you have to leave your house and take your car to move your family and food to another location? Get storage containers that fit well in your fully loaded car, and practice in advance learning how much food you can pack in each one. If you really want to get organized, when you test what you can load into each container, keep a list that you write of type and quantity of each food and leave it in the storage container. Thus you will know in advance of the emergency that say 30 cans of tuna, 12 jars of peanut butter, 10 jelly jars, etc fits in say an 85 quart size container or whatever. So if you have to leave in a hurry, you open the plastic container and there is your checklist already inside of what would fit in it. Backpacks are great, especially if you imagine “being on foot running for the hills,” which is all very modern and science fiction, but it is easy to forget the baby food or pet food, or some other essential, if you are leaving because of fire, earthquake, natural disaster and so forth where you have time to organize but must move pretty rapidly. Some art supply containers are plastic, like giant shoe box sized, with handles. Those are great for the “backpack” scenario. One reason I prefer plastic boxes to back packs is that they can be floatation devices, while a backpack pulls you down, should you have to encounter water. So sure, have backpacks, but also have a plastic container for each member of the family.
9. I don’t want to jump ahead to non-food articles, but I would be remiss to not mention that each container should have a bottle of aspirin (whether you can tolerate it or not, other people will need it) and chewable Pepto-Bismol tablets. Pain relief (especially the anti-fever capabilities of aspirin) and diarrheal relief are essential to plan for in advance. When you have stress, a sudden change in food source and water, and possible contamination, fever and diarrhea are real possibilities and are more than just inconvenient. If you have children ask your pediatrician in advance that in a civil emergency, what dose of aspirin or Pepto-Bismol you could give to your under 12 child in such a scenario. If they have trouble imagining giving you open ended advice, give them the Katrina scenario. For example, say, “What if my family was one of the ones trapped for 5 days before rescue and my child got diarrhea? What dosage of Pepto-Bismol could I have given him or her in such a scenario where no medical aid is available?”
I could write a book, LOL, but I hope this is a good start for you. You are not crazy or paranoid to want to provide for your family and have an emergency supply. It is actually what homemakers used to do as part of their routine family life. But you need to plan for realistic scenarios and not for fantasy sci-fi hero scenarios, which, God willing, will not be required. And if they are, trust me; this country has not seen what war and panic will do to even the most well stocked family with food and guns. Dudes and chicks like to imagine that they can hole up in their house and fend off looters, but that’s just not what has happened throughout history. As Ben Franklin said, we stick together or hang separately. I think Katrina is a reasonable model for the type of situation that every family should plan for. It has both elements of possibly having to hold out without food or water in your home for weeks, or the possibility of having to leave home in a hurry in a survival type of mode. So while I’m not saying everyone should plan for a hurricane, I’m saying the Katrina model is a good imaginary template that includes lots of the scenarios that some genuine natural or civil emergency would contain.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Abortionists caught, discarded fetuses in street
Bahrain news account of how Saudi officials busted an abortion ring. These disgusting abortionists were discovered after tossing baby fetus and newborn bodies in locations in the city of Jeddah. They deserve what they get! Check out the photos of the perps. And these aren't exactly liberal "noble doctors," but fake medics and a taxi driver.
http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp
snip
JEDDAH
Two Sri Lankan men and a woman were arrested and charged with performing illegal abortions at a house in Nuzlah district.
The Saudi Gazette says the operators provided services for mainly Southeast Asians in Jeddah.
The bust follows cases of discarded fetuses and newborns found in trash containers on Jeddah streets.
http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp
snip
JEDDAH
Two Sri Lankan men and a woman were arrested and charged with performing illegal abortions at a house in Nuzlah district.
The Saudi Gazette says the operators provided services for mainly Southeast Asians in Jeddah.
The bust follows cases of discarded fetuses and newborns found in trash containers on Jeddah streets.
Felicitations to Orthodox brethren
It is their Easter time, with today as spy Wednesday.
The Jerusalem Post has a generous article about Orthodox pilgrims who have sacrificed so much to be in the Holy Land on Easter pilgrimage.
Greetings and blessings at this Easter time. Two years since my dear and pious Orthodox stepfather died.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870468928&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The Jerusalem Post has a generous article about Orthodox pilgrims who have sacrificed so much to be in the Holy Land on Easter pilgrimage.
Greetings and blessings at this Easter time. Two years since my dear and pious Orthodox stepfather died.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870468928&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
More about the Holy Eucharist controversy
While the talk about whether a politician who has public stance against Church teaching should or should not be allowed to receive Holy Eucharist is settling down in the "drive by media," I know it is still on many people's minds. While I'm not speaking for any individual bishop or priest, I want to give those of you who are quietly pondering this subject another angle to think about it in a grace filled and charitable way.
=h=h=h=h=h
As you know, the grace of the Holy Spirit, God, and the Savior Jesus Christ can find some good and holiness in even the most dire situation. In Jesus Christ all things are made anew, and as Jesus himself said, when asked who can be saved, "For God all things are possible."
=h=h=h=h=h
I believe that the Holy Father, the Cardinals, the bishops and the priests tend toward a laxity in allowing public officials with the stances mentioned above to receive, if they are doing so reverently, even when they are unworthy, because they know the power of the Real Presence to change hearts. I firmly believe (and know for a fact) that some who have received unworthily in the past have experienced conversion in the stances that they previously held. This is what I have been watching and waiting for, for many years now, and while I preach charity and hold my tongue on this subject.
=h=h=h=h=h
Further, priests and bishops may be aware of a private conversion of heart that is still ongoing and in the process with certain individuals, and of course they appropriately hold their tongues too.
=h=h=h=h=h
Dear friends, the power of the Real Presence, and the Holy Spirit, cannot be underestimated. If one is going to err in one direction or the other, do consider that leaving room for the Spirit to work in an individual's heart is the wiser alternative. Even people who receive with kind of a mechanistic attitude toward it (and even the devout fall into that, being only human) are still open to its grace full transformative effect, slowly and subtly over time.
=h=h=h=h=h
Sometimes when momentous change is hoped for and prayed for, silence is the most appropriate rather than strident and self righteous advocacy. Those who speak should be those who have fullness of understanding of their own diocese or parish, such as Archbishop Burke. He is correct in stating his clarity of policy regarding how he ministers to his flock. This is part of proper formation of those who listen to him, for he is teaching the truth of the matter. But that does not mean that a different bishop is necessarily being weak or lax. It is a mistake to jump to that conclusion.
=h=h=h=h=h
I am not inclined to be harsh toward those who, on the face of it, received unworthily during the Holy Father's visit. I continue to pray that the many people, both public and private, who receive unworthily are experiencing the grace of full conversion and reversion through the power of the Real Presence.
=h=h=h=h=h
I hope that you find this a helpful and enlightening perspective. I continue to advocate to the Holy Spirit for the fullness of harmony and conversion of heart of all the faithful.
=h=h=h=h=h
As you know, the grace of the Holy Spirit, God, and the Savior Jesus Christ can find some good and holiness in even the most dire situation. In Jesus Christ all things are made anew, and as Jesus himself said, when asked who can be saved, "For God all things are possible."
=h=h=h=h=h
I believe that the Holy Father, the Cardinals, the bishops and the priests tend toward a laxity in allowing public officials with the stances mentioned above to receive, if they are doing so reverently, even when they are unworthy, because they know the power of the Real Presence to change hearts. I firmly believe (and know for a fact) that some who have received unworthily in the past have experienced conversion in the stances that they previously held. This is what I have been watching and waiting for, for many years now, and while I preach charity and hold my tongue on this subject.
=h=h=h=h=h
Further, priests and bishops may be aware of a private conversion of heart that is still ongoing and in the process with certain individuals, and of course they appropriately hold their tongues too.
=h=h=h=h=h
Dear friends, the power of the Real Presence, and the Holy Spirit, cannot be underestimated. If one is going to err in one direction or the other, do consider that leaving room for the Spirit to work in an individual's heart is the wiser alternative. Even people who receive with kind of a mechanistic attitude toward it (and even the devout fall into that, being only human) are still open to its grace full transformative effect, slowly and subtly over time.
=h=h=h=h=h
Sometimes when momentous change is hoped for and prayed for, silence is the most appropriate rather than strident and self righteous advocacy. Those who speak should be those who have fullness of understanding of their own diocese or parish, such as Archbishop Burke. He is correct in stating his clarity of policy regarding how he ministers to his flock. This is part of proper formation of those who listen to him, for he is teaching the truth of the matter. But that does not mean that a different bishop is necessarily being weak or lax. It is a mistake to jump to that conclusion.
=h=h=h=h=h
I am not inclined to be harsh toward those who, on the face of it, received unworthily during the Holy Father's visit. I continue to pray that the many people, both public and private, who receive unworthily are experiencing the grace of full conversion and reversion through the power of the Real Presence.
=h=h=h=h=h
I hope that you find this a helpful and enlightening perspective. I continue to advocate to the Holy Spirit for the fullness of harmony and conversion of heart of all the faithful.
Latin Mass at Holy Ghost Church Knoxville
Read this delightful report of this very moving event.
http://www.knoxlatinmass.net/1stsolemnmass.htm
http://www.knoxlatinmass.net/1stsolemnmass.htm
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