Merry Christmas! (Early)

I promised myself I wouldn't put out any Christmas decorations this early... but then we started singing Christmas songs at school.... and I couldn't help myself. But I did limit myself to only two items. The first one to make its appearance was this fleece Christmas throw.



As you can see, one member of our household took a liking to the fleecy warmth. She spends most of her sleeping hours on the throw, either when it's draped on the couch or on my lap. While awake she kneads it incessantly. I was planning on getting more use out of it than my cat, but I don't have the heart to scoot her off of it when she looks so cute.

The other Christmas decoration that has found its way into our living room (and onto our piano) is this adorable snowman figure. I found him while shopping in Lewiston with my mom at a store called Real Deals. It's an adorable shop with very reasonable prices (hence the name) and I just couldn't resist buying this little guy. It makes me smile every time I see it.



Anyway, nothing really new or exciting to report on. We're having our good friends Lucas and Nicola (and baby Audrey) come and stay with us for a few days, so I'm spending the day airing out the guest room, washing sheets, cleaning the bathroom, grocery shopping, etc. I love being able to offer hospitality to out-of-town folks, it's nice to get some use out of our guest room and bathroom! Joel spent the morning at the school doing homework and is now seated downstairs munching on sunflower seeds and grading papers. Whiskey is taking a four hour nap in the basement. It's a wonderful Saturday.

From our favorite news source: The Onion

On the Uselessness of the Liberal Arts

This is from a speech one of the professors at NSA, Dr. Peter Leithart, gave a few years ago:

"We must concede that the liberal arts are, at least by all normal standards, useless.

But we must go further than concession: we must be willing to celebrate this uselessness. Lewis points out that there is always some crisis, some alarm that demands our attention; there are always a million and one things more important than reading Homer. Yet we continue to read Homer because we are not creatures whose behavior is solely guided by a crabbed criterion of usefulness. We are creatures made in the image of a Creator who makes things that He does not need, things that are not of use to Him. As we imitate His excess, we play music and recite poetry and tell stories—and organize liberal arts colleges so others can do these things with us. The liberal arts are useless in the same way that the centerpiece on a dining room table is useless; useless in the way a silk tie is useless; useless in the way salt and pepper are useless; useless in the way that perfecting a golf swing is useless; useless in the same way that most of what makes life rich and beautiful is useless. We should not be ashamed of the uselessness of the liberal arts, for making what we do not need, and doing what we have no ordinary use for, is part of the glory of being made in the image of the infinitely creative God."

The whole speech is great, you can find it here.

Yikes

Okay I know it's been a very long time since we've posted anything.... I really don't have a good excuse except that we're both very busy. I often think of things I would like to blog about, but then at night I remember how much homework I need to get done before tomorrow and then our blog gets abandoned, kicked unlovingly to the side where it slowly collects dust. But today I have my duster out. I came up with the brilliant idea of posting on Sunday afternoon when I don't do homework anyway! So here are our some pictures of our halloween festivities. A week before halloween we had a pumpkin carving party at our house, which is what these pictures are of. Then on Halloween the six of us watched a movie (the old version of the Haunting) over at mom and dad's house, drank spiced mead and took turns answering the door for trick-or-treaters. Very fun tradition.










Davey's pumpkin



Mom's Bat




My Ghost



Kate's Happy Vampire




Dad's Scary Pumpkin beside my ghost

In a nutshell

I was driving home from school a few hours ago and was imagining a conversation I might have with somebody who asked me my opinion on the banking system. As I was considering howto give my opinion in a nutshell, the term ponzi scheme came to mind. I was reading an article on the internet a few hours later and came across this paragraph:

The Collapse of a 300 Year Ponzi Scheme

All the king’s men cannot put the private banking system together again, for the simple reason that it is a Ponzi scheme that has reached its mathematical limits. A Ponzi scheme is a form of pyramid scheme in which new investors must continually be sucked in at the bottom to support the investors at the top. In this case, new borrowers must continually be sucked in to support the creditors at the top. The Wall Street Ponzi scheme is built on "fractional reserve" lending, which allows banks to create "credit" (or "debt") with accounting entries. Banks are now allowed to lend from 10 to 30 times their "reserves," essentially counterfeiting the money they lend. Over 97 percent of the U.S. money supply (M3) has been created by banks in this way. The problem is that banks create only the principal and not the interest necessary to pay back their loans. Since bank lending is essentially the only source of new money in the system, someone somewhere must continually be taking out new loans just to create enough "money" (or "credit") to service the old loans composing the money supply. This spiraling interest problem and the need to find new debtors has gone on for over 300 years — ever since the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 – until the whole world has now become mired in debt to the bankers’ private money monopoly. As British financial analyst Chris Cook observes:

"Exponential economic growth required by the mathematics of compound interest on a money supply based on money as debt must always run up eventually against the finite nature of Earth’s resources."

http://www.infowars.com/?p=5371

It's reassuring to know that I am not out of my mind.

Apple Picking and Cider Pressing!

Photos taken by Mike Church.

Two Sundays ago we went to Bishop's Orchard and picked apples and pressed them into cider. It was cold, but the cider was delicious. It tastes good cold or heated up (with cinnamon sticks and oranges, if you're fancy). I made an apple crisp a few days later with some of the ones I'd picked at the orchard. This is yet another aspect of fall that we love.



The orchard





Joel preparing to press the apples while Kate drops them in the top.


Davey cranking away while I press the mashed up apples into frothy goodness


Joel posing



On a more gruesome note, one of the few things we do not like about fall is when the spiders decide our house is more cozy than the cold outdoors. I am not a fan of spiders (to put it lightly) and am prone to fits of screaming and gagging when I see them. Thankfully I have a brave husband. Even Whiskey helps out; though she hasn't turned out to be a great mouser, she's a bold and daring spider-er. She likes to walk around with them as they try and wobble away to safety on their long, unstable legs. Then, whether because she's bored or just clumsy, she usually squishes them with one heavy paw. I've come downstairs several times to find flattened spider corpses on the floor. It's a satisfying sight.

Three More Things I Love about Fall