May God’s Grace Shine On Moore, Oklahoma

Photo by robby_s_perry • Instagram.

I live in the area that has the startup of these winds.  I thought March was over, but that is not so.  Prayers for all in Oklahoma.

Tracks.

 

Kudos To The Parental Unit

Putting a stop to bullying in schools can be a difficult task for teachers, but one woman from Murray, who found out her daughter was relentlessly teasing another student, decided to teach her a lesson by giving her a taste of her own medicine.

Yes, a parent!  Maybe, this isn’t how most parents would address this issue, but I think that this young girl will think twice about ever doing this again.

Ally went to a local thrift shop and bought about $50 worth of clothing that she knew her daughter would never want to wear. Thursday morning, Kaylee awoke to find an unflattering outfit on the bathroom door with a pair of old sneakers below it. Ally explained to Kaylee that she would be wearing the ensemble to school that day.

“I died. I did,” said Kaylee, who admitted she cried when she first looked at the clothes.

In the two days Kaylee had to dress in the outfits selected, she admitted she became the target of unkind words.

“They talk behind my back,” she said of her classmates.

I really hate the fact that young students believe that what they wear is more important than what they are supposed to be learning.   We are defined by our actions.

“She would take her out on the playground and call her names, and tell her she was a slob and tell her she dressed like a sleaze,” Ally said. “Someone not wanting to go to school anymore based off of something that one other little person said to them. I mean, that’s huge, that’s damaging.”

Of course there is the ever present know it all telling us that this is not the norm:

The experience, while effective, strays from the norm, according to Dr. Douglas Goldsmith of the Children’s Center.

“What happens with that is the person walks away at the end saying, ‘Now I’m really angry, that was humiliating and now I’m angry,’” Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith recommends a different approach when dealing with cases of bullying.

“What may be better for most parents is if we teach children empathy by having them volunteer at a place where there’s poor people,” he said.

That doesn’t really work.   As for them being angry…give me a break.  Is that something that Child Protective Services should be called into investigate?   I think Dr. Goldsmith might just have made that call.

Call me an ogre, but it doesn’t kick them in the arse in the same way when the tables are turned on them.  I am with this mom.  The kid needed to feel the same way that she made another feel.  Sending her to do some volunteer work is an easy get out of jail card.  Early intervention might have helped this young one grow up sturdier.

 

I Don’t Have A Problem With This, What Do You Think?

 The Land without Muslims.

…The official policy of Japan is not to give citizenship to Muslims who come to Japan, and even permits for permanent residency are given sparingly to Muslims.Japan forbids exhorting people to adopt the religion of Islam (Dawah), and any Muslim who actively encourages conversion to Islam is seen as proselytizing to a foreign and undesirable culture. Few academic institutions teach the Arabic language. It is very difficult to import books of the Qur’an to Japan, and Muslims who come to Japan, are usually employees of foreign companies. In Japan there are very few mosques. The official policy of the Japanese authorities is to make every effort not to allow entry to Muslims, even if they are physicians, engineers and managers sent by foreign companies that are active in the region. Japanese society expects Muslim men to pray at home.

Japanese companies seeking foreign workers specifically note that they are not interested in Muslim workers. And any Muslim who does manage to enter Japan will find it very difficult to rent an apartment. Anywhere a Muslim lives, the neighbors become uneasy. Japan forbids the establishment of Islamic organizations, so setting up Islamic institutions such as mosques and schools is almost impossible. In Tokyo there is only one imam.

snip

The Japanese approach to Muslims is also evidenced by the numbers: in Japan there are 127 million residents, but only ten thousand Muslims, less than one hundredth of a percent. The number of Japanese who have converted is thought to be few. In Japan there are a few tens of thousands of foreign workers who are Muslim, mainly from Pakistan, who have managed to enter Japan as workers with construction companies. However, because of the negative attitude towards Islam they keep a low profile.

There are several reasons for this situation:

First, the Japanese tend to lump all Muslims together as fundamentalists who are unwilling to give up their traditional point of view and adopt modern ways of thinking and behavior. In Japan, Islam is perceived as a strange religion, that any intelligent person should avoid. [...]

The most interesting thing in Japan’s approach to Islam is the fact that the Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam. They make a clear distinction between their economic interest in resources of oil and gas from Muslim countries, which behooves Japan to maintain good relations with these countries on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Japanese nationalist viewpoints, which see Islam as something that is suitable for others, not for Japan, and therefore the Muslims must remain outside.

You must read the entire piece.  What do you think?

h/t WZ

 

Resting Doesn’t Have To Be New

It is Sunday, a day of rest.  I know that I would love to stay in this hotel.

When Margareta Berg, a young German girl who ran away from her parents in Germany as a teenager, arrived in Matera, she found mostly hippies living inside the honey colored caves. She would later be involved in the transformation of those caves into a hotel that would be listed in prestigious travel publications as one of the most beautiful hotels in the world.

The mind and the owner of the hotel is Mr. Daniele Kihlgren, who Berg partnered up with after reading about his work restoring villages in Abruzzo in a newspaper. The Swedish-Italian entrepreneur, hotelier and philanthropist,  spearheaded the campaign to breathe life back into the caves while honoring the simplicity of the dwelling lifestyle.

There is just something quite wonderful about old and new meeting in the center.

While the calming style certainly pays tributes to its simple roots (there are no televisions or telephones in the rooms), the time-worn cobblestone floors are heated from underneath, bathing involves a state of the art Philippe Starck bathtub, cleverly placed LED spotlights illuminate the hidden nooks and in case you’re not quite ready to disconnect, there is WIFI in every room (phew!)

WiFi for those that must stay connected to the world.  I can’t think of anything more relaxing.

Just look at the night view.

The Italian Hotel built inside Abandoned Medieval Grottos | Messy Nessy Chic Messy Nessy Chic.

 

Wasn’t Peggy a big supporter of hope and change?

Now, Peggy seems perplexed.

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He’s shocked, it’s unacceptable, he’ll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.

But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department.

A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.

 

Since Judges Got Their Records Snagged, Will They Do Anything?

IRS faces class action lawsuit over theft of 60 million medical records.

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.