The liberal line at WalMart

 What a wonderful day at WalMart!  I don’t get to say that very often.

I was feeling kind of bored and lonely, so I decided to go shopping. I learned that from my wife years ago. I spent part of the day reminiscing with old photos and video of us when she was still living.

Not only that, but I have been on a keto diet for about a year, due to weight and heart trouble, and I was having a carb attack. Specifically, I craved some corn chips with salsa. 

So I binged today. I told myself if I only do this once a year, it shouldn’t hurt me too bad!

I was surprised at the number of shoppers at 3:00 on a Monday afternoon. Most of them were not wearing masks or keeping a distance. This town is a conservative bunch, so that didn’t surprise me at all.

I got my groceries and went toward the checkout row. There was a long line of carts backed up to the fresh fruit and vegetables section waiting for the self check machines. I cut through there and headed for the live checkers. WalMart doesn’t pay me enough to do my own checking.

All the checkout lines were full, and most of them had carts loaded up like they were shopping for a month.

But hey! Look at checkout line  #4! Only two other carts in that line, with just a few items in the cart just like myself.

I looked down toward the checker, and there was a nice looking young black man with natural Afro hair wearing a mask. He was a little slow and unsure of himself, like he had just been hired.

I also immediately noticed that everybody in this checkout line was wearing a mask to avoid spreading the virus. I hadn’t been, but I had one folded in my back pocket, so I took it out and put it on! 

I was vaccinated back in February, so I’m safe from serious illness, but it is perfectly possible that I could breathe in the virus and pass it along to others who might be still at risk. The joker during this pandemic was finding out that people with no symptoms can pass on the virus and infect others.

Kudos to WalMart for having a line just for liberals! They should do that everywhere. As he finished checking each person out, they all wished him a good day, and thanked him. I did the same and made sure to call him by name. Kaleb. Good man!

I have some idea of what it feels like to be the only one of your color in a room. I had some of my buddies in the Army invite me out for drinks at a black bar in Koza, Okinawa, back in 1966. Even though I was with friends and Army buddies, I still felt strangely out of place. Even though they were celebrating with me and buying my beers! 

Yep, it was a great day at WalMart. I may shop there more often, now that I‘ve found the liberal line!

Invitation to the Bryan County Federation of Democratic Women

 Thank you for the invitation to the Democratic Party functions in Bryan County. I consider it to be an honor. 

However, my political story is long and involved, and although I was a fervent campaign organizer for Barack Obama and was elected to the chairman’s seat of the Humboldt County, Nevada, Democratic Party during the 2008 election, I was never more disappointed at his unwillingness to actually fight for poor and working people during his administration.

Before I joined the Democratic Party to work for Obama, I was a founding member of the Libertarian Party in Colorado. That was when the emphasis was on civil liberty, not as they later became the party for freedom to financially ruin all your competitors, when it was taken over by the Koch brothers and Ron Paul.

On February 20, 2001 I spent a long cold day picketing the courthouse on behalf of the Libertarian Party and November.org, a prisoner’s rights organization. We were protesting the incarceration of the 2,000,000 prisoner in the US.  One quarter of all prisoners in every country in the world are imprisoned in the US. We are by far the most imprisoned country in the world, even as we sing about the land of the free, and the land of liberty. I am still a long time member of the ACLU.

During those years of fighting to reduce our prison population, Joe Biden was one of my chief nemesis’ as he was a leading figure in the War on Drugs, Three Strikes You're Out, and other schemes to throw more poor people in jail and prison.

I was no longer the Democratic Chairman in the 2016, but I campaigned hard for Bernie Sanders in northern Nevada, and take a little credit for his win in the Nevada Caucuses. I organized and conducted caucuses for four different precincts, and actually got a couple of wins for Bernie in a strongly red part of the state.

To be frank, I don’t see a lot of hope for either the old conservative wing of the Republican Party or the old Third Way Clinton coalition of the Democratic Party. The younger generations are only too aware of the total failure of both mainstream parties to move America to a place with real opportunities for progress and advancement for them. Both parties are still committed to free trade, which forces US workers to compete with Chinese workers who get pennies per hour. I believe that is one of the main motivations for the rise of Donald Trump. He lied about his intentions better than Hillary did.

I see the national picture of the Democratic Party as pretty dismal. If Joe Biden survives to the end of his term, Kamala Harris may be the nominee, which will be a disaster. Identity politics got her the vice presidency, but her performance during the primaries in 2020 was pathetic. She is not a natural politician, her policy positions are vague to nonexistent, and she just isn’t very likable.

I am a Social Democrat, still in love with Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and the rest of the progressive populist wing of the Democratic Party. As usual, the official Democratic Party has endorsed an opposing candidate to Nina Turner, a hugely popular candidate in Cleveland, Ohio. 

I believe if Democrats went back to the lingering legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and ran on his accomplishments, they might have a chance at swaying some opinions down here in the South. I am a beneficiary of a wildly socialist electric cooperative company here in Durant. Many thousands of older people down here are existing on Social Security checks, a socialist conspiracy if ever there was one. 

I believe if Democrats ever want to win again, they need to stop cringing at words like socialist and liberal, and start preaching and educating people on the real history that is fading away with those people who remember the Great Hoover Depression.

Sorry I’m so long, but I don’t know how to say it shorter. 

I’d be happy to sit in on the meeting at the library on July 20, If I’m still welcome. 

Thanks again,

Don Rogers

P. S. I went to the meeting today and was made to feel very welcome. 

Kudos from my Cardiologist

 Hey!! I’m feeling pumped! I’ve got my cardiologist’s praise.

I went in for a follow up on my trans esophageal echocardiogram today, and the doctor came in smiling. He told me my heart valves are perfectly fine and my coronary arteries are splendid! He told me I am in better health than 99% of my peers, and asked me to what did I attribute that.

I told him I think it’s culture. I was born and raised in California, where most people walk, run, climb mountains, surf and swim, and some of us ride bicycles. I moved here, and everybody thinks I’m nuts because I still ride a bicycle, even though it’s been sixty years since I graduated from high school.

He asked where in California, and I told him in Merced, in the Central Valley. He explained that he and his wife went to Santa Monica to visit friends last year, and even took a boat over to Santa Catalina island.

I told him that twenty years ago my wife and I took a side trip from a national square dance festival at Anaheim, and went to Santa Catalina island, and right there on the dock we rented a bicycle built for two. We rode that bike all over the island on every paved road they have at Avalon.

( There were only three then).

He laughed out loud. 

He explained that he is retiring soon and will be looking for activities to keep him young, too.

He asked if I am up on my vaccinations, and I assured him I got mine in January and February. The side effect of those were what we had agreed was probably myocarditis, a rare condition for the Pfizer shots. But I haven’t had any trouble in a couple of months.

My guess is that years of dealing with an autoimmune disease probably ties into that somehow.

He cautioned me that he will probably call me when a booster shot becomes available soon. I asked, “Delta variant?” He said no, the latest mutant is the Lambda variant, and it’s worse than the Delta. It comes from South America, and the president of Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro, who poo-pooed the Covid virus is in the hospital with an oxygen mask keeping him breathing as we speak.

I promised to keep in touch, even though I am cleared from any more cardiologist visits for the present.

Yep, I’m pumped! It’s been a great day. 

I went for a ride on my mountain bike to celebrate and got about a mile away from the house and the front tire blew out with a pop. So I got one mile of biking and one mile of walking back pushing the bike. 

Still feel great!

All About Stalls (Flying)

 I just watched a YouTube video by Dan Gryder called Probable Cause. It is a series of investigations into various airplane crashes and the causes, with the purpose of learning and preventing similar accidents in the future.

The video I watched involved a student and an instructor who were practicing stalls and dove straight into the ground at high speed. His take was that the student was afraid of stalls and froze at the controls, and the instructor wasn’t ready to take it away fast enough.

It reminded me of myself when I first took flying lessons. I also had a fear of stalls. It was not helped when my first instructor demonstrated a spin to show me what was going to happen if I didn’t use the controls correctly to recover from the stall. 

For those who are not pilots, a stall does not involve the engine quitting on an airplane. It is when the wings go too slow to create enough lift to keep the plane in the air. In most airplanes the ailerons quit working as the plane stalls and falls, and the pilot must use the rudder to keep the wings level as he pushes on the yoke (or stick) to gain airspeed and then pull out of the dive. 

It is a skill that must be practiced until it becomes second nature, similar to recovering from a skid on ice in your car. It’s hard to practice enough when you are petrified by fright every time the plane stalls and falls off on a wing.

I had five instructors over a two year span while I learned to fly. Three of them were for a very short time, just filling in while the airport looked for a full time instructor. The two I learned the most from were Maxl Willis, and Bob Shermerhorn. 

The first time I went up with Bob he saw my fear of stalls and decided I needed to overcome that fear. So we climbed up to 10,000 ft so there was a lot of room between us and the ground.

He explained that he was going to take control of the yoke and throttle, and I was to put my hands in my lap. He said we were going to stall this plane for several thousand feet down to show that a stall is nothing to be afraid of. Meanwhile the rudder pedals were mine. When ever a wing dropped I was to step on the opposite rudder pedal. That turns the plane, speeding up the falling wing, and slowing down the rising wing. 

Bob kept the yoke back, with just enough throttle to hold the tail down, and we fell at least five thousand feet in the next minute or two. It wasn’t long until I got good at keeping the wings level with just the rudder. We did that falling leaf maneuver several times that afternoon, until I was getting almost comfortable with stalls.

 I got completely over my fear of stalls for sure the first time I went to the Reno Air Races. I watched Art Scholl do hammerhead stalls and tail slides, falling out of the sky, then recovering and going to the next maneuver. He also demonstrated flying by the stands while he stood outside the cockpit on the wing while waving at us. 

Leo Loudenslager demonstrated spins and snap rolls, which involves stalling just one wing and letting the plane twist through the air. I could see him using the rudder to switch from a left snap roll to a snap roll to the right and back again.

Bob Hoover demonstrated his “energy management” in his Shrike Commander by shutting off both engines and doing loops, rolls, and then landing and coasting up to the announcer’s stand without needing to restart or stand on the brakes.

After watching the pilots at the Reno Air Races, a simple stall seemed pretty tame.

Maxl Willis was a former helicopter pilot, and I learned about flight planning and we practiced cross country trips, including one to the little cafe at Denio Junction, Nevada, for one of those “hundred dollar” burgers. (That includes the cost of the flight). We learned about landing on dirt runways over power lines and doing it safely. 

The cafe had a sign that said, “Denio is so small the town hooker is a virgin!” I still miss Nevada humor!

After I got my Private Pilot’s License, I rented the local Cessna 172 for a while. Then several of us who were pilots at the power plant where we worked formed a partnership and bought a 1966 Cessna 172. 

It had several differences from the later model 172’s I had learned on. The most unusual was the Horton STOL modifications to the wings that involved a reshaped cuff on the outer half of each wing and a “fence” or fin on top of the wing that kept the airflow from angling across the wingspan. The main effect was to keep the ailerons working deep into the stall.

We couldn’t find any instructions or documentation on how the modification was supposed to be used. It made the plane almost useless for instruction. To learn stall recovery a different plane had to be rented. 

I decided to find out what I could do with the Plane and how to use that STOL (Short Take Off & Landing) modification. I climbed up to 10,000 feet and tried to stall it in every configuration I could think of. It would not drop a wing and full roll control stayed with the ailerons at all times. 

The surprise came when I held it in a full stall with just about half throttle. The airspeed dropped to zero with the nose pointed skyward, and yet the ailerons still worked. The plane was literally falling out of the sky tail first at 2000 feet a minute under full control.

I practiced stall recovery from that configuration and found that if I chopped throttle to idle and pushed the nose over, it stopped falling and was flying level at 40 mph in exactly 200 vertical feet. I did this many times, until I was sure it always worked and the maneuver came naturally to me.

The runways at Winnemucca had been extended at some time in the past to allow small jets to land there, so there was just 1000 feet to the first taxiway. I made a game out of landing on just the 1000 foot extension and turning off on the first taxiway. I usually had to add power and motor over to the taxiway. It was easy to land in less than 500 feet every time.

I never tried to land on any of the short mountain landing strips because the old tired Continental engine took a long time to get the plane up to speed for take off. With an engine upgrade to a new Lycoming engine it would have been a real STOL performer.

I did use the stall enhancement once at Farmington, New Mexico, when the tower asked me to “expedite my approach” as a twin Cessna was ten miles out on a straight in approach to Runway 7 also. I was “abeam the numbers” on downwind, so I told my wife Carolyn to “Hang on, this should be fun.” 

I pulled the nose high, added some power to hold the tail down, and turned toward the end of the runway. I turned a half circle directly to the runway, and as the plane lined up with the threshold, at 200 feet I pushed the nose hard over and cut the power. The plane immediately stopped falling and began flying. In just a couple of seconds we were flying level at 40 mph ready to land. I set it down easy and added power to taxi down to the midfield exit. When I announced I was clear of the runway, the tower thanked me for that expedited landing. I’m sure he was expecting a crash landing!

After several years the partners who owned the plane decided to sell to one of the owners and split the money. Some had quit flying, some wanted a more expensive plane to get their instrument rating, and I didn’t need the two extra seats in back, since my kids had grown up.

After some searching, I came across a Grumman AA1B two seat airplane with a canopy like a fighter plane and low wings. A pilot in Reno was stepping up to a bigger plane and was ready to sell his little plane. After agreeing on a price, and agreeing that he would pay for a new annual on sale, we made the deal.

He flew the plane up to Mountain Home, Idaho, for the annual inspection, so when the day came to close the deal, he flew to Winnemucca in his Piper Cherokee and picked Carolyn and I up and we went up to Idaho.

When the inspection was complete, I found a local pilot instructor who was familiar with the plane to give me a checkout ride. This little airplane was nearly the exact opposite of the Cessna. The wings were below us, not above. They were much shorter, only 25 ft tip to tip, and straight, with no stall enhancements added on. It was pretty obvious that when this wing stalled, it quit flying all at once. 

The cloud ceiling was only about 1200 feet that day, and the instructor refused to try a stall demo at that low altitude. He had heard about the reputation of Grumman Yankees, too. So we mostly practiced takeoffs and landings. When he was satisfied I could fly the plane he signed my log book and Carolyn and I were ready to fly our plane back to Winnemucca.

It was getting late in the evening, but the ceiling was lifting, and I could see clear sky toward the Rome VOR to the west, so I filed a flight plan and Carolyn and I boarded the plane and took off. The route is easy to follow, with roads beneath and VORs (VHF Omnidirectional Radiobeacons) all the way home. We turned at the Rome VOR in daylight and flew south toward Sodhouse VOR as darkness fell. 

Somewhere near the Nevada state border we both started to feel tired and sleepy. I was worried about an exhaust leak, so I told Carolyn to bundle up with her coat and I opened the canopy a small crack and opened the fresh air vents near our knees. It sure was cold, but it wasn’t far to Winnemucca. We landed without any trouble, and I tied the airplane down on the ramp and we got in the car and drove home. 

The next day I had a mechanic check the exhaust system for leaks, and there were none. It was just the end of a long, exciting day with our “new” airplane.

I went flying in the “Yankee” by myself in the next few days, and the first thing I wanted to do was check out the stall characteristics. It had a prominent placard on the dash right in front of the pilot that warned, “SPINS PROHIBITED”. I had also read that this plane had the worst record of spinning into the ground on turns to final of any airplane. That is always fatal.

Stalls no longer worried me at all, as long as I was high enough, so I climbed up to 10,000 ft. and tried a slow stall with engine at idle and full flaps deployed. It wasn’t nearly as scary as some had told me. There was no shaking as in a Cessna, but there was a stall warning buzzer that told you you were nearing a stall. The plane just suddenly dropped the nose and quit flying. Sure enough the ailerons became useless, but the rudder picked up a wing just fine, and if you kept coordinated there was no wing drop to worry about. 

A full throttle stall was much more exciting, as the torque of the engine ensured a wing drop at stall, but a stab at the rudder and a push on the yoke restored the plane to flying mode quickly.

I tried accelerated stalls in a 30º bank both left and right turns with full power, and it handled as expected with a break out of the turn, and a quick recovery with a push on the yoke.

I discovered that most stall recoveries took about 200 to 300 feet of altitude loss, so it was easy to see why a pilot wouldn’t want to stall when close to the ground on a landing approach. I changed my procedures when coming in for a landing with the “Yankee.”

The Pilot’s Operating Manual recommended 90 mph on downwind, 80 mph on base, and 70 mph on final in the landing pattern. The stall speed (with flaps) was 61 mph. It barely qualified to be certified in the “Normal” category. I knew a couple of pilots who swore they should’t have certified the plane at all, since it had been known to not recover from a spin. It only passed the certification by having that warning about SPINS PROHIBITED on the panel in front of the pilot.

I believe that every plane should be flown taking into account its strengths and weaknesses. A Grumman AA1B “Yankee” is not a slow, heavy hauler bush plane and shouldn’t be flown like one. It is light on the controls, and fun to fly, even if a little under powered and overweight. To compare it to cars, it is very like an MG sports car. Not really practical, but the most fun you can have flying for the least money possible.

I flew the whole pattern at 90 mph, and rounded the corners Navy style. Only when I was lined up on the runway with wings level did I chop the throttle, pull the nose up to lose speed and put in the flaps. It was easy to bring the plane down to seventy at the end of the runway and when I flared for landing, it soon set down on the pavement. I always held the nose high to keep the castering front wheel in the air as long as possible just to avoid extra wear and tear on the front tire.

I also had to change other things about cross country flying. I had to be more careful about the airports I chose to land on. I flew to Oklahoma a couple of times from Nevada and I had to move down to Double Eagle airport in Albuquerque from Santa Fe, because the altitude at Santa Fe was too high for the little “Yankee” and there were power lines at the end of the runway there. The “Yankee” only had 105 hp and short wings, so a longer runway was essential.

Once when flying to California, I needed to land for my passenger’s nature needs, so I landed at the next airport I came to. It was Cameron Park, a short strip in the middle of houses - an airpark. I started to fill the tanks, but when I looked back at the runway, I stopped at two gallons. In a couple of aspects I was lucky: it was not too hot yet, being morning, and the airport elevation was much lower than my home airport. 

I got out the POH and calculated the density altitude, and runway length, and decided now would be a good time to practice my short runway takeoff. I taxied the airplane as close to the fence as I could, stood on the brakes, and checked both mags, adjusted the fuel mixture for best RPM, then let the brakes loose and held the nose down until I got best angle of climb speed and pulled back and held the speed there until I cleared the house at the end of the runway by 50 or 60 feet. Then I lowered the nose to best climb speed and richened up the mixture a bit to cool the engine for the rest of the trip to Merced. I never made the mistake of landing at Cameron Park in my “Yankee” again.

When my son wanted to learn to fly, I had to search to find an instructor who would teach in my “Yankee”. I found one who was willing if I checked him out in the plane, and especially if I showed him the stall characteristics. He had heard all the horror stories of how “bad” it stalled.

I took him up to show him how it flew, and he liked the handling. A Cessna feels like a truck after flying in a “Yankee” for awhile. He wanted me to demonstrate stalls for him, so I showed him stalls with no power, stalls with full power, and ended with a full power stall in a turn at 30º banks angle. He agreed that it wasn’t that awful, just quick and sudden. 

He asked why I pulled the plane into the stalls, instead of “sneaking” up to them. I explained that I understood why he would ask that, because most people killed in stall/spin scenarios were not paying attention to the airspeed and were surprised when the stall happened, often on the turn to final approach. 

My philosophy is that you make the fatal mistake when you forget about the airspeed, and if you are close to the ground no amount of skill will save you from a crash. It serves no purpose to learn to recover from a surprise stall that sneaked up on you in a turn close to the ground. 

As one instructor told me, the three most important things to remember when close to the ground are 1. Airspeed, 2. Airspeed, and 3. Airspeed.

My son got about ten hours of flight instruction, but got a good scare when they forgot to switch to the fullest fuel tank in the landing pattern. The instructor knew instantly what happened when the engine quit, and switched to the other tank, but there are a few seconds until the fuel gets to the engine. 

In telling me about it later, the instructor praised my son for pushing on the yoke to maintain airspeed as they came in on final, rather than pull on the yoke to try to keep the plane in the air. They just missed landing in the sagebrush at the end of the runway, but they got to the runway alright. Both of them were obviously still shook up when they taxied into the airport, where I was waiting. 

My son lost enthusiasm for flying after that close call, and decided he would be happier on the ground, or letting me do the piloting. I did not try to dissuade him, because if it’s not fun to do, why do it? 

After 9/11, 2001, a lot of the fun went out of flying for me, with closer surveillance from the government, and nearing retirement with tighter finances coming my way, I decided to sell the “Yankee” to pilot friends at the Winnemucca airport. The engine was nearing overhaul time, and I needed the money for other things.

Now and then I think of getting back into flying. My wife died of Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago, and I am single now, with a little money left over, even after buying a house here in Oklahoma. But my eyesight isn’t so good anymore, and my heart is having electrical problems and will probably need a pacemaker soon. 

But I still look up at the students learning to fly overhead (I live under a practice area for Southeastern Oklahoma State University, a large flight school) and vicariously fly with them as they practice stalls. 

I miss the fun!

Having Fun Again

 The power has been on for over a day now, and the seriousness of the situation has abated significantly. Today I’m having a fun time again.

Darlene had a doctor’s appointment this morning. Even though it has been snowing all night, we have only 5” on the ground. We decided I would drive her to town. We were almost the only vehicle on the road.

At 9:00 AM there were no snowplows out, even on the highway. The little Mazda was dragging bottom badly, and in some places plowing and pushing the snow in front, but as long as I can maintain momentum we move along just fine. The snow is fine, hard frozen powder and is easy to push away, even with the ice sheet on the road surface underneath.

I had to back up and punch through the ridge of snow on the side of the highway, but once I got out on the highway I was able to get up to 55 or 60  on the hard ice and packed snow. There were no other cars around, so stopping distance was infinite. 

When I got to town, the snow ridges were much higher between lanes, and especially in the median. When coming into Durant on West Main St, it is necessary to make a U-turn through the break in the median to turn north onto Westside St., since the freeway ramp offset the road by a couple of hundred feet.

Now we were in traffic, and several were waiting at the traffic light as I approached. The green arrow came on, so I held my speed up to conserve momentum to turn through the median for the U-turn. Sure enough, the deep snow caused my front wheels to skid wide on the U-turn, and it looked like we might hit the ditch. 

Knowing the brakes wouldn’t help me, I grabbed the parking brake lever, held down the button and pulled up hard as I added a little power to the front wheels. Wheeee! The back wheels broke loose and made a beautiful circle around the front wheels. I let off the hand brake, steered back to the right and caught the lane perfectly and drove on down to turn right on Westside St.  Back when I was a teenager in California, we called this maneuver a Brody. Great fun!

I bet those people waiting at the light thought there was some crazy teenager at the wheel. Worse! Some old white haired codger reliving his youth with a wicked grin on his face.

We weren’t too surprised to find the doctor’s office closed and dark. Both Texas and Oklahoma are having rolling blackouts because they are not equipped to handle this kind of weather. Even if they had snowplows, they can’t plow the city streets because they would remove thousand of raised reflective lane markers on the streets. The only snow removal equipment we saw was a road grader out on highway 70 slowly peeling packed snow off the right lane. If he doesn’t get some help, we might get the highway plowed by March.

So we turned back and went back home. The only trouble was at that stoplight by Walmart in the middle of the banked curve. Last time there was a pickup stranded there, but it was clear when I arrived today. Unfortunately the red light lasts about two minutes, and I couldn’t drive slow enough to avoid having to stop and wait. 

When the light turned green, I had to turn to the right and slowly crawl the tires up the bank and across the intersection until I could get a little speed going and find enough traction to continue forward. 

For the life of me I don’t understand why they piled up a tall bank of soil to create a banked curve, forcing side roads to climb a hill to get up to the highway, and then put a stop light right in the middle of the curve. It is so dangerous that trucks are prohibited from turning left onto the highway from the north, because the sudden banked slope tips them over if they are the least bit heavy or fast. Years ago I made this same turn in my RV and dumped all the dishes out of the upper cupboards.

The logical solution would be to tear out the whole intersection and lower the grade about 15 feet, make the curve flat (It’s not that sharp a curve) and allow side traffic to approach on the level. Today, I suspect it would be impossible to climb up out of the What-a-Burger driveway, and difficult to get up the slope from Walmart with out chaining up or have studded tires on a four wheeler. 

Well, I guess that’s enough fixing all that is wrong with the world. We continued on back to the house with no further trouble, as there still were no cars on the road besides us. 

We are snug inside the house again, hoping the electricity hangs on for the next week or so. 

Today was fun, reminding me of younger days in Colorado and Northern Nevada. I got to practice some of the tricks I learned the hard way in colder climes. If you want to hear a long tale, ask me about how many ways I have been stuck and had to winch out, jack out or dig out.

It took me years to convince my wife Carolyn that the whole fun of four wheeling is to see how far from home you can get stuck!

The Big Chill

 It’s not funny anymore! Things got serious here last night. 

About seven PM the lights went out and the furnace, of course, shut down. We already had the water trickling in the kitchen sink because the pipes run along the west side of this house, just inside the skirting.

The skirting is fairly substantial, with rocks grouted to the bottom of the house all the way around, and the hot water heater is at one end of the house, and the kitchen sink is at the other end, so a trickle of hot water will keep all the pipes toasty - as long as the electric hot water heater has electricity.

We heat this house with propane, and I just put 300 gallons in the tank last week, so that isn’t the problem. The heat from the fire is distributed through the house by an electric fan, and we soon started feeling the cold coming through the walls. 

I have a small tailgate generator in the garage, but I can’t find the amperage rating on the fan motor. One of my plans for the future is to hook up that generator and see if it can handle the load. If not, I may have to buy a bigger one. If I hard wire a double pole/double throw switch to an outside receptacle, I could keep just the furnace alive without electrocuting any linemen working on the service feed outside. 

I’ll have to check with a licensed electrician before I make that move. 

I called the emergency hotline to the power company, and I listened to a recorded message telling me that there was trouble in the Kirsey switchyard and they had people working on restoring power, but no estimate on when they would get the power back on. 

When the power dropped out, it tried to reclose three times, but popped open immediately, as if it was a dead short to ground somewhere. No wind was blowing, and no ice was building up on the trees or wires, so I was baffled as to the cause of the outage.

There were two brief minutes of power about two hours later, but the lights went back out within a minute, leaving us in the dark. I went out to the motor home and retrieved a battery powered lantern with LED lights, which will make light for 20 hours or so.

We sat in the dim light getting colder and colder until about five hours had passed and we were beginning to shiver. Wilma, my sister-in-law, had offered us a warm place to stay the night if the power didn’t come back on, and the power company still had no estimate on power coming back.

The hot water trickle in the kitchen sink was slowly going cold as the water heater filled with cold water. It was near midnight when we decided it was time to abandon the house. I retrieved a couple of bottles of alcohol that Darlene had just bought, and I poured a full bottle of each in the toilet bowls for antifreeze, made sure the water was still trickling in the kitchen sink, just hoping that circulating water at ground temperature might prevent a total freeze up.

We drove over to Wilma’s house and woke her up. She graciously offered us couches and recliners and blankets for the night. I went to sleep in a recliner with ugly thoughts of busted pipes and water spraying all over the house when the power came back on and thawed the pipes.

When I awoke at about eight AM I called the power company again and instead of the recorded message, I was surprised to hear an actual live person. She could not tell me about the outage status, but she took down my number if they needed to contact me.

Darlene and I drove back out to the house at 10 AM and were thrilled to see the power was back on in the house. The water was still trickling in the kitchen sink, and I opened and purged every faucet in the house - no ice found - and both toilets were intact and functional. 

The time on the electric range was 6:00, so I know the power came on six hours earlier, at about 4:20 AM. That’s about nine hours and twenty minutes chilling in the dark.

We drove back to Wilma’s house and got Poppy, Darlene’s dog, and also her cell phone. The roads are snow packed and rutted, so we dragged the bottom of the car in town, which had not seen a snow plow yet. 

Wilma’s house is on the other side of a creek (bayou) with a steep grade on both sides, so getting across involved a lot of momentum, because with packed snow and ice there was no traction. I measured the south slope a year ago when I was installing a gate next to the road, and found it’s a 13 1/2 % slope.

Last night on the way into town a tow truck was extricating a small sedan out of the median that had slid off the road near Walmart. This morning there was white Ford pickup in the same spot with his flashers going, because when he tried to move on the banked curve, it just slid sideways toward the median. There is a banked curve there, with a stop light in the middle of the curve. Somebody needs to send a traffic engineer back to school. If you are required to stop halfway around a curve, they should not bank the curve.

I pulled around the pickup when he stopped sliding, and had no trouble on the rest of the trip home. Everybody here likes pickups, but when the roads are icy there is nothing more helpless than an empty pickup. All the weight is at the front and all the wheels pushing are at the other end in the back.

So this morning I’m proud of my little Mazda3. It went everywhere I needed to drive in the ice and snow, and drove around several other cars and pickups with no trouble at all. I’m pretty proud of this old house, too. It came through the freeze up with no damage at all to the piping anywhere. 

I’m ready for a hot shower now.

Islam and its relationship to Christianity and Judaism

 Islam and its relationship to Christianity and Judaism.

I have a friend, who since the election, has gone over to the dark side. She has rejected the freedom for all religions to worship in this country as they wish, and has become very anti-Muslim, even to complaining about Muslims and other religions giving prayers in our capitol.

If she was arguing that all religious observances and prayers have no place in our official government meeting places, I would agree, but that horse left the barn ages ago. She is convinced that this is a Christian nation, even though the Constitution makes no reference to Christianity or Jesus. And she is ignorant of the intentions of the founding fathers in creating a secular, free country where all may observe their religious rites (rights?) equally.

She shares the beliefs of most fundamental Christians that somehow Islam is a different, opposing religion. They don’t realize that Islam is one of the three Abrahamic religions, along with Judaism and Christianity. 

The Koran brings Islam even closer to Christianity than Judaism, because in that book, Jesus is recognized as one of the greatest of prophets. The Koran has a whole chapter on Mary and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Moslems believe Jesus was a Messiah, just not the Son of God. The fundamental belief of Islam is that there is only ONE God, and Mohammed is His prophet.

One of the things that puzzles me after many years of studying the early Christian writings, is how the Catholic Church decided to put the book of James in the Christian Bible. To me, James is the crossover book that bridges the beliefs of Islam and Christianity. 

The 27 books in our New Testament were first proposed by Bishop Athenasius of Alexandria, Egypt, in 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicaea, called for by Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to claim Christianity.

The list of books wasn’t finalized until over seventy years later. Meanwhile, some objected to including the book of James, precisely because there was no mention of Jesus as the Son of God, or of his redemptive death on the cross for our sins, although there are a lot of words about sinning. But in the end James was accepted into the canon. 

In the centuries leading up to the Carthaginian Councils, some prelates objected to the Revelation of John as being too hard to understand. At the time it was interpreted to refer to Nero or Herod Antipas. Since then every generation has found its own Anti-Christs and Beasts. Some wanted to leave it out and insert The Shepherd of Hermes instead. I think that might have been a good idea.

The final list of approved books in the New Testament wasn’t done until about four hundred years after the crucifixion. Following are excerpts from the records:

“Councils were nowhere more frequently called in the Primitive Times than in Africa. In the year 418–19, all canons formerly made in sixteen councils held at Carthage, one at Milevis, one at Hippo, that were approved of, were read, and received a new sanction from a great number of bishops, then met in synod at Carthage. This Collection is the Code of the African Church, which was always in greatest repute in all Churches next after the Code of the Universal Church. 

The Canon approved by the third Synod of Carthage (397 CE)

The first council that accepted the present New Testament canon was the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (393 CE): however, the acts of the Council are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the third Synod of Carthage.

Canon XXIV. Besides the canonical Scriptures, nothing shall be read in church under the name of divine Scriptures. Moreover, the Canonical Scriptures are these: [then follows a list of Old Testament books]. The [books of the] New Testament: 

the Gospels, four books;

The Acts of the Apostles, one book;

The Epistles of Paul, thirteen;

Of the Same to the Hebrews, one epistle;

Of Peter, two;

Of John, apostle, three;

Of James, one;

Of Jude, one;

The Revelation of John.

Concerning the confirmation of this canon, the transmarine Church shall be consulted. On the anniversaries of martyrs, their acts shall also be read.

(The transmarine church is the Church in Rome, across the Mediterranean Sea, which still had to approve the acts of the African church Synod, which was not always a given. D.V. Rogers)

Note that Hebrews is listed separately from the other 13 epistles.

According to Zahn, in 419 another Synod held at Carthage gave the concluding words in the following form:

Fourteen epistles of Paul…

The Revelation of John, one book. 

Let this be sent to our brother and fellow Bishop,  Boniface [of Rome], and to the other bishops of those parts, that they may confirm this canon, for these are the things that we have received from our fathers to be read in church.

One thing few modern day Christians realize, is that after the crucifixion, there was not one unified church with just one set of doctrines. When I was younger, I wished I could go back and find out what the original apostles believed. That is what led to my obsession with the early church and everything that was written in the first four hundred years or so of the church history.

 In their choice of books the Catholic Church, in an attempt to make it seem as though it had always been one church, declared all other groups of Christians as heretics, banning their scriptures and persecuting those who persisted in other interpretations of Jesus’ message. But even in the New Testament, the differences are apparent.

For instance, some thought Jesus was a physical human being with a physical body. Some were sure he was a spirit, of divine and not human nature. So included in the canon is the story of Thomas, who doubted the real body of Jesus and was asked to touch his side to prove he was really flesh and blood.

Those two beliefs persisted, and became branches of the early Christian church. For those who believed he was a flesh and blood human, who suffered on the cross in agony, there was Matthew’s Gospel, which says he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then when he had cried aloud again, he died.

For those who believed he was composed of divine spirit, and felt no pain, there was John’s Gospel. First he took care of business, telling John to take care of his mother. Then Jesus, noting it was time to fulfill the prophecy, said, ”I’m thirsty.” They gave him vinegar on a sponge, and then he simply said, “It is finished!” And he died. No sign of pain at all. 

The followers of Marcion taught that the real Jesus was up above the scene somewhere laughing at the presumption of mere men thinking they could kill God.

The most telling evidence of the controversy in the early church is hinted at in Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15. 

“And certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren. “Unless you are circumcised as Moses taught, you can’t be saved!”

When therefore, Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.”

This was not just about circumcision - this is about Moses’ teachings. James’ church in Jerusalem was Jewish in all respects. In order to join the Christian church in Jerusalem, you had to become a Jew. You had to keep all the Mosaic laws, including those related to food. You also had to believe in one God, our Father, as Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer. But you could not be a Jew and believe that Jesus was “The Son of God.” 

Just as Moslems believe today, James’ church believed that Jesus was a great prophet, Lord, and Messiah, but not God.

Paul, on the other hand, was teaching a new religion. Jesus was the Son of God and came down to earth to pay for all the sins of men, and allow them to be saved without keeping the laws of Moses perfectly. God’s love and grace covers all those who accept his sacrifice, and you were no longer in bondage to the old Jewish laws. 

“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith in Jesus Christ…and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Galations 2:16

“Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loves another has fulfilled the law.” …”Love works no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Romans 13:8,10.

“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.” “And now abides faith, hope, and love, these three: but the greatest of these is love.”  ! Corinthians 13: 3, 13.

“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, thusly: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Galations 5:14, 18

James and Paul argued about this for all the rest of their lives. As noted in Acts 15, they came to a compromise where Paul’s Gentile and Greek converts didn’t have to be circumcised to remain Christians, but the rule still applied to the Jews in Judea, where James’ churches were. 

Peter, who lived in the town of Capernaum, in Galilee, seemed to try to have it both ways. When he came up to Antioch to see Paul, he dispensed with the Jewish dietary rules when with Gentiles, but when others came up from Jerusalem, he went back to following the Jewish rules. Paul called him out for his hypocrisy. In Galations, chapter 2 verse 11, Paul says he got right up in his face!

James makes it plain that keeping the law was essential to being a Christian. And he makes it plain that he is talking about the law of Moses.

“If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well.”

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, “Do not commit adultery” said also,”Do not kill. Now if you commit no adultery, but you kill, you have become a transgressor of the law.” James 2:8, 10, 11.

In verse 19, James asserts his monotheism: “You believe that there is one God; you do well. The devils also believe, and tremble.”

In verse 20, James is vehement - “But will you know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” Want to take a guess who the vain man is that James is referring to?

In their lifetimes, Every time that Paul went to Jerusalem to argue with James, he seems to have lost. Even when he took lots of cash to the Jerusalem church, they still could not find agreement. Eventually the record shows the Jews were about to stone him to death, and he appealed to Caesar, being a Roman citizen, and they sent him to Rome as a prisoner. Those Jews who sent him just might have been James’ Christian/Jews.

Peter was already in Rome, as a missionary. In about 67 CE both were executed by Nero, who claimed the Christians set the fire that burned Rome.

So how did we get to the modern era, where Christian churches still have that argument going about faith and works?

James’ churches near Jerusalem were destroyed and annihilated in 70-72 CE by the Roman army of Titus. All Jews in and around the city were carved and sliced to pieces until the streets of Jerusalem were awash in blood, according to Josephus. The Roman army even attacked Jews at Masada, near the Dead Sea, and kept a siege going until they all killed themselves.

What few of his followers escaped went to the east, through Petra in Jordan, and on into Arabia. A few hundred years later a new religion appeared there, led by a prophet named Mohammed, with beliefs that strongly resemble those of the Christian Jews from Jerusalem. 

Islam believes in all the Old Testament prophets, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaiah and Jesus, with Mohammed the last, most important, one. They still keep the dietary laws as the Jews do, except the Arabic term is Halal, rather than Kosher. And there are strict laws which they must follow in order to be faithful Muslims.

Paul’s churches, on the other hand, continued to thrive and expand throughout the Roman world. They had the advantage of Paul’s writings, which were copied and read in every church. Peter and John were illiterate fishermen, and the books attributed to them were written by close friends or followers, scribes probably. Half of the books that became the New Testament were attributed to Paul. His ideas on religion became the rule.

I find that ironic, since the Catholic Church claims Peter as its founder and first apostle. Paul is the one who preached Christ’s death on the cross and his redemption for our sins. Grace is a Pauline concept.

But the Catholic Church tried to make it all fit when they chose the books to make the New Testament. They needed James to make it necessary to do good works to be in the church, such as doing penance, paying into the church treasury, and helping build large buildings.

 

They also needed the vision of Christ on the cross from Paul, to give people hope, and to keep people believing that his grace and forgiveness could be found in the Catholic Church, with the help of the priests.

They also ruled that gospels and epistles that implied that one could find his own salvation without the church, as a group called Gnostics believed, were heretical and those books should be destroyed. 

Luckily for us, when Bishop Athenasius sent those orders out to the churches in Egypt, one church near a town called Nag Hamadi chose to pile those books in a tall jar and bury it in a cliff near the Nile River. They were found by local people in 1945 and eventually found their way out to the world where we could read them and discover what some of the other Christian churches believed.

There is also an intriguing book called the Gospel of Barnabas, which is of Muslim origin from about the eighth century, which has this quote from its introductory chapter:

“Dearly beloved the great and wonderful God hath during these past days visited us by his prophet Jesus Christ in great mercy of teaching and miracles, by reason whereof many, being deceived of Satan, under presence of piety, are preaching most impious doctrine, calling Jesus son of God, repudiating the circumcision ordained of God for ever, and permitting every unclean meat: among whom also Paul hath been deceived, whereof I speak not without grief; for which cause I am writing that truth which I have seen and heard, in the intercourse that I have had with Jesus, in order that ye may be saved, and not be deceived of Satan and perish in the judgment of God. Therefore beware of every one that preacheth unto you new doctrine contrary to that which I write, that ye may be saved eternally.”

— Introduction to the Gospel of Barnabas 

The author is unknown, (we know it wasn’t Barnabas, since he died on the isle of Cyprus a couple of years before Paul died in Rome), but the text pretty well sums up the beliefs of the Judean Jamesian Christians and their disputation with Paul. If this is true, it corroborates the text in Galations 2:13, which implies that Barnabas reverted to the beliefs of the Jews from Jerusalem.

So, in conclusion, (I could write a book on the Marcionites, Valentinians and other Gnostics, etc. but I’ll leave those for another day) anyone who believes that Islam doesn’t belong with Christianity and Judaism as the three Abrahamic religions, and somehow worships a different God, needs to go back to their studies again.

If Christians can give prayers in our national capitol, then Jews and Moslems should have the same rights. Maybe even Hindus, Sikhs, or Pastafarians! It’s a free country, isn’t it?