Memnison Journal

State Ag department:  http://www.agr.state.il.us/markets/farmers/

Farmers Markets Online: http://www.farmersmarketonline.com/fm/Illinois.htm

Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass.

Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes:

Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the Netherlands eastward to Germany in the 17th century. As Quaker evangelists moved into Germany they received a sympathetic audience among the larger of these Dutch-Mennonite congregations around Krefeld, Altona-Hamburg, Gronau and Emden. It was among this group of Quakers and Mennonites, living under ongoing discrimination, that William Penn solicited settlers for his new colony. The first permanent settlement of Mennonites in the American Colonies consisted of one Mennonite family and twelve Mennonite-Quaker families of Dutch extraction who arrived from Krefeld, Germany, in 1683 and settled in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Among these early settlers was William Rittenhouse, a lay minister and owner of the first American paper mill. Jacob Gottschalk was the first bishop of this Germantown congregation. This early group of Mennonites and Mennonite-Quakers wrote the first formal protest against slavery in the United States. The treatise was addressed to slave-holding Quakers in an effort to persuade them to change their ways.

Yep – we Rittenhouses came here because we were a religious minority that the locals in Europe were working over.   We were invited  by William Penn to come here and enjoy religious freedom and get out from under the thumb of  governments that liked to determine what was and wasn’t the ‘right’ way to worship their God.

In my own more immediate family history, there’s lots of religious dissenters and minorities that got a rough number here and abroad – Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Methodists, Baptists, Unity, Theosophists, and several more.   My Chinese daughter would have been barred from immigrating to the USA – first by laws that forbade Chinese women as the forerunners of the Yellow Peril that would destroy America.   It wasn’t until very modern times that Chinese were seen as something un-threatening…

…and that could change if we ever got into a fight with them, and they could become uncitizens, as the Japanese and some Italians did during World War 2 – and Germans during both World Wars.  H’m – German-Americans means me again…even if all of them came to America before the Revolution.

One of my buddies here in Chicago had a dad who was wounded as a US solider in the war – while the rest of his family sat in an internment camp.  But the problem is that it’s just so easy to stop thinking things through and start hating and fearing.

Ask any Jew you know who had family gassed and incinerated in Europe to solve the ‘Jewish problem’, because it was easy and convenient to hate them and blame your problems on a whole race of people.

Ask the Irish about their families in Ireland who were treated like crap in Ireland and then came over here and were treated as a Catholic plot to take over the country.

Ask the Mormons about their faith’s treatment by the locals in the midwest, where they were killed and burned out until they had to escape to Utah – and then were attacked by the US Government.

I could go on and on with examples.  But I have some different things to say…

Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?

It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.”

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we’re supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems…

Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.

This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible.

There is no doubt that a small portion of radical, angry Islamists do want to kill us but the question remains, what exactly motivates this hatred?

If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.

The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer….

Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam–the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.

The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservatives’ aggressive wars.

The House Speaker is now treading on a slippery slope by demanding a Congressional investigation to find out just who is funding the mosque—a bold rejection of property rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the Rule of Law—in order to look tough against Islam.

This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

We now have an epidemic of “sunshine patriots” on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there’s no controversy and nobody is offended.

Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.

Blog entry on August 20, 2010

America is not a “Christian” nation in the way we think of “Muslim” nations. If it were, birth certificates would automatically indicate “Christian” as the “faith of birth.” It would be illegal to convert to another faith. Jews, Native American religions, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons and atheists would be unwelcome. They would need to practice their faith covertly, at great risk of discovery and penalties unto death.

That’s the way it is when a nation defines itself by the predominant faith of its people.

That’s the way it was for Baptists 400 years ago in Europe when they stood for freedom of conscience against state churches and in some cases were chained together and thrown into the river to be “baptized” by immersion. That’s why our ancestors fled Europe. That’s why Roger Williams eventually had to flee Massachusetts Bay Colony and establish Rhode Island.

Baptists must stand for the freedom of conscience for all, for which our ancestors died.

Any question of this mosque in New York City is not about the First Amendment’s precious words that the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”  The question of this mosque in New York City has everything to do with self-absorbed Americans nourishing our pain from 9/11 and continuing to look for someone to blame, for someone to pay, for something to make us feel alright again.

Because the radicalized terrorists who struck at our heart were Muslims, we somehow think that to deny unrelated American Muslims the opportunity to build a worship center close to where the World Trade Center towers once stood is to strike some kind of defiant blow against terrorism. We think it will raise freedom’s torch higher because we’ve defended the memories of those who died by denying a place to read, swim, meet and worship to people who claim the same faith as the terrorists.

I’m glad that standard doesn’t hold in North Carolina, where more prisoners indicate their faith of choice is “Baptist” than any other faith. As a Baptist, I would be held accountable for their crimes.

Norman Jameson is editor of the North Carolina Baptist Biblical Recorder.

“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect. Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes. Moms who wear cover must be not intimidated in America. That’s not the America I know. That’s not the America I value,” – former president George W. Bush.

See also: http://muslimrepublicans.net/Article.asp?ID=164

We knew as the season for skating drew to its close that the first priority (before Meredith went back to school) would be surgery on both of her feet for her flat-feet condition (which her sister shares) that we had confirmed this spring with the family podiatrist.   Mere didn’t get nervous about the surgery until a couple of days beforehand – Mere won’t necessarily tell you that something’s bugging her, but her stress level will soar – as will her crankiness and sometimes her overhectic levels of activity.

We had a slight delay (the surgeon, who was my podiatrist as well, was off to Portugal as a doc for the US Soccer Federation for a week) and Mere’s surgery happened on August 11th,  early in the morning.  She was very very brave going into the surgery, and we were told that she’d done well and the surgery had went just fine.

If you look at this picture, you’ll see a slight darkening on her right ankle – sort of a round spot – that’s where the surgery was.  (Mere hates the bandages and finds them horribly itchy and rough.)  The surgeon placed a cylindrical thing in her ankle area to act as a lever to cause the structure of her feet to change (one on each foot) and create a solid, lasting arch. See:

If I’ve been quiet again, it’s because my main PC in my office downstairs (where I’m exiled to pending the doc saying I can go up and down stairs again) has been zapped by a nasty virus. It got past my Trend Micro antivirus, and started disconnecting various things on my PC (including the virus protection) and pushing out popups that screamed Your PC Is Hit By A Virus You Need Our Antivirus To Fix It (Visa or Mastercard). Of course, all that’s good for is to give your credit card number to dudes in Russia to have fun with, so I called BS on that and started to try to clean off the infection.

It was tough and unwilling to go; crashed the PC after an hour or two (it usually takes over 3 hours to scan my system on good days) of a run rather than let me run Trend Micro or another virus control program. Finally had to go for the portable version of SuperAntiSpyware; it didn’t crash, and removed the bulk of the virus files over a series of about 4 runs yesterday and last night.

This ate up a lot of time since Sunday at all sorts of hours; I’d have some sort of scan running all the time I could. As in waking up in the middle of the night to answer both nature’s call AND checking the last run and setting it up again.

Then I found out that the virus had blown the use of .exe files throughout the PC, and I had to muck with the Windows Registry to re-attach that connection, and that was just a whole lot of fun.

Now, as per suggestion, I’m doing a run with Malwarebytes, and it’s probably got another 30-45 minutes, and it’s turning up two files it says are bad news – don’t know where or what until it’s done. Once it’s done, and the offending files minced, I run it again…and there’s about seven other programs to go to use to restore things. I don’t imagine that I’ll actually lose anything of data in the process, but it’s just a whopping big pain and screws up me doing much else for work in the meantime while I clean things out and quintuple-check the results.

And no, I have no idea where this came from for sure. I’m usually very careful about such things.

A young student from China is Ireland-bound, and runs into a problem..agus faigheann sé amach go bhfuil an nach labhraíonn Gaeilge i bhfad Gaelic!
10 minute YouTube video, very funny and sweet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA0a62wmd1A

Susan passed this along for the folks who wanted to know about the connection between competitive roller-skating and the Olympics:

http://usarollersports.org/about-usa-roller-sports

For all of the folks in Facebook who invite me to participate in a game: Sorry, don’t have the time to play them, and I distrust a lot of the join-this stuff in Facebook anyway.

For all the folks anywhere who invite me to events out of town (Chicago): Sorry, too laid up after the operation, and we need some time to recover from the summer, cash-wise.  Especially the many invites I’ve had to the big reunion of Wilbur Wright people this month…I appreciate the interest, really, but I’ll not be able to make it.

For all the folks asking about video or photos of the National Championship event that Mere took a gold in last week: We don’t have them yet, and we didn’t take video or photos there – Susan was too busy watching, and you had to pay the event organizers to get a license to video the thing.  I have ordered a DVD of the proceedings, and will be able to rip that WHEN it shows up.  Susan has (I think) ordered pictures from the pro photographer there at the rink, but we don’t know when they will show up.  One of the folks on our local rink’s team – her mom videoed the action on the rink, and we will be getting a copy of that that I can rip, but I just have no idea when that will be.   Sorry.

China Daily is reporting that the Chinese police are starting to put together a national DNA database to help combat child trafficking and help lost children; 107,000 kids and 35,000 from anxious parents.

The database is composed of blood samples taken by the police from missing children’s parents, children suspected of having been abducted or with an unclear history, children in social welfare institutes, homeless children and child beggars, according to the ministry.  Information on the database is shared among the 236 DNA laboratories in the country…It costs 100 yuan ($14.8) to take a blood sample, while the cost of DNA tests vary. In Beijing, each DNA test costs at least 2,400 yuan, she said.

Police authorities cover the expense, so the service is free for parents and children. During a nine-month anti-trafficking campaign, which began in April 2009, police rescued a total of 14,717 women and children, according to the ministry’s latest data. They arrested 17,528 suspects, including 19 who had a level A (most wanted) warrant against them. About 30,000 to 60,000 children are reported missing every year in China, but it is hard to estimate how many are cases of human trafficking, the ministry said.

Of course, the numbers are pretty drop in the bucket for China, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of something real being done on this sort of thing.  Note the bolded ‘social welfare institutions’ – aka orphanages like the one the twins came out of.

I’m skeptical as to the sort of test they’re using and how much of this is hype…I’ve had long cold hard experience with the Chinese press warping things out of reality, and I’ve seen various DNA testing setups here for sisterfar-ish purposes.  Not all DNA tests are the same, not by a long shot.

As you can imagine, the champions (my Mere and her pairs partner Eric) are in seventh heaven – as I write this, Susan and Mere are on their way home to us, bearing a new gold medal.   And, of course, all their stuff.

The last year, in dealing with Mere getting serious on roller-skating competitive work with Eric in pairs, it’s obvious that I didn’t realize what would be involved, from all aspects.  And Susan spent a whole lot more time and was far more deeply involved in schlepping her back and forth and so on, and could probably add more if she wanted to.  This is just my reflections from my viewpoint, and yes, I could be wrong somewhere.

(1) Going to a competitive level with the sport eats up a lot of time. Everyone in the family’s time, not just the skater.  At first it was just Saturday mornings, then a creeping add of Sunday nights, and then much of the rest of the week, especially since school let out in June.   The training sessions would go on for 2-6 hours at a crack.  Everything else had to be scheduled around it (with the exception of Mere’s trip in June to see Sissy, which was absolutely necessary, mental-health-wise).   This also eats up time for the adults who go with, and also have to go out and procure equipment, outfits and so on. And the time a kid needs to just be a kid has to be more tightly set up and allowed for, or you’re going to have a demoralized kid – but it makes impromptu going-over-to-Jessie’s-house a lot rarer.

(2) Cost is more than you’d think. We were lucky that the kids were trained for free by Eric’s dad, who has a really solid rep with the skating world, but there were club fees, entry fees, training fees, you-name-it-fees.  Big ones for the Regionals and Nationals.  Outfits, leggings, special high-end skates (Mere has two sets, and they are NOT cheap), and so on.   Then there’s the costs of the big out-of-town competitions; travel, lodging, food, emergency whatever, admission to see other skaters skate or for parents to watch the events.  Costs for the training rinks for practices while you’re there.  And each of these big competitions can go on for a week or more…and if you’re in a couple of events, you may have days on end of in-between waiting in a hotel and up to twice-daily practice sessions.  That racks up the Frequent Whatever miles, let me tell you.   If Mere and Eric had been a year older, as US champions, they were up for going on to the World Championships – and that’s in Portugal this year.  *ka-ching*

(3) Even if your kid is in good shape, she will be pretty worked over. Lots of bruises are common, pulled muscles and just bone-weariness.  And if they’re not up to snuff because of a bruise or something, it’s more likely that they would make a mistake and have a still worse thumping – major falls could cause sprains and broken bones.   And this is not even going into the physically punishing level of practice-practice-practice.  You have to be able to deal with this and she has to be able to deal with it, while not burying things that need attention.  In Mere’s case, during the time leading up to the big meets, she had terrible allergy problems, even going to the point of wheezing from time to time, and you have to stay on top of that.

(4) The mind rules all. Mental attitude for something like this is essential.  You want to have  a situation where the kid is really positive about it and wants to compete.  This is a Very Delicate Trick,  helped by the coach(es) and the family.  Mere’s coach was firm, and kept the kids going and working.  We went out of our way to be supportive for her, especially when she was tired and cranky and vulnerable.  Another factor in this for the kids was the support they got from other friends and family, and from the skating club that encompassed all of the contestants and their families. Where Mere and Eric went out there to win the Gold, they were psyched and ready; some other kids lots their groove and crashed and burned – one even got violently sick all over the rink in mid-performance.  You also have to step in as needed and say ‘that’s enough’ and make it stick.

(5) It’s complicated. The routines, the muscle-memory buildup, the choreography, the rules of the sport – and the style that the kids and the coach want to put into it – are hideously complex.  If you can understand the different jumps and moves, can tell a sweetheart from a suicide, a lutz from a toe-loop – man, that’s hard for anyone, especially the untrained but tries-to-be-helpful parent who finds themselves lost in the jargon and the moves, and wondering how their kid keeps it all straight!

(6) Be sociable and watch the social structure around your kid. In Mere’s case, the local skating club trainers saw her coming, and were watching her early on for her quick learning curve and eagerness to get deeper in – along with skill, body type and personality.   As she came along in the basic training as a roller skater, they approached us and said – she could do this!  When she made the move, we found that the local club of skaters were very helpful and friendly and supportive of each other – including the junior mascot and aspiring champeen (Mere) who charmed her elders.   One big family, in more ways than one, in the best of situations.   They are a massive support resource, and you do not want to honk them off!

Mere in turn looked at the far more experienced and friendly late-teenage lady skaters and idolized them, and was delighted to be one of the big-kids’ gang.  And at the big events, there were other young girl skaters roughly her age to run around with and enjoy the company of…

(7) The events are different from the movies. If you see a girl-skater film like Ice Castles, you get the idea that all of the meets are like that – in a big arena filled with people. Nope.  Only the Nationals were even remotely like that, and the arena was only about 15% full at the most.  And almost all of the spectators were the people from the clubs – the parents, friends and siblings of the skaters, the other skaters from the club that weren’t in that event and wanted to watch, and so on.  The rest were all in moderately busy but bleacherless skating rinks, and a lot of the people in the rinks were busy getting themselves or someone else ready, and maybe keeping half an eye on the action while chatting up friends that they know in other clubs from other events previously.  The levels of tension that the movies describe with all eyes focused on the skater was not really present.

Also, there’s all sorts of sub-categories of events, usually ranked by age and experience and past history in the sport.  Trying to figure out what Sophomore A/B Artisitic Group Dance or some such will be a little odd, too.  And the music for the events is whatever the skater brought in; at the Regionals, one big Ohio skating club brought in one CD of music for different skaters in the club, and every time it started up, you heard a snatch of the theme for the Harry Potter movies – and then it would go on to the actual piece.

(8) Judging at events is hard to fathom for outsiders. There was one pairs set from Meredith’s events in the Regionals who did a swing number that was very flashy, but any of the experienced skaters could see what sort of sloppy maneuvers that they were making, and the judges expressed their dislike in the scores.  Same couple brought the same routine to Nationals, and got creamed even worse.  In the case of Mere and Eric, their coaches had trained them solidly on the basics, and their clean program showed it.   And the fact that they seemed to come from nowhere caught the attention of everyone – who are these kids and **wow** they’re good!  Many participants in meets have been doing the circuit for years and years, and everyone knows everyone.  Mere was a new wild card in the deck.

That’s all I can come up with at the present; I’ll come back to this and add in another set later as things come to me.

Meredith and Eric took first place at the National Championships with a flawless, beautiful performance… stunned the people online and the commentators with **OMG WHO ARE THESE GUYS!!!** reactions. They can’t go to World Championships until the elder is 14, which is next year. But my god, they were the best I’ve ever seen them, and their heads were in just the right place – and they skated like a dream. Their coach even got an award then and there for his work.

We’re all over the moon, to put it mildly. Very happy, very proud. Many family and friends were watching the show and rooting for her, including her sister Mer. Just in happy shock.

Susan has been posting on a photo blog about her and Mere’s trip to the National Roller Skating event for the last few days: Mere’s been practicing every day at least once, and kept a very busy schedule.  Her big event is Thursday night at 9:30 pm Central Daylight Time; you can catch her and Eric in the Pairs competition at http://www.skatersplace.com/Streaming.html at or shortly after that time, live on streaming video from Lincoln, Nebraska.  Feel free to tune in!

Susan’s posts and many photographs can be found as follows:

• Photos of Mere and Eric in costume: (http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/7)
• Photos of Mere and Eric practicing or Meredith at the event: (http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/14)
• Saturday blog: (http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/20)
• Sunday blog: (http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/21)
• Monday blog: http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/25
• Tuesday blog: http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/74
• Wednesday blog: http://srittenh.shutterfly.com/skating/84

Went to the podiatrist/surgeon on Monday, and he’s leaving in the stitches for longer – I’m a slow healer, and there’s a couple of small gaps in the thing. He’s switched over to a much smaller bandage thing, essentially enough to cover the incision, and has to be redone every day with special silver gel to promote healing and keep infections out. Still exiled to the basement. Tomorrow (Wednesday) will be my first day back at work (at my home office) and today I spend the bulk of the day in getting my IV Immunoglobulin treatment. It’s a rather boring process; I do this about once a month, and do bloods and a ‘clinic visit’ first, and they then steer me into a side room and set up the IV – giving me a big dose of Benadryl in the process – which makes me sleep for most of the procedure. It eats the morning and half the afternoon – and this time, Connie is going to have to come in with me to the joint, driving in and out of the city. (Rich Rostrom has been spending the weekend here, being a good soul and keeping me occupied while Susan and Mere are out of town, and we’ll take him back into the city.) Connie has been really easily tired recently and her knees have been giving her a lot of problems; I’d have preferred to leave her here but I can’t managed the trip in this time on my own.

Susan has been busy with updates to a photoblog about the Nationals skating trip; Mere is practicing twice a day and having a horrible time with her allergies. She’s working hard at it, hanging out with friends in skating who are there for their own part in the competition and generally spreading havoc, as Merediths do.

Quoting from Susan’s entry about Monday:

I’m really not sure that we should be letting Mere watch Leverage. She’s learning entirely too much. Today is an “off” day for us. Just a half hour practice late this afternoon. This morning, Mere and 5 other skaters have been wreaking havoc throughout the hotel complex. Right now, they are setting up fake crime scenes to scare their buddies (or the buddies younger siblings), and recording the responses with the flip video camera. Meredith seems to be the ring leader. She’s just referred to one of the girls’ younger sister as the “mark”. I vetoed ketchup and corn syrup mixed with red food dye, or any other fake blood.

Yep, that’s our kid, all right. Sheesh.