"The Handsome Frog" - The Gift of a Story!

On Friday, while we were away at the church, a friend who had been visiting decided to stay at the house until we got back.  In the mean time, her 12-year-old daughter wrote a story for us.  What a wonderful gift a story is, especially when it's written just for your family!


Here's a picture of the page, with the text typed below:

The text (there are a few slips, but I'll leave it exactly as she wrote it):

Once upon a time there lived a frog, his name was James.  James lived in a pond filled with lily pads and dragonflys fly over him.  And he could always see the sunrise and the sunset.  Theose were his most favourite things to do sit and watch the sun.

James loved to eat flys big ones in July, August.  Sometimes he even made fly salad.  His favourite season was summer he loved to play tag with his Best friends and go swimming.  His very Best friends name was Albert.  James and Albert always wanted to look their best in a good way, not to put anybody down but they always thought it was good to be handsome.

Sometimes they would go shopping together.  Usually it is the girls that go shopping but they didn't care what other frogs thought they just did what they felt was right.  "So it doesn't matter what other people think of you, you just got to do what you feel is right"!

Hope You Enjoyed This Story!!

I don't think I'll be rushing off to go shopping, but certainly not because of what other people think!

Stations of the Cross Restored and the Prayerful Elderly

Stations of the Cross at Our Parish

This Lent  we are having the Stations of the Cross at my parish (St. Mary Queen of Heaven, Linwood, ON) again.  I have to confirm this, but I believe it is the first time these prayers and meditations have been held here since we started sharing a priest 13 years ago.  Of course, they are being led by a layperson while the priest leads the stations at the main parish nearby (St. Clements).

We though at first that it might be only my family showing up, but we were pleasantly surprised to be joined by 6 elderly parishioners from the community. 

Detail of the 12th Station

These parishioners, along with a few others who join when they can, form a core group of what the pastor praised as "our prayerful elderly."


They always come 30 minutes early for Mass to say the Rosary and pray and a number of them always come to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Mass (in honour of Our Lady of Perpetual Help) on Wednesdays.

It hadn't occurred to me very directly before our pastor mentioned it, but this group is a true gift for our parish; I don't doubt that the dedicated and constant prayers of this group are a strength and blessing for the rest of us.

And I am delighted that they have blessed the newly re-established Stations of the Cross by joining us.

One of our crucifixes

A Special Post, Just for My Wife!

Today, my wife complained that I don't say enough to her, and that I'm not writing enough in my blog.  So, I decided to kill two birds with one stone.  Here's a blog post, just for you Cecy!

I love you, all the time, even when you look like this:

But even on your worst days, to me you always look like this:

I have to say, though, I like you best like this:

Or like this:

You like it when I keep things short, and use lots of pictures, so I think this is a good time to stop.  I could've kept it all shorter, and just said:

"I love you."

"I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one" - Chesterton

The author of this blog, and his wife;
truly incompatible, truly in love!

"If Americans can be divorced for 'incompatibility of temper' I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced.  I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one.  The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable.  For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible."

- G. K. Chesterton, "The Free Family," What's Wrong with the World

Why I Love Mexico

Two days ago I wrote a short piece sharing my opinion of people who tell you you should've used birth control when they find out you have four children. (In case you didn't read it, and you couldn't guess, it's not a good opinion.)

What I wrote two days ago didn't just pop into my head out of nowhere, and it didn't just turn up out of an entire year of "mixed" reactions to my babies.

A week and a half ago, I arrived in Mexico again with my family, this time on a work trip. (My last one, since I am less than a week away from finishing this job.  The last 2 weeks will be a vacation.)

An Unpleasant Welcome

Upon our arrival to Playa del Carmen, we were greeted with the usual visuals of Mexico; dirt and garbage in the streets, mangy street dogs, half-built homes, graffiti-covered walls, children playing with trash in filthy parks ...

The list could go on.  Home, sweet, home?  Well, not quite.

Den of Sinners

Then comes the visible immorality of Mexican culture. 

Like everywhere, marital infidelity abounds; and here, intentions along these lines are made all to visibly obvious, as are the relationships themselves.  A married taxi driver has his "companion" joining him in the passenger's seat, who is almost certainly not his wife, men cheating on their wives is chronic. (First hand stories.)

Dishonesty is endemic.  Just today, my commadre's daughter told me how a store worker stole her cellphone from a fitting room, and then called her a "bitch" when she tried (successfully) to reclaim it. (Commadre = godmother of my son.)  People here "find" other people's things and assume that this sequence of fortunes means that people have lost all rights to their belongings, even if they "find" those things in someone else's front patio.

Just two examples of so many.

At this point, I would like to talk about how I actually like the fact that in Mexico sin, immorality, dishonesty, etc. all look like exactly what they are - but that belongs to a different post.

Loving People

So far, I'm guessing I haven't inspired many would-be expats to make the leap, abandon their home and move to Mexico.

But in spite of all its problems and unpleasant sights (which I would argue are not actually bigger, but simply more visible) there's something about Mexico - even the dirtiest most unsightly places - that captures my heart:

Mexicans have a deep love for being with other people.  The don't need to share common interests, understand each other, have something to do together or have anything else that we would consider fundamental to a "healthy relationship;" the love of another person and the joy felt in seeing another person is enough.

Seeing and feeling a joy for human life is something that surpasses many other comforts and conveniences in life.

To love another ....

 Having lived in a few (Western) nations, I will be so bold as to claim that I have identified two things that are universal (among many others I'm sure.) One is the love of human life. Unfortunately, alongside of that love is the hatred of human life.

When you tell people that you have four children and their first response is "you should've used a condom" or (in the case of the mother) "So, you've had your tubes tied now, haven't you?" they're basically telling you that the world, or at least your family, would be better off without your most recent children.

In the past 2 weeks, these exact ideas have been told to me and my wife more often than I would like to say.

That is hatred of human life.

While there are far too many of such hateful people, fortunately there are still many more who love human beings.  They see baby twins and play with them; they bubble over in joy about how cute they are.

Or, on the other hand, they might talk about which one might be a better boss, and which one might be a better boss and which one might be a better salesman.  Others may notice which one likes to get dirty and which one likes to stay clean. Some may kiss them, others may give them a blessing.

Not once does it occur to these people how the existence of these beautiful twins could've been prevented. Why? Because they love people, and human life gives them joy.

In the same past few weeks - especially in the past two days - these and many other such wonderful things have happened when people see our twins, thankfully far more than the kind of comment mentioned above.


The joy of seeing an infant is the joy of seeing new life brought into this world and at its very root the deepest love for humans.

The next time you see a baby, let it bring joy to your heart, and not a Godless, inhuman wish that the baby's life would've been prevented.

23,000 Pictures in 7 years?!?

The Revelation

Last week, among my new explorations of the computer world, I re-discovered cloud storage, i.e. online storage for files and information.  I knew it existed but it had never really occurred to me that it had any direct personal usage that could benefit me.  I had used it now and then for work only to share and work together at a distance over Google Docs and Dropbox.

Then, reading about it again last week, I thought, "Hey, I know a great use for this.  My wife has a hard disk where she saves her pictures.  Why don't I back this up for her in online/cloud storage in case anything ever happens to the external hard drive?"

Free Storage: Is 5 GB Enough?

So I did some research.  Google Drive offers 5 GB of free space.  So does Ubuntu One and a few others.  Well, I thought, I'm sure opening a couple of accounts in her name will easily cover all of them with space to spare.

So I started making tallies of the folders on the disk (which holds 1 TB or 1000 GB of memory), but is far, far from full.  I got up to 12 GB and started getting worried.

When I got to the end, it was 60 GB of memory in photos!

Help, I Need More Cloud Memory!

Needless to say, I had to find a different way to do this; I wasn't going to open 12 accounts just to get all her pictures up.  Fortunately, I found ADrive which offers 50 GB with it's free package.  This way, 2 accounts will do the trick.

The guilty photographer

How Many Pictures???

Besides looking for more cloud storage, I was curious about this huge number. So I did a quick calculation of photo files; 23,000 pictures!!

There must've been some mistake.  But no.  I looked a few folders, and it looked like the numbers were accurate.  In complete disbelief, I decided to do some further calculations:

• The pictures were taken over 7 years (Aug 2006 to present)
• That means she has taken an average of 3286 pictures per year.
• That's an average of 9 pictures per day!

That number doesn't include the many that she has lost or discarded.  I'd say it's easily at least double that, more like 20 per day.  Knowing my wife, that actually doesn't sound like a whole lot.

I've now told her she has a limit of 5 pictures a day, and of those she can only keep the best ones.

So far, she's paid no attention to my limit whatsoever, and I'm pretty sure I've counted well over 20 shots each day.

The Task Goes On ... and On

I think this was about 5 days ago.  Last I checked the uploads were about 15% done.  We have my recently revived mini constantly uploading. (It does a much better job of it than her fancy, new graphic-friendly HP, which kept freezing up the upload after about an hour.)

I think I have about 3 weeks of this work ahead of me.

Henry Morgentaler - Should We Be Glad He's Gone?

Henry Morgentaler died today, at the age of 90.  Let's look at what this man did:

• he repeatedly, illegally opened abortion clinics and appealed jail sentences until the Supreme Court of Canada  decided that he was right after all
• he personally performed over 100,000 abortions (http://goo.gl/bmepp)
• his clinics performed "many hundreds of thousands more"
• his actions are largely responsible for the over 3.2 million abortions that have taken place in Canada since 1970 and the fact that these cannot be punished by law (http://cambridgerighttolife.ca/testepage/abortion/)

Thanks to him, legally in Canada:

• over 300 abortions are performed ever day 
• over 100,000 are performed every year
• more than 3 babies are aborted for every
• a live-born baby is killed after a "botched" abortion, once a week on average

All of this continues full tilt ahead as you're reading.

Dr. Morgentaler personally has the blood of over 3,200,000 babies on his hands, and the numbers rise.

So, shouldn't we be glad this monster is gone?

And about the Holocaust ... 

It makes me wonder about Dr. Morgentaler - why is it that having experienced the deadliest atrocity in history up to that time first hand, having miraculously survived it, that he would choose to be the leader of the only atrocity, the only large-scale, sanitized, clinicized mass-murder that overshadows that one?

Perhaps no answer will be discovered to that question.

A Lost Soul is a Catastrophe

As tempting as it is to say "good riddance," as good as it would feel for the moment, it is wrong.

One lost soul is a catastrophe, not a victory.  He gave his life to the Enemy, and that is sad. Yes, the 3 million lives he has cost Canada is a catastrophe.  But so is the fact that he died without (as far as I know or has been publicly stated) repentance.

I think of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who's life - despite having performed proportionally more abortions than Morgentaler - was a great victory.

God's Mercy

No, we cannot be happy that this man has died with the blood of so many innocent lives on it.  We cannot rejoice or claim any victory in this sad death.

God have mercy on the soul of Henry Morgentaler.

May is Time to Start Another Garden!

For my family, gardening has progressed from accidental tomato and papaya plants, to our beautiful bougainvilleas and mini rose bush in Playa del Carmen,
to last year's sunflowers here in Canada, and this year to a shared garden and a more complete house-side garden (instead of the usual flower gardens.)

Our elderly neighbour, who can no longer plant her garden alone, as asked me to help her plant and care for her garden, and has offered us the share the vegetables.  Her garden includes:

• tomatoes
• green, red and yellow peppers
• potatoes
• onions
• radishes

 and a few other items I can't remember right now.  Here are some pictures:

In the same flower garden where we planted the sunflowers last year, I planted various items since they all have space between them:

• tomatoes
• sunflowers (which will be tall and rise above the rest)
• string beans (between the tomato plants)
• marigolds (in a well-spaced line right in front)
• cilantro (between the marigolds)
• more potatoes (around the more shaded side of the house)

I don't know if I've crowded too much in, but we'll see.  It's our first experiment.  Weeding won't be a problem since it's all accessible from the front of the flower garden.  The kids helped to plant it again, and were very excited.

Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of the kids helping, but I'll get pictures of them at harvest time.  Here are some pictures I took of the visible plants later in the evening:

These are the packages from the cilantro and string bean seeds:

I'm looking forward to enjoying fresh vegetables in August and September!

Happy Mother's Day - in Mexico!

Today, May 10, is Mother's Day in Mexico!  (It is always celebrated May 10, regardless of what day of the week that is.)

So, to celebrate and wish all mothers a Happy Mother's Day in true Mexican fashion, here's a beautiful song especially for mothers (especially for my wife and my mother-in-law, and, of course, my mother):

Why Are "Catholic lawmakers hostile to abortion even when more moderate on other social issues?"

Before I say anything, I want you to click on the link below.  I want you to look at the green number that appears at the top of the page.  First see how many millions are listed there, then notice how quickly that number is going up?

http://www.worldometers.info/abortions/

When I opened the page it at 13,336,610.  It goes up by about 3 every second.

A law recently passed in Kansas limiting abortions

These are statistics for clinical murder.

The counter shows how many human beings are being murdered around the world every second - not total of murders, but only those murdered clinically, in a nice, safe, clean sterile setting that makes these murders seem like a "medical procedure."  This clean, clinical murder is called "abortion."

The total is the number of abortions that have taken place this year - since January. That's less than 4 months.  In less than 4 months, well over 13 million babies have been intentionally murdered in clinics.

That means that in less than 2 months, there were over 6 million clinically murdered babies.

According to the same webpage, the WHO reports that there are between 40 and 50 million abortions per year. That means that in less than 2 years, there are more than 75 million clinically murdered humans.

a precursor to abortionists

Why 75 Million Murders?

Why do I highlight the numbers 6 million and 75 million?  Well, about 80 years ago, a man took over the parliament of a prominent and very advanced European country.  He proceeded to start a program that led to and arranged for the clinical and systematic cold-blooded murder of over 6 million innocent people.  This program also lead to the deaths of 75 million people in the war which most people would consider the worst catastrophe in human history.

This man is an icon of evil; his actions and the way of thinking that led to those actions are unquestionably condemned by all reasonable humans.

Yet, the same number of cold, systematic, clinical murders that he committed in about 6 years was committed in the first two months of this year in the name of "choice" and "rights."

Of course, we're comparing planned, clinical murders in a handful of nations to those in the whole world .  So to make the comparison more fair, let's compare only to the U.S.  According to the WHO, there are about 3000 abortions a day in that country. That means there are 6 million every 5.5 years.  That means in the U.S. alone, abortion is outdoing the holocaust in a lesser period of time.

The same total number of people that died in horrendous 6-year war that evil man started have been murdered in abortions in only the past 2 years.  Both these numbers are world-wide.

A monster, because he made abortion look as dirty as it really is

The Holocaust of Our Progressive World

World War II and especially Hitler's Holocaust were horrible atrocities which should have never happened.  The numbers above show that abortion is an even greater atrocity - at least by 3x.

Abortion is the Holocaust of our modern, progressive, middle-class world.

Like the Holocaust, comfort, ease and - most importantly - the fear of shame or public humiliation for speaking out against it, make us quite us quite content to allow it to carry on quietly out of sight in safe, sterile clinics where it won't make us feel bad or guilty.

Unlike Hitler's atrocities, which eventually brought almost every other super-power nation against it, there is only one single nation in the world that has taken a decisive stand against abortion (Chile).  All other either endorse it as a "fundamental right" (increasingly more common) or turn a blind eye to it.

Many people are upset by what happened with Dr. Gosnell.  A few people are upset because he was murdering babies.  Most people are upset only because he wasn't as clean and clinically sterile as he should've been and - worst of all - that he let his filthiness spill out into the public eye to make us uncomfortable.

Like the brainwashed middle-class of central Europe in WWII, we are willing to turn a blind eye for the sake of comfort - we just want to be sure that it's kept comfortably clean and out of our sight.

Alberto Giubilini, advocate of "after-birth abortions"

The Final Solution

Post-birth abortion is not only a monster looming in the future used as a scare tactic by pro-lifers.  It is a common and accepted practice - even if it has not yet been given official legal approval.

It is already common practice for babies born live after botched abortions to be (a) left to die or (b) killed by the same techniques used in abortions.  This not a freak abuse limited to monsters like Gosnell.  In Canada, the government has reports of this happening to almost 500 babies in 10 years.  These are only the reported cases.  (In Canada, there is no legal requirement to report an abortion.)

Planned Parenthood practices both techniques (a and b) mentioned above.

The academic groundwork to justify "post-birth abortions" legally has already been laid by "credible" academics in influential places.  The justification is that a baby can be killed by the same techniques used in abortions “when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion."  They use the term "after-birth abortion" rather than "infanticide" "to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child."

(see http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-08/opinions/38362423_1_viable-babies-abortion-survivor-planned-parenthood)

Marc Thiessen - a critic of "post-birth abortion"

Basically, killing a baby just after birth can be justified by the exact same arguments used in favour of abortion. And these academics are right; there's no reasonable way you can justify that a baby is a conscious human being 1 minute after the leaving the mother completely if you did not recognize that status 2 minutes earlier when part of her was still inside her mother.

Currently, there are scientists studying the question whether a 2-month-old baby is a conscious human or not - and even a 5-month-old.  People should be paying much more attention to these studies, because if the "scientific consensus" answers the above question with "no" then we will soon be having academics, and then doctors and judges, talking about something like "pre-consciousness abortion" to describe a process for clinically murdering babies that are several months old.

Unlike the case with pre-birth abortions, for "post-birth abortions" we don't even need renegade doctors who want to be heroes. Planned Parenthood is already doing that quietly, behind the scenes, on public money and with public approval (given through silence.)  All it will take to implement this "final solution" is a couple of Supreme Court judges who want their names to be recorded in history as the fearless leaders of justice who overturned their nation's laws for the sake of "progress."


Saving a Mother's Live?

And the big question - how many abortions are procured to save a mother's life? This is after all, the end-all wildcard pro-choice argument that makes all pro-lifers shut up and be entirely ashamed of ever even thinking that abortion should be banned.

Reasons for abortions

In a U.K.study, 0.006% were in direct response to save a mother's life (i.e. she was dying and the abortion saved her), and another 0.37% were due to risk of the mother's life (i.e. it was unsure if she would've died or not, but the risk was high.)

That means, of the 13 million babies clinically murdered since January, probably only 78,000 - worldwide - were in direct response to the immediate threat of death for the mother.

Abortion is not right in any situation, but the point here is legal abortion has nothing to do with saving mothers' lives. 99.994% of abortions are carried purely for a matter of personal preference or convenience, justified on the assumption that the baby is not in fact a human.  This lends itself very nicely to post-birth abortion arguments.

(*U.S. stats will list 2.8% as "maternal health concerns." This does NOT indicate danger or even risk of death, but "health" in a far broader context. "Danger of death" does not show up on stats - I'm assuming because the cases are so rare.)

Me, holding my babies minutes after they were  born.
They were humans then, just as they were 8.5 months
before, at the moment of conception.

Some More Stats

• Worldwide, there are 125,000 abortions per day - that's the entire population of Waterloo, ON, or Playa del Carmen, MX, murdered every day
• In the US there are over 3000 abortions every day - that's the population of the township I live in
• That's a total of about 20% of all babies in the U.S.
• In Canada, there is one abortion for every 3 live births; that's 25% of all babies

So ...

I couldn't name a worst atrocity than this one. Go back to that counter again - http://www.worldometers.info/abortions/. Every time that number turns over, imagine a person in nice clean clinic, having surgical scissor being jammed up through her neck into her brain, or having her spinal cord severed, or being burned in chemicals or cut to pieces alive - of course, in each case this person is nicely sedated and muffled to ensure that other people in the room don't feel uncomfortable about the process - they might see her squirm a little, but doctors and scientists can reassure us that that's just an non-conscious reflex. Pleasant thought, isn't it?

Back to the Main Question

Why, then, is that "Catholic lawmakers in particular are often hostile to abortion rights even when they are more moderate on other social issues"?  Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress.org points out this fact as though it's absurd, some sort of silly contradiction.

I hope the numbers and comparison I shared above answer this questions satisfactorily. Abortion is not simply another "social issue."

Sunflowers

During June, my sons and I planted some sunflower seeds in the flower garden beside the house.  We planted 12 seeds.  We planted them late (I think May is ideal) and it was a very dry summer.  However, with nightly watering and the daily careful watching of my 4-year-old, two finally sprouted.  Both grew up and finally, last week while I was here in Mexico, the flowers opened.  My wife sent me pictures.

First, this is us planting them in June:

Now, three months later, here are my two sons, each with the sunflower that they claimed as their own (well, really the older one dictated which one belonged to whom, but they're both happy:)

Thanksgiving in Canada

Unfortunately, I wasn't in Canada to celebrate Thanksgiving this year; fortunately, my wife "shared" the dinner with me by means of pictures.  Looks delicious:

Table set

Some of the Family

(By the look of these first two pictures - looks like bacon and eggs - I'm not sure if it was breakfast, or the first part of the dinner.  In any case, I wish I were there ...)

Main course

If this is what I think it is, it's a "cooked salad" - some of the veggies are cooked, others are raw, with peanuts and grapes; I'm not sure if this a Mexican thing or my wife's creation, but it ends being pretty good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Baptism of Our Twins

This Sunday, our baby twins, who will be 2 months old in 2 days, were baptized!  Here are some pictures:

Grandma getting the babies dressed

The blessing of the water.

The annointing with oil.

The sermon

The baptism itself

Closer view of the baptism

Welcoming of babies into the Church



 After the baptism, the priest gave my wife the blessing for mothers of newborns, known as "churching":

Here's picture of the church's beautiful high altar.  It's a beautiful little church building in the countryside:

Finally, our celebration afterwards. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, so we enjoyed lunch outside, at our house: