Pig-pen for president!

I have decided who I am going to vote for in 2020.

Pig-Pen.

Yes, THAT Pig-Pen, the dirt-loving character from Peanuts.

Frankly, I can't find a candidate that is worth voting for and who will help bring this country together.

I wrote this morning on my Facebook page that in the last year, I have seen posts from Christians that have made me think that if they met each other in the hallway, they would come to blows.  I saw it last year during the Kavanaugh hearings, and this morning, I saw it again between two Christians talking about certain new immigration policies.

Trump isn't the Messiah.  Get over it.
Trump isn't the Antichrist.  Get over it.
Trump is not the fulfillment of any sort of Biblical prophecy.  Please, for the love of all things holy, DO NOT quote me that verse about Cyrus.  While it's true that God can use whoever he wants whenever he wants, trying to fit Donald Trump into the verse that prophesies about Cyrus the king is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.  (And while these rocket scientists COULD "put a square peg into a round hole", us trying to do it with Biblical prophecy is a misuse of Scripture.  Period.)

And those of you that tell me that Trump is a baby Christian? 

I've been hearing that for three years now.  I see no fruit of the Spirit.  I see no increasing faith, goodness, brotherly kindness, etc. 

"But the economy's good!"

How many people said that when Bill Clinton was president as an excuse to overlook his behavior? 

"But at least he tells it like it is!"

Uh, there are ways he can tell it like it is without coming off as a total buffoon. 

"But at least we have a conservative SCOTUS!"

But at what price? 

We are at a level of anger I have not seen in my lifetime.  I'm waiting for someone to bring a cane onto the floor of the Senate. 

If this is the price that we have had to pay for a conservative SCOTUS, that price is too high.
The Democrats want free stuff for everyone and they want the rich to pay for it.
The Republicans . . . well, I'm not sure what they want, outside of a good economy. 

Neither party is doing their job.  So my vote is going to Pig-Pen to clean up government!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Kyrie eleison ....

"This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them." -- Isaiah 37:3 (New International Version)

Saturday, while on the computer, my phone alerted me to a shooting in El Paso, Texas.  Twenty people died.

And then, shortly after I arrived at church yesterday, I learned of the shooting in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people are dead.

I spoke briefly to my preacher and told him I'd just heard of that shooting; he said he already knew (and at the beginning of his sermon, he asked one of the elders to pray, and he also acknowledged that it had been a hard week in our country.)

All my sorrow, all my sadness, all my frustration over yet another shooting just exploded into two words, one phrase:

Kyrie eleison.

The first song our praise team sang yesterday was "Shout Hallelujah," and although I sang with them and worshiped with them, all I could think was, this is not a time to shout hallelujah.

(That above comment is not intended as a slam on our praise team.  I sing on our praise team approximately once a month, and I know the work that goes into practicing and singing.  And they had no way of knowing that there would be two mass shootings in less than 24 hours.)

"Kyrie eleison," as I just used it, is not a reference to the wonderfully upbeat Mr. Mister song of 1986.  Rather, it is Greek for "Lord, have mercy."  It's an ancient prayer dating back to the early days of the Orthodox and Catholic Church.  There are places in the Gospels where people cry out, "Lord, have mercy on me."  The Canaanite woman with a demon-possessed daughter cried out for the Lord to have mercy on her.  Many others cried out for mercy as well.

Lord, have mercy indeed.

This Wikipedia article lists 256 mass shootings in 2019 alone, with 283 dead and 1,057 wounded.  I am not exactly clear on the definition they are using as "mass shooting", so I am going to cut and paste the paragraph the article used when talking about the definition of "mass shooting":

There are many definitions of a mass shooting. Listed roughly from broad to specific:

Stanford University MSA Data Project: 3+ shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time, excluding organized crime, as well as gang-related and drug-related shootings.^[8]

Mass Shooting Tracker: 4+ shot in one incident, at one location, at roughly the same time.^[7]

Gun Violence Archive/Vox: 4+ shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time.^[4][9]

Mother Jones: 3+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at a public place.^[6]

The Washington Post: 4+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at a public place.^[5]

ABC News/FBI: 4+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time.^[10]

Congressional Research Service: 4+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at a public place, excluding gang-related killings and those done with a profit-motive.^[2]

Only incidents considered mass shootings by at least two of the above sources are listed.  

No matter how you define a "mass shooting", one is too many.

Already the screaming, blaming, and finger-pointing has started.  The usual suspects are being blamed:  too many guns, lax laws, mental illness, etc. etc.  And "white supremacy" as a cause is also raising its ugly, deformed head, mainly because of a manifesto left by the El Paso shooter which stated that "this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas".  The El Paso shooting is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and as a possible hate crime.  In the case of the Dayton shooting, the suspect was taken down in less than a minute after the first shots were fired -- and he still murdered nine people, including his own sister, and injured at least 27 others. There's no known "hate crime" motive in the Dayton shooting as I write this.

Lord, have mercy.

If the usual pattern holds, people will scream at each other on social media, post hashtags, and demand action, and nothing will happen.  And then the next mass shooting will happen and the cycle will begin all over again.  Over and over, lather, rinse, repeat.

This 1987 song by Richard Marx has a line that sums up our current situation well:

Lord have mercy
For we know not what we do
Lord have mercy
We've forgotten to be afraid of you.

I recently read where Donald Trump kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign "in the name of Jesus Christ."  If Donald Trump is really serious about invoking the name of Jesus in his campaign for president, he will call for a national day of prayer and repentance, starting with his own sins.  

This is not the time for finger-pointing, screaming, hashtagging, or anything else, for that matter.  This isn't even the time to shout hallelujah (as appropriate as that is at other times.) 
This is a time of distress.
This is a time of rebuke.
This is a time of disgrace.
This is a time to lament, to fall flat on our faces before the living God and just simply cry out, "Kyrie eleison."

Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison . . .

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

The most important thing

"Dad molested me when I was a kid."

Those are hard words for anyone to say, hard words for anyone to hear.

When preacher Jimmy Hinton heard those words, they punched him in the gut.

Because the person who said those words, Alex Howlett, was Jimmy Hinton's sister.

So when Alex said, "Dad molested me," she was saying that it was their father, Church of Christ pastor John Hinton, who'd preached for the Somerset Church of Christ in Pennsylvania for 27 years, who'd done it.

Jimmy Hinton did two things.

First, he told Alex, "I believe you."

Second, he reported his father to the police. 

That report prompted an investigation which resulted in John Hinton pleading guilty to the sexual assault of four girls, ages four to seven.  John Hinton is now in the Rockville State Prison, serving a 30- to 60-year sentence. 

Contrast this with an incident in the Uniontown Church of Christ in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

When a judge sentenced volunteer youth minister Clyde Brothers on charges of "corruption of minors and indecent exposure", part of his ruling was to order Brothers not to attend the church "until and unless there is a signed waiver of this provision . . .by the governing authority of the said Church."

Soon after, the elders met to consider granting that waiver and to allow Brothers to continue worshiping with the congregation.

A mother of one of the victims told the Christian Chronicle, "It's almost like Clyde is more important than the victims are."

(The judge's decision was reversed on appeal due to the fact that the statutes of limitations had run out.)

Les Ferguson, pastor for the Lake Harbor Church of Christ in Mississippi, is tragically familiar with the subject of sexual abuse.  A member of his former congregation, the Orange Grove Church of Christ in Gulfport, Mississippi, offered to babysit Les' son Cole once a week.  Cole was severely disabled, and Les' wife Karen badly needed the break.  

The member used that time to rape Cole, and he threatened Cole with death if he told.  

Cole eventually did tell, and Les and Karen reported the predator to the police.  The man was arrested, released on bail, and while out on bail, he murdered Karen and Cole before committing suicide.

And just last week, a Church of Christ minister in the Sarasota, Florida area -- a registered sex offender -- was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography.

I've deliberately picked stories from Churches of Christ because they are my "tribe" of believers.  The news media, over the last several years, has covered the abuse of children by Catholic priests, and more recently, they've covered widespread sexual abuse in Southern Baptist convention churches and in other evangelical churches.  But this is not a problem that exists only in "denominational churches".  Churches of Christ deal with it, also.  We are no different. 

I grow weary of the continual reports of sexual abuse among people who claim to be Christians.  Jimmy Hinton grew up admiring his preacher father, and it was because of him that Jimmy, himself, entered the ministry.  Christians tend to be trusting of other people who claim to be Christians.  We love a good repentance story and we love a good story of forgiveness.  God does forgive.  People do repent and change and stay changed. 

On the other hand, sexual abuse is a crime that stays with the victim for life.  I don't think we appreciate just how shattering the crime of sexual abuse is.  Too many of us treat it as a "sin" and tell the victim, "the Bible says you must forgive," and demand immediate forgiveness.  I don't hear the same emphasis on telling the offender "you must repent and prove your repentance by your deeds".

Jimmy Hinton still preaches.  He also is an advocate for victims of sexual assault and consults with church leaders on the topic of abuse. 

Alex Howlett no longer goes to church.  She said in an interview, "I don't like the idea of God as a fatherly thing.  If that's who He is He wasn't there for me.  If my dad was supposed to be someone who was spreading His word -- that's not the case at all."

None of the victims from the Uniontown Church of Christ remain in church.  One victim is in jail, and two of them have committed suicide.

Les Ferguson has remarried, and he preaches, but he is still without his first wife and his son.

(Snark alert here.)

But go ahead, let's keep arguing about instrumental music, and whether or not women can preach, and whether or not we can have kitchens in a church building, and whether or not it's a sin to turn in your contribution to the church early because you're going to be out of town on Sunday.

Because we all know that we are saved by the five-step plan of salvation in order to perform the five acts of worship -- preaching/teaching, singing, prayer, taking up of a collection, and taking the Lord's Supper -- on Sunday, and only on Sunday.

After all, that's the most important thing.

Isn't it?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Spoil of war

Gloria Vanderbilt was 10 years old when she became a spoil of war.

At stake was not only who she would live with, but who would control her very substantial trust fund. 

In one corner:  Gloria's mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, widow of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt.

In the opposing corner:  Gloria's aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Reginald's sister, patroness of the arts, and the wife of Harry Payne Whitney, banker and investor.

The setting:  a Manhattan courtroom in October of 1934, during the depths of the Great Depression.

Called "the trial of the century" by the press, it fascinated a nation and gave it a window into the lifestyle that most Americans could not even fathom. 

So why were two women fighting over the same child?

I'm sure there was a long list of reasons. 

Much of the situation revolved around Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's age.  She was allegedly 19 when she married the 42-year-old Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt.  Because she was not 21 yet -- in other words, not legally of age -- she received her father's legal permission to get married. 

They were married in March of 1923.  In February of 1924, their only child, Gloria Laura, was born. 

In September, 1925, Reginald Vanderbilt died of an internal hemorrhage (probably complicated by cirrhosis of the liver), leaving his widow in charge of a trust fund totally $2.5 million dollars.  But, because Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt was believed to be 20, and still underage, she also needed a legal guardian.  The only income available for her and her young daughter was the interest from little Gloria's trust.

That income funded Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's travels to Europe over the next several years.  She traveled in high society circles and went through a brief engagement to a German prince.  (Gloria's twin sister, Thelma, was also the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales; later to become Edward the VIII.)  Little Gloria spent most of her time with her live-in nurse.

When little Gloria developed tonsillitis, she and her mother sailed back to New York.  Little Gloria had her tonsils out, and then, aunt Gertrude Whitney offered to let little Gloria recuperate at her house.

Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt accepted the offer, left her daughter with her aunt Gertrude, and sailed back to Europe, having very little contact with the child.  Then, in 1934, fearing that she was about to be cut completely out of her daughter's life, she went back to New York and filed a petition for guardianship. 

Gertrude Whitney's response was to declare Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt an unfit mother.

The war was on.

Back and forth, during those days of late 1934, the headlines screamed of scandal, of "unfit motherhood", told of Gloria's "neglect" of her child while partying in Europe and socializing with relatives of the royal family.  When a witness testified that she'd seen Gloria kissing another woman "like a lover", a shocked judge ordered the courtroom cleared of all press. 

Caught in the middle was a 10-year-old child whom no one seemed to consider. 

Little Gloria, on the one hand, wrote her mother letters about how much she missed her and loved her.  But during the trial, she told the judge she hated her mother and was afraid of her.  Barbara Goldsmith, the author of Little Gloria . . . Happy At Last, her account of the sensational trial, theorized that little Gloria feared being kidnapped and murdered by her mother.  Only two years before, the baby son of Charles Lindbergh had been kidnapped and murdered . . . and Gloria herself , because of her wealth and the Vanderbilt name, was also a target for a kidnapper.

But many years later, little Gloria herself said that she'd been coached by her aunt's attorney to lie about how she'd been treated. 

The judge ruled in favor of Gertrude Whitney, with Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt allowed weekend visitation.

Gloria Laura Vanderbilt died today, at age 95.  Did she live happily ever after, after that bitter, sensational custody trial? 

She married four times.  She inherited that trust fund at age 21 and immediately erupted in a mass amount of lavish spending.  One of the recipients of the Vanderbilt money was Pat DiCiccio, her first husband, from whom she got a Reno divorce.  She immediately married conductor Leopold Stokowski.  Later, she would marry Sidney Lumet and Wyatt Cooper.  Her last husband was the father of CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper.

She became an actress, and then a businesswoman.  For my generation, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans were a prized possession, and I remember having two Gloria Vanderbilt tops, one in pink, one in turquoise. 

Then she became a writer, telling her story in Once Upon a Time and other books. 

The New York Times published Barbara Harrison's review of Once Upon a Time, and in it, stated that little Gloria Vanderbilt "knew her mother just enough to worship her . . . and just enough to fear that her capricious mother would take her away from the few adults she briefly trusted."  During the weekend visitations awarded Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, she used that time to, once again, associate with the adults in her social circle and not bond with her daughter. 

Her aunt Gertrude Whitney, who'd fought in court and won custody, told her niece she loved her . . . one time, and only one time.

Was "the trial of the century" a fight over the best interests of a 10-year-old girl, the desperate attempts of a aunt to rescue her niece from the clutches of an unfit mother?  Or the desperate attempt of a mother to rescue her beloved only daughter from the clutches of a manipulative aunt?

I fear that little Gloria lived her life believing that she was nothing more that a prize to be displayed, and nothing more than a spoil of war. 

The eighty-five years she lived after her custody trial is a long, long time to bear that burden. 

I hope now that she will find peace.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

30 years of journals

Stacked in a box and scattered among my bookshelves are various notebooks chronicling over 30 years of my life. 

I have Anne Frank to thank for that.

I've kept a diary off and on since I was 10 years old.  I no longer have the diaries I wrote in as a child and teenager.  The notebooks I have begin at the end of 1986 and continue on to the present. 

I first learned about Anne Frank in the 4th grade.  I don't remember learning about the Holocaust then, although I'm sure Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were mentioned.  What I remember is that there was a girl named Anne Frank, that she kept a diary, and she called it Kitty.  The lines I remember reading in our lesson on Anne Frank are:  "Anne had only begun to write.  If she had lived, her talent would have developed and grown."

When I started my very first diary, it was in one of those five year diaries that don't give you enough room to write in.  I called my diary Beth because Beth was my best friend in the 5th grade.  (I remember one of my entries was about how badly I'd performed in either kickball or softball and I wrote, "Dumb me, I'm bad in it.") 

I started seriously writing a diary in 8th grade and called it Carrie, after an imaginary character of mine that I developed into a book character.  That year that I was in 8th grade, I wrote a book about a girl gymnast named Carrie who went to the Olympics and won a gold medal.  This was in 1976 and Nadia Comaneci was one of my heroines.

I no longer address my diaries to an imaginary person, and I am not as consistent in writing in a journal as I probably should be.  And I don't know what's going to happen to those journals when I die.  I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in my life. 

I don't know what inspired Anne to want to keep a diary in the first place.  She says in her opening pages that she didn't have a real friend and she'd decided that her diary would be that friend. 

Today, June 12, 2019, would have been Anne's 90th birthday.  On June 12, 1929, she was born in Frankfurt, in Germany.  She was four years old, just barely starting to form memories, when her family left Germany and settled in Holland. 

June 12, 1942 was her 13th birthday.  That was the day where she "went to Mummy and Daddy and then to the sitting room to open my gifts.  The first to greet me was you, probably the nicest of all."  "You" was a red-checked notebook the size and dimensions of an autograph album.  In the front, she wrote, "I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely . . . and that you will be a great support and comfort to me." 

She didn't know at that moment what a "support and comfort" that diary would be.  Because less than a month later, she and her family, dressed in layers of clothing and walking in a pouring rain, would enter an office on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, climb up the back stairs to an attic, and not leave until August 4, 1944, the day they were arrested by the Nazis.

I visited Anne Frank's hiding place in 1996.  The longer I stayed there, the more claustrophobic I found the place.  That's when I decided that writing in her diary saved Anne's sanity.  What do you do when you're cooped up in an attic, you can't go out, you're bursting with energy, and the adults in your life may or may not be the greatest support to you?

You write. 

I'm not Jewish and I'm not a young girl forced into hiding by circumstances. 

But it's because of Anne that I write.

Today, she would have been 90.

Happy birthday.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

D-Day + 75 years

Their feet hit the water in the cold dawn of  June 6, 1944.  They splashed ashore underneath a hail of German bullets and between explosions of German shells.

Many of them did not make it onto the beach.

Many of them did not make it off the beach.

Those that did, they possessed territory step by step, inch by inch.

We know them as "the boys of Pointe du Hoc" (thanks to Ronald Reagan), and by other names; those that landed at Omaha, Juno, and Utah Beaches.

History calls it "D-Day", and in most newspapers of the day, the word "invasion" was a prominent part of the headline.  The St. Petersburg Times, in their headline of June 6th, just had one word, in type as big as they could get it:  "INVASION".

Today, it's 75 years since these men splashed off the boats and onto land, since men parachuted from the sky and landed on French territory, the order of the day from General Dwight D. Eisenhower perhaps ringing in their ears:

"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

In Amsterdam, a young girl in hiding in an attic wrote in her diary, "This is *the* day.  The invasion has begun!"

Back on the home front, Americans like my maternal grandparents, my paternal grandmother, my parents (who would have been 11 and 6 at the time) and other relatives would have woken up to bulletins such as this from NBC radio or perhaps this from CBS radio.

One day later, Orson Welles would broadcast a magnificent portrait of what an ordinary American would have experienced on that June 6th through the eyes and voice of actress Agnes Moorehead.

Today, we know more about the human cost of war.  We've known since the beginning of war about the physical cost--the deaths, the injuries, the destruction of homes and other properties.  In the last 50 or so years, we've become more acquainted with the mental and psychological costs of war--post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor's guilt, nightmares, and in the case of Vietnam vets, active contempt for their service.

I hate war.  But I also understand that sometimes, war is necessary.  I wish it were not.

Today, we honor the men who fought at Normandy, these "boys of Pointe du Hoc", these men who parachuted and waded ashore because they believed in the cause of freedom.  They probably hated war as much as I do, and probably more so since they experienced it.  I never have.

Their numbers grow fewer every year.  My own congregation lost a D-Day veteran just a year or two ago.

Even though their numbers grow fewer, their story must not be forgotten.

I close with Charles Schultz's comic from D-Day a number of years ago:

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Tina v. Bertha, round 6417 . . .

I've written before about Hubert and Elmer; Hubert is the OCD part of me and Elmer is the depression part of me.  The other "people" that live in my head are Agnes and Bertha.  Agnes is the part of me that is anxious and worries about the worst-case scenario. Bertha is the bully.  She weighs 300 pounds, dresses in an ugly calico housedress, and walks around smacking a rolling pin in her hand.

It's Bertha I want to talk about today.

She's lived in my head since I was a kid, and she is extremely good about telling me how dumb, stupid, etc. I am.  Not only is she my inner critic, she beats me up at every opportunity.  We've gone many, many rounds in the metaphorical boxing ring of my mind, and too often, she wins.  Last Friday, I had what is possibly round 6417 with her.

Matthew, this weekend, went on a retreat with the college/young adult class at church.  I had messaged back and forth with the guys in charge asking about what the retreat would be like.  I didn't want Matthew to miss out, but I also didn't want to send him into a situation that might be over his head.  The guys in charge thought it would work out for him to go. 

But one of the things I needed to do was to get a letter giving one of the people in charge permission to authorize medical treatment for Matthew should it be necessary.  Since I have legal guardianship, Matthew cannot authorize medical treatment on his own.  So I wrote up a letter, had it notarized, and put it in my purse to give to the people in charge. 

Friday, we dropped Matthew off at the building.  One of the guys was driving the church bus down to the retreat location.  After convincing Matthew that no, he did NOT need to take his own pillow, blanket, bedspread and sheets, I kissed him good-bye and we got in the car to go to a retirement party for another church member.

We got to their house, I picked up my purse . . . and discovered the permission letter STILL IN MY PURSE.

I panicked.  Frank told me to contact the bus driver.  Which I did.  They hadn't left yet.  I said, "DON'T LEAVE," and I took off, driving frantically through the neighborhood, back to the church building. 

On the way there, Bertha took charge and started kicking me, saying, "How stupid!  You idiot!  You shouldn't have done this!"

This time, I fought back.

I used a version of a technique I use with Hubert:  instead of fighting the thoughts, just let them be.  Sometimes, I even say to Hubert, "Oh yeah, that sounds like a good thing.  I think I'll try it in about 10 minutes."  Then when 10 minutes are up, I can go another 10 minutes.

So I decided that I would let Bertha beat me up all the way to the church building . . . but after I got there, she would not be allowed to beat me up anymore. 

I talked out loud, saying things like, "You idiot!  You fool!  Worst mother in the world!"  And since I was being beat up, I yelled, "Left hook!  Right cross!  Kidney punch!  Gut punch!"

Saying the words out loud made me laugh, because really, it exposes my inner Bertha for who she is:  ridiculous and mean.  Laughter is a good weapon to use against a bully. 

I made it to the building, handed the letter to the bus driver, and then relaxed. 

Then I drove back to the retirement party.  On the way, I told myself why I had forgotten the letter:  One, I had it in my head to give it to a particular person, who had already gone ahead and was not the driver of the bus.  Two, I was distracted by telling Matthew he didn't need his pillow and blanket because sheets would be provided.

The takeaway?  Next time I have to have a medical authorization letter, I will write the letter, get it notarized, and give it to Matthew to give to the appropriate person.

As it turned out, Matthew had a good time and nothing happened where he needed treatment.   He told me that they talked about the book of Esther, and that he -- Matthew -- had said to someone that, if you didn't have enough of the spirit of God, you might be humbug.  Matthew has heard the word "humbug" before and interprets it as "something that is not good".  (In the case of certain characters in the book of Esther, he has a point.) 

Bertha and I have gone many rounds in the boxing ring of my thoughts.  This was not the first fight we had, nor, unfortunately, will it be the last.  Like Rocky Balboa, the movie and the sequels will probably go on until the day I die.

But at least this time, at the end of round 6417, I was still standing at the sound of the bell.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.