THE PITIFUL BLEATINGS OF AN EX-NUN

Humor Dept.

Too ridiculous to get terribly upset about.  But if you want a laugh or two you can read this:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/28/17959215-kentucky-woman-ordained-as-priest-by-dissident-roman-catholics?lite=

There's no fool like an old fool, I guess, but I wonder:  is this kind of Junior High school idiocy peculiar only to Americans?

FRANCE STICKS ITS HANDS INTO DUNG AND SMEARS IT IN THE CHURCH'S FACE

To no one's surprise, the swine faction in the French parliament has jumped headlong into the filth of queerdom and is now beginning already to smear it into the face of the Church and the good people of France.

They have "legalized" the unspeakable.  Of course an unjust law is no law at all, but judging how their goon squads and praetorian guard has been treating the demonstrators, including Catholic priests, they are going to fight to the death to uphold their lunacy.

We cannot comment on it at this time for this reason: we await the reaction of the Church, in France and in Rome.  Will it be conciliatory, cautious and nice, or will it thunder loud and clear in condemning this monstrous injustice?  When we hear anything decisive from the Church we will comment more fully.

St Joan of Arc sits quietly by herself just now, in tears we would imagine.  But her fighting spirit just might still rally the citizens of the eldest daughter of the Church who have just been shat upon.

ROME AND MOSCOW AND A HOLY ALLIANCE

The miraculous icon of Kazan

When Pope Benedict was on the throne of Peter, there did at one time seem to be some hope that one day soon Moscow and Rome might, at least in this instance, form a Holy Alliance.  The instance in question is the re-evangelisation of once Christian countries, suffering under a vicious secular onslaught.

In May of 2010 Sandro Magister wrote an article in which he was convinced that a much hoped for meeting was to become a reality, a meeting between Pope Benedict and Patriarch Kirill.  That article, which is an important read, can be found here

But that was three years ago, and now Benedict has abdicated.

I know nothing of our present Pontiff's views of such an Alliance.  There are a few encouraging indications here and there but we simply don't know yet how he will confront the need of ending, even with baby steps, a schism that has gone on too long. 

But I can write neither profoundly nor knowledgeably about the delicate matter here.  It is my hope to invite an author who does have knowledge of these matters to contribute a piece to The Eye Witness, and with any luck such a piece may appear here soon.

Nevertheless Magister's article linked above is most encouraging.  And the more the forces of evil - let us use the word - have their way with the world the more it will necessary to hope and pray for such a Holy Alliance.

We need them and they need us.

SAINT CARDINAL DOLAN SPEAKS

This is not fresh news; it is several months old.  But we were intrigued by remarks of this noted Prince of the Church and could not help commenting on it.  We wrote this several weeks after the interview, which dealt with the Cardinal's disastrous then-upcoming Al Smith Dinner invite but held back publishing it in the hope that His Eminence would see the seriousness of it all.  He hasn't as yet.

In a recent interview granted to John Allen of The National Catholic Reporter, flagship publication of the numbskull faction in Catholicism, we read the following exchange [editorial remarks in yellow:]

Question: On this question of dialoguing or engaging with this secular culture, how do you do that without giving scandal to the extra-sensitive [an amusing description of Catholics shocked by the Al Smith Dinner scandal] portion of your flock?
Dolan: You mean, how do you sit next to Barack Obama and Governor Romney?
Question: There are some people who would say you’re just wrong for doing that. How do you find that balance?
Dolan: There might be some people who would say that God the Father was misguided in sending his only begotten son to sinful humanity. Some might question the wisdom and prudence of the Incarnation, I don’t know. It seems to me that God the Father set a pretty good example of probably the best way to invite people to eternal salvation is to be in the midst of them, to be incarnate where they’re at [Come again?  "Incarnate where they're at" - which means...what, exactly?]. I don’t mean to be dismissive, because you do have to try to be sensitive to some of their feelings.
Question: People weren’t exactly sensitive to your feelings in the way they reacted.
Dolan: I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m pretty thick-skinned [Thick-headed might be a better way to put it.]!

So.  According to this interview, God is sending His beloved Cardinal to frolic with the persecutors of His Church.  The operative word in that sentence is "frolic".  I don't think anyone seriously imagines that His Eminence will be trying to do what God's only-begotten Son was doing when He met with sinners, namely: converting them.  If His Eminence stays true to form, it will be an evening of hilarity, tiresome jokes and perhaps an occasional mildly-serious reflection on the nebulous concept of "freedom" which, we are sure, His Eminence will not take too much time explaining.

Notice the smugness, the condescension.  "Some might question the Incarnation, I don't know" or "you do have to try to be sensitive to some of their feelings" or "I don't know if you noticed or not, but I'm pretty thick-skinned."

This is the man Rome has sent to govern the diocese of New York.

LEST WE CATHOLICS FORGET: DEIR YASSIN

For those who have forgotten and those who've never heard about it, The Eye Witness recommends this article by historian Ramzy Baroud:

http://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2013/04/17/deir-yassin-beit-daras-and-the-buried-history-of-massacres/

We call our readers attention to these things because recent decades have shown that even Catholics, even those in the hierarchy, who once had a healthy skepticism about world events, have begun to follow only a single party line.  There are Catholic news outlets, websites and blogs who don't wish to know about these things either from a contempt for the facts of history or as a reaction to a well-known and ancient fear.  When this subject is brought up on some Catholic blogs, for example, the commenter is either censored, blacklisted or libelled by the blog administrators.  Another example of the disarray that a once united Faith finds itself in in 2013.

Some Catholics that I know have told me about this massacre, "So what?"  There in two words you see the triumph of propaganda over the Catholic Faith.  There are those Christians out there who could care less about the death of innocent Muslims.  To them I would point out the fact that in the photo shown above there are Christian corpses, Catholic and Orthodox, in that pile of death.

We therefore encourage our fellow Catholics, who once all held the same unshakable Faith, to ponder these words in the article linked above.

Sixty five years ago this atrocity was carried out.  In a somewhat "modified" way, it is still going on as we write. 

Would that some bloggers would try to understand that there are always two sides to every story.

Would that Cardinals Kasper and Koch remember Dier Yassin, too.

THE OTHER BOMBS

I thank The Big Pulpit- Byzantine Edition for linking to this plea, tragic in its desperation, and pitiful in its expectation that some world leaders might listen.  They wont.

https://melkite.org/patriarchate/appeal-to-world-leaders-from-patriarch-gregorios-iii

They wont because most of them, particularly America and Israel, want to see Syria crushed, its Christian population murdered or decimated, its Muslim population enraged with more justifiable hatred, a country in collapse.  The arrogant pipsqueak Michael Ledeen once famously called this evil "creative destruction", the annihilation of ancient civilizations to make way for those more to the liking of the Usual Suspects.

I am glad Pope Francis finally said something about this.  Would to God that he would go to Syria himself; it would be one papal journey that this writer could actually applaud.   Another vital part of the cradle of civilization is being decimated, much of it financed by US dollars.  We Americans sit here and pay our taxes, knowing that some of that money (indeed the majority of it) goes to bomb innocent people and destroy civilizations, either directly by drone or our own bombers, or by the proxies we train, coordinate and finance.  It is sickening.  Many more of those dollars go to murder our own children in the womb, and fuel a juggernaut of unnatural vice.

Yesterday the Hypocrite-in-Chief condemned the Boston bombing.  I wouldn't even listen to that monster.  I could not care in the slightest what he said, nor will I be panicked by a news media happy with this incident for a million reasons (one of them being to keep the ghoulish Gosnell case out of the papers), nor will I accept at face value anything Washington says about the Boston incident.  It was horrible and one can only weep at the evils it has wrought.  It could have hit this writer much closer to home than it has; I have a son attending school not far from there.  These poor, innocent people, bombed for God knows what reason.

But a bomb is a bomb, whether it explodes in Boston or Damascus.  The perpetrators in both cases should be brought to justice.  Whoever caused the carnage in Boston will no doubt be caught and punished.  But those who are causing carnage in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. will probably not be punished.  They will be re-elected to office, perhaps with the help of Cardinals Dolan and Wuerl.

A grabbing of our rosaries for the killed and injured in Boston would be well in order, as would some rosaries for the innocents being murdered by our drones, our bombs and our money, in Syria and elsewhere. 

Patriarch Gregorios has set a good example, pleading for sanity in a world that has taken leave of its senses.  May Our Lady, Help of Christians, preserve and protect these people.  And us.

A MOST BEAUTIFUL KYRIE

One of the most heart-rendingly beautiful settings of the Kyrie is that which was composed by Flor Peeters (1903-1986) in his lovely Mass in Honor of St Joseph.

It implores Our Lord to have mercy on us.  Musically, it begs Him to have mercy on us.  This exquisite piece, composed rather recently (in 1950), was written to adorn the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in that pure form which was taken away from the Church in the late 1960s.  It was that Mass that inspired Peeters to compose what he did; it was that Mass that inspired numerous other brilliant musicians.

In recent years in Milwaukee I was privileged to attend the traditional, ancient Rite Mass which has musical accompaniment by the Palestrina Choir under the leadership of Lawrence Stich.  Maestro Stich had his choir sing the Peeters Mass often.  The Peeters Kyrie, and Stich's conducting of it, was art of the highest order.

Here is a rendition of this gorgeous Kyrie.

http://youtu.be/bGlXD8rWWZY

That is what Heaven-centered Catholic liturgy is all about.

OBAMA REALIST...FROM THE LEFT

It is always instructive, and fascinating, when a left-leaning writer can see through the snake-like veneer of our Imperial Highness.  Sometimes, honest leftists see more clearly than blinkered rightists.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2295-dead-enough-the-reality-of-the-qlesser-evilq.html

In the linked article above Chris Floyd, a man of liberal bent, sees very clearly what kind of man is at the helm of our country (though I might argue with Mr Floyd if Obama really is at the helm).  Floyd's views in this case are more valuable than your average Obama-despiser because he approaches his subject from a different worldview.  I am glad he wrote this piece.  He wrote it in November, after the Obamunists won another election thanks to the help of the financial oligarchs, Hollywood, stupid Democrats, homosexual child molesters and Cardinal Dolan.

In the above article, Floyd takes a deep and terrible look into the actions of our ruling elite.  It is not for the faint of heart.  But we at The Eye Witness encourage you to read it.

THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE DECLARES A CHICKEN TO BE AN ASS

That much vaunted chronicler of all things true blue, The American Conservative magazine, has just declared a chicken to be an ass (at least many of its columnists have).

(Because it takes one to know one??)

That publication, in the person of a number of its columnists, has come out in favor of allowing two homosexually disturbed people to - get this - "marry" each other.   Yes.  A chicken is really an ass and the Mad Hatter makes perfect logical sense.  And they think ducks can fly backwards, too.  That is what passes for Conservatism now.  Is it any wonder why people have become increasingly fed up with those who claim to be conservative and who are nothing of the kind?  Or why they are now starting to believe that our Two Party system is comprised of Extreme Liberals and Conservative Liberals?

Over at the Chronicles website Tom Piatak points out the utter hypocrisy of this magazine.  What he says is very sound.

The whole "Conservative" or "Republican" charade has finally come to an end.  These people will sell their own Grandmothers into White Slavery rather than get a disapproving stare from sexual miscreants.  The number of those people still expecting any kind of substantial change under the Republicans is at last shrinking.  After decades of being stilleto-ed in the back by these gangsters with regard to abortion, personal freedoms, taxes and whatnot people are finally getting the picture that the Republicans are not and never have been our friends let alone the saviors of America.

It's quite amusing to see the lineup of "big name" conservatives all displaying their suicidal insanity.   Jim Jones must have trained them with his green KoolAid.  That list includes war-mongers like Dick Cheney, addled former first ladies like Laura Bush and bad movie directors like Clint Eastwood.  Not to mention the usual assortment of Congressclowns.  They are out there Stumping for Sodomy.  Too bad Lewis Carroll isn't still alive; what fun he'd have writing about this dismal crew. 

Pitiful, really.

At least we are beginning to see that the trust we placed in Republicans, or professional Conservatives for that matter, was misplaced.  It always was.  They are not the solution; they are the problem.  I cannot think of a single Conservative who has not betrayed the voters who sent him to office.  Even the celebrated Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, has been backtracking faster than a speeding locomotive.  He has suddenly forgotten about all those spending cuts the over-taxed people of his state were expecting and has suddenly remembered lots of projects that suddenly require money from the public purse.  But he is just typical of the rest.  The American Conservative suits these politicians well.  It is not surprising at all that they have lost their marbles like nearly every other pundit on earth that talks about this sordid business.  We even have Catholic bloggers trying to find common ground on this issue.

Some Catholics even want to debate the topic.  Debate?  There is nothing to debate.  Debating with madmen about lunacy is not this writer's idea of spending productive time.

Some Saint, I forget which, (Catherine of Sienna?) has stated that buggery is so disgusting that even the devils look away in revulsion.

We now have a ringside seat at the beginnings of what is very much starting to look like an authentic persecution.  Brace yourself, and arm yourself with the weapons that Holy Church supplies: prayer, the Sacraments and mortification. 

And don't bother subscribing to The American Conservative.

UPDATE:

[St Catherine of Sienna:

They [the homosexuals] not only fail from resisting the weakness [of fallen human nature] .... but they do even worse when they commit the cursed sin against nature. Like the blind and stupid, having dimmed the light of their understanding, they do not recognize the disease and misery in which they find themselves. For this not only causes Me nausea, but is disgusting even to the devils themselves whom these depraved creatures have chosen as their lords.
For Me this sin against nature is so abominable that for it alone five cities were destroyed by virtue of the judgment of My Divine Justice, which could no longer bear their iniquity ....
It is disgusting to the devils not because evil displeases them or because they find pleasure in good, but rather because their nature is angelic and flees upon seeing such a repulsive sin being committed. For while certainly it is the devil that first strikes the sinner with the poisoned arrow of concupiscence, nonetheless when a man actually carries out such a sinful act, the devil goes away.

Food for thought.]

MORTAL SIN, THE WORDS THEY DARE NOT SPEAK

In the many statements, allocutions, encyclicals and speeches of Pope John Paul II, it is sad to report, the words "mortal sin" are conspicuous by their absence.  I can not say he never spoke those words nor do I want to say he never thought about the issue but I cannot point to a single utterance or writing of his where he mentioned it.  The same can be said for Pope Benedict XVI.  It is as yet too early to determine what Francis as Pope will say on this topic.  Along the same lines I have not gone through the laborious task of reading everything that Paul VI wrote but I suspect he, too, had little to say about the explosion of mortal sin in the world.  I would happily welcome any corrections by readers.

Regardless what recent Popes may or may not have warned about mortal sin we do know that it is rarely, if ever, spoken from our pulpits.  Those who regularly attend the New Mass and have still managed to stay Catholic have told me that sin is a three-letter four-letter word.  Indeed as a regular attendee at an Ancient Rite Mass in my town this writer can add that I rarely even hear it from so-called traditional priests.  I cannot explain what is holding them back from speaking frankly.  Fear?

In a world sodden with vice, both natural and especially unnatural, the silence of the Church regarding the proliferation of those sins which offend God the most is incomprehensible.  Papal writings of the past fifty odd years have not exactly been shining examples of clarity, the Popes preferring ambiguous phrases over the simple, understandable King's English.  They make for very hard reading.  I hate to add that they are excruciatingly boring.  Yet while there are gems to be mined in those writings and utterances, the mining has to go very deep.  And even when found the truth is sometimes obscured by trendy words like "hermeneutic". Yes, I know that is a perfectly legitimate word.  There are others, surely.  Simple people really should not be expected to be left wondering about meanings when reading documents of great moment.  More than once this writer has had to have a dictionary nearby when wading through modern papal writings; conversely, when reading someone like Gregory the Great the words are as clear as a mountain lake.  Popes St Pius X, Pope Leo and Pope Pius XI didn't seem to have much trouble making themselves understood perfectly.  True, education being what it is the general level of intelligence today is far, far lower than it was 100 years ago.  Even so, the Popes of the last centuries and early 20th were able to convey their teachings clearly, so clearly that today's badly educated can understand them just as well as their forebears.

But who reads those anymore?  Not your average 21st century Catholic.  It is odd that numerous Catholics will, most commendably, read every word from the pen of the current holder of the Petrine Office, and, most strangely, be at the same time totally oblivious to, say, Rerum Novarum or much more tellingly, Testem Benevolentiae.  Our crowd these days, and that includes priests, nuns, Bishops and even Cardinals, probably have never read - perhaps never even heard of - Gueranger, Marmion, Goodier or Fahey.   They fairly ooze with Urs - von Baltasar, that is; they delight with de Lubac.  They are attracted to the nebulous, far from clarifying ideas of those gentlemen.  But anything written before 1962, or God forbid the works of the Fathers and Doctors, is a closed book to them.  Literally.  This is why I believe we are so badly instructed nowadays: our teachers are reading the wrong writers.  Chasing after anything new or revolutionary they instinctively reject the wisdom of ages past.  For them the first Pope was not Peter but John XXIII, or so it would seem when we hear whom they continually quote.  It is something remarkable when a modern prelate, high or low, can quote anything from any previous Pope.  Popes of the past were forthright when it came to discussing serious sin. No punches were pulled. They were unafraid to call a spade a spade, or a mortal sin a mortal sin.  Contemporary Popes have taken a different, more "nice" approach.  Rarely is sin even mentioned, let alone condemned.  Perhaps that is why we hear so little of past wisdom from modern Churchmen.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons why there is so little Faith today....not "faith" but Faith.

I find a truer sensus Catholicus among the simplest Christian mother than masters of convoluted thinking like Yves Congar, for example, and I for one will be very pleased when my co-religionists start to think of Teilhard as a new type of kitchen flooring and Schillebeekx as some sort of prehistoric bird.

But those great unspoken words "mortal sin" are going to have to be heard again and often if we are to pull our Church, and ourselves, out of the mire that is sucking us downwards.  It might mean remedial education for some notable Princes of the Church such as Timothy Dolan who has apparently never heard of such concepts as sin and Hell.  Indeed he must never had heard those terms at all, else why would he hobnob with Vice Creep Joe Biden at Mass and offer the Sacred Species to this man who sneers at Christ and who relishes his role as assistant persecutor of the Catholic Faith?  (One wonders if Dolan is aware of how the Obamas and Bidens must laugh at him behind his back)  When our teachers once again re-learn their Catechism perhaps then they will be better able to pass it along to those whose souls they are responsible for.

I am not going to wait for our Churchmen to suddenly remember that they have been neglecting their flocks for several generations.  In our small way we writers on internet blogs can dig out our old Catechisms and Missals and quote them as often as the situation demands.  Waiting to be led by the Bishops is not a sensible option at this moment in time.  In 16th Century England many Englishmen waited  for their Churchmen to act against the rising tide of apostasy.  Rome didn't act.  Until it was too late.  Unless we wish to repeat that episode, the one that split Christendom asunder, we must come to the realization that the Bishops aren't going to mount their chargers and come racing to our rescue.  They're not coming.  We've seen that in country after country every time some despotic government tries to shove the faces of Catholics into their steaming piles of filth.  When the government gets nasty the Bishops vanish. At least one could say that that's one ancient Apostolic tradition they have kept: the minute trouble emerged they all fled from Our Lord.  As the late and very great Hamish Fraser used to say, the first Official Collegial Act of the Bishops of the Church was to abandon Christ on Good Friday.

[God has taken pity on us a little.  He has given us men like Schneider, Rai and a number of other prelates who are deadly serious about restoring the Faith.  Rally around these men and pray for them.  May they go from strength to strength.]

There is nothing more edifying than finding a solid Confessor.  They're out there.  They are not numerous but you can find them.  They will not be afraid to tell you about that wrong road you are taking.  Treasure these men.  Make use of their guidance.  They will tell you squarely what most of our Bishops will not.

Then nourish yourself.

I cannot recommend highly enough the practice of reading the great minds of the past as a sort of tonic to refresh yourself after decades of sterile and badly-written tomes.  May I recommend the writings of Archbishop Goodier as a beginning?  Anyone who wishes for a non-Hollywood depiction of the Life, Sufferings, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ could find no better place to begin than with Goodier.  No equivocations, no flights of authorial fancy, no dabbling with odd theories, the Archbishop brilliantly walks us through the various moments in Jesus' life.  He was a great writer and a holy man.  Reading him is like being revitalized.

It is possible that this insignificant and small blog may possibly fall underneath the eyes of a Bishop or two.  If that happens may I ask Your Lordship to once again tell it like it is with regard to sins that are mortal?  Use your authority and do not tarry any longer.

You have the God-given authority to teach.  I haven't.



 

THE 71ST ANNIVERSARY

At the Manzanar Relocation Center.  Photo by the great Ansel Adams.

The United States government, in the person of that honest, stalwart and upright Commander-in-Chief, has assured us that the government would never round up US citizens in internment camps, even while the government is right now building a very large 'FEMA' camp out West and has put laws into place making such internment "legal" and while still holding and torturing innocents in Guantanamo Bay.  Our president was shocked that we would ever think such a thing.  This is America, after all, he assured us in that smoothly reptilian style of his.

This is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.   We weep at football games while the Star Spangled Banner is sung.

But while the tears are flowing as we sing about bombs bursting in air it might be helpful to recall, on this Opening Day of baseball season, that 71 years ago, on April 1st, 1942, the United States sent thousands of Japanese into internment camps...because they were Japanese.

I have my doubts that you will be hearing much about this from the major news media this week.

American war crimes come and go without too much notice.  There are a number of reasons for this, some of them obvious, others more confusing.  We all learned our US history in the 5th Grade and the lessons learned have stuck with us.  Not even our churches, imbued with or frightened of Americanism, have talked much about this.  Even in these days of the internet, as war crimes being committed are becoming ever more visible and impossible to deny, that 5th Grade history text trumps any and all reflection and thought upon the darker side of our history.

We know that had America been Catholic from the beginning, which was possible considering the strong historical Catholic presence in the West, the South and Canada, we wouldn't have been doing things like we did to the Japanese innocents, or dropping atomic weapons upon civilian populations, or carpet bombing European cities.  If we had been Catholic we probably wouldn't have been in that terrible war in the first place.  There are those who have dedicated their lives to the conversion of today's America to Catholicism, a noble effort to be sure.  That such a task may seem Herculean, or even Utopian, should not deter us from helping such efforts.  But while engaging in that kind of effort we should not close our eyes to the crimes of the past.  True patriotism does not mean joining the military and going off to "fight for freedom" (as if that was ever the case these past 150+ years); rather it means loving your country while dedicating yourself to cleansing it of the filth of the past and the present.

The injustice being remembered today is merely a reminder that we Americans might do well with a second and large helping of humble pie.  The military reminisces of our various Colonel Blimps hold no interest for this writer.  Jingoism and flag-waving while ignoring our inglorious past and present leave some of us rather disgusted.  Hilaire Belloc would often write of his own military experiences when he was young, when there still was a bit of chivalry left in soldiers (vide the famous World War 1 Christmas truce).  But when he got older that great man began to see things differently and to look at men-in-arms less romantically.  Losing sons in an evil and far from chivalrous Second World War being fought on behalf of international money-grubbers had a lot to do with it, as did Belloc's exemplary Catholic faith.  While we are losing what few freedoms we have almost every day we might wish to start resorting to that kind of humility which can give strength, the kind that remembers the wrongs we have done, with a firm purpose to never allow such wrongs to happen again.

Innocent Japanese then, as innocent Arabs now [WARNING: the link posted is hideous], were and are shamefully treated by the government of the United States and, I'm afraid, by far too many citizens.  These are crimes, and they must never be blotted out of our memories.

America needs to go to Confession.

THANKS MONSANTO, THANKS CONGRESS...

A real endangered species

The honeybee population is dying off.  We have lost nearly 50% this past year.  Our food supply is in serious and grave danger.


http://au.businessinsider.com/us-honeybee-population-is-collapsing-2013-3  (H/T to New Beginning)

Thank you, Monsanto.

Thank you, Congress and the Assassin-in-Chief, for passing the "Monsanto Protection Act" last week, making it impossible to sue these corporate pirates (who generously donate to Congress) for the ill effects caused by their life-killing products.  You are swine.

Thank you, media, for dutifully ignoring the story for so long.  As mouthpieces for Washington you do your job well.  Very well.

Thank you, farmers, who continue to use Monsanto products.  You are merrily cutting your own throats.  Thank you, BigAg farmers: you are the absolute worst of the lot.

Thank you, frivolous cell phone users, who use your cell phones to talk about such life-threatening issues as what color to dye my hair this week to how many fish I caught yesterday to the latest hip-hop news, for transmitting those waves which do, indeed, cause havoc among the bees.

Thank you all.

And when the price of, say, apples goes to $147.00/dozen do remember how you've helped.

Who said famines are not man-made?