what i wish all my protesting family and friends knew

498. What are immoral means of birth control?
Every action - for example, direct sterilization or contraception - is intrinsically immoral which (either in anticipation of the conjugal act, in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences) proposes, as an end or as a means, to hinder procreation.

Further reading: CCC 2370-2372

At work
loathing
anger
disgust
hate

give way to

love
prayer
hope
peace
kindness

Thank You, Jesus!

Up early on this football Saturday before our trip to Howell to run some errands. 30 degrees on the deck, and thank God for the firewood stacked neat and ready! Perhaps Dearborn Dogs and burgers on the grill for our Spartan game, and a whole lot of fighting Irish rooting tonight against the school in Ann Arbor.

Thank You, Father, for the beauty of a new day. Thank You for the whole idea of rest and peace and contemplation, and then activity and work and interaction. Every new day is a blessing, after a good night sleep. Hallelujah! 

Loving Father, help me to notice the 

situations in my life that 

cry out for me to serve Your kingdom 

and make a difference in the world.

Amen

 

From to-day's reading, the sixth of Romans:

But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin,
you have become obedient from the heart
to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted.

Thank You, Father, for the teachings that come from Jesus, from His Church, from his prophets, from our parents and our teachers. Thank You for entrusting the work of carrying on Your mission to us! Thank You for loving us so much! Our help is in the name of the LORD, Who made heaven and earth! Hallelujah, hallelujah!!

 

Sitting on the deck, and the world is beautiful. Quiet

Sky

Evenings

Cows afar

Roosters close

Children a ways off

Wind rustling the Autumn leaves

Dryer sheets and wood fire aroma

Tonight with a south wind warmer

My sister's number two son Carlos Luis was wed to his bride Cheyenne on Saturday night in Southgate; a wonderful time was had by all.

I was blessed to share a table with my parents

Representing the longest-married-couple present, Dad got to offer words of advise to his grandson and his new bride.

With my brother Gary and his son Joshua

The three of us Baldners

With sister Nancy - Mother of the Groom

We had a super fun evening out last night after work. Sweetie called before quitting time and asked if we could go out to Dexter A&W for 99c coney dogs. I was like yeah boy lets!
So, we get out to Dexter, and she's like it's five o'clock somewhere and I'm like yes let's go to the Pub. Now we have never been there but have broken fast three doors down from there at the diner several times. Dexter's Pub did not disappoint.

We both shared our chicken tender and quesa dilla dinners. Yummee!

Nice and quiet when we got to Dexter's Pub at 5:30

The diet coke's were quite tasty

Steak fries and chicken tenders were cooked perfectly and hearty!

Hot cheesey chicken quesadilla with perfunctory applications

The side of the Dexter Riverview Cafe, there are great breakfasts.

The world-famous Teal Bike

A colourful tree

Toward the Farmers Market from Main Street

2019 October 6

Happy 57th Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

In the absence of a good recent photo of them, I am including one from two summers ago.

Along with a recent one of Grandsons (our nephews) Ray #1, Alexander #3, and Benjamin #4. Carlos #2 is getting married this week and Ric # 5 was in the bathroom.

Along with a recent one of three retards we found in the attic.

Along with a not so recent one of a non-migratory European swallow.

Along with a quite less recent than the swallow one of the Knights who say 'Ni!'.

The same.

2019 October 5

Saturday morning and we are up early working hard on our fall chores. I have already cleaned the bathroom drain trap and did our taxes!

Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away.

Oh, how I love Jesus; because He first loved me.

MSU at Ohio State tonight, but Michigan hosts Illinois at noon. We are not having anyone over to-day, so I am just doing burgers and dogs on the grill, perhaps with some potato salad. Yes, potato salad. Sounds good. To the kitchen!

UPdate 13:10: I went with the nachos in the oven with good guac instead of potato salad. We had another roof guy out for an estimate, and Michigan is beating Iowa 10-3 at home.
The nachos were OK, but I only had muenster and mozzarella cheese. I am now a firm believer that you need yellow (cheddar, sharp cheddar, etc) cheese with this type of dish. The muenster that is so delectable on pizza is just lacking on corn chips. I shredded one red chili pepper and made the apetizer kind of spicy... but again: cheese matters.
More later

On football and such

The funnest part of the weekend was the Lions losing in the end of the game at home to the Chiefs :-) (evil nasty smile).


Down to five B1G teams in the top 25: OSU up to #4, Wisconsin (#8), Penn State (#12), Iowa (#14), and Michigan up one spot to #19 (after a convincing win over perennial threat Rutgers).

Wisconsin has the best rush defense in the nation at 1.7 yards per carry;  MSU is second with 1.9 yards per carry. Indiana picked apart our secondary this past weekend though. OSU likes to run, but they've got a pretty durn good quarterback. MSU plays them at 7:30 this Saturday.

My new favorite singing folks: The Carters

musings

Still very little color change in the foliage here in southeast Lower Michigan. Our sedums are stunning maroon (?) and the crab apple's leaves are yellowing a bit (as are the bamboo's) but still looking in any one direction you see less than one percent color. Beautiful mind you, and I'm certainly not complaining at all.
We made our first batch of chili yestreday (use the search queue for chili above for my variations over past eight years;) this season. With a dollop of sour cream on top, so good and flavorful. I wonder if it might do any good in one of the many chili cook-offs we have around these parts (and everywhere else, I imagine).

My mother asked if we had seen any hummers lately, and I began thinking that I surely hadn't - not for a couple days anyway. The water was cloudy so I brewed up a fresh small batch yestreday, but still I have seen none. I was hoping the warm weekend (mid-eighty highs and mid-sixty lows) would encourage a straggler or two to stop and indulge. Either way, we have seen more birds this year than ever before, with just our one feeder. More birds, and more groups of birds - we have both seen up to five at a time dancing and singing and scolding each other. The precision with which they rocket around my head and then off south around the plum tree and over the neighbors house is daunting. Imagine a helicopter shrunk down a million times, and all decorated in green, white, black and red feathers, and then it flying two or three inches from  your noggin whilest you try to watch with your jaw dropped.
I did not do too well this year photographing the dancing but I have several good stills of them feeding.

I was just looking back out our photos over the past six months. April and our Spartans lost to Texas Tech in the Final Four. In May Joslin took her First Communion and we got our annuals and herbs in the ground, and a new faucet in the kitchen, Moni got her new Jeep :-).

Praise and honor and glory to the One and Only God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and Earth. All praise to You: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; alleluia, alleluia!!

Heading into the fourth weekend

The B1G still has 5 teams in the top 25: OSU 6, U-M 11, Wisconsin 13, PSU 14, Iowa 18. Noticeably absent are MSU and Maryland (neither ever should have been there, easy for me to say now, huh?).

Huge match-up at Camp Randall with Michigan at noon eastern - could get my weekend started off with a huge bang!! Notre Dame - Georgia tomorrow night could be a good one.

Go Green!

lookin at my gucci it's about that time

CCC Compendium

424. What other kinds of grace are there?

Besides habitual grace, there are actual graces (gifts for specific circumstances), sacramental graces (gifts proper to each sacrament), special graces or charisms (gifts that are intended for the common good of the Church) among which are the graces of state that accompany the exercise of ecclesial ministries and the responsibilities of life.

425. What is the relationship between grace and human freedom?
Grace precedes, prepares and elicits our free response. It responds to the deep yearning of human freedom, calls for its cooperation and leads freedom toward its perfection.


426. What is merit?
In general merit refers to the right to recompense for a good deed. With regard to God, we of ourselves are not able to merit anything, having received everything freely from him. However, God gives us the possibility of acquiring merit through union with the love of Christ, who is the source of our merits before God. The merits for good works, therefore must be attributed first place to the grace of God and then to the free will of man.

Help for misguided protestors - Justification

No, Colonel Sanders, you're wrong. From the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

422. What is justification?

Justification is the most excellent work of God's love. It is the merciful and freely-given act of God which takes away our sins and makes us just and holy in our whole being. It is brought about by means of the grace of the Holy Spirit which has been merited for us by the passion of Christ and is given to us in Baptism. Justification is the beginning of the free response of man, that is, faith in Christ and of cooperation with the grace of the Holy Spirit.

423. What is the grace that justifies?
That grace is the gratuitous gift that God gives us to make us participants in his trinitarian life and able to act by his love. It is called habitual, sanctifying or deifying grace because it sanctifies and divinizes us. It is supernatural because it depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative and surpasses the abilities of the intellect and the powers of human beings. It therefore escapes our experience.

Silver Lake, Golden Township, Mears, Michigan

Our first weekend trip together since 2010 did not disappoint. We booked our lake-view Beachhouse Inn room at the Silver Sands Resort (Dave and Val are your hosts: http://www.silversandsresort.net/) in June and have been looking forward to the trip quite eagerly.

We left early Friday morning in the rain and darkness with a couple of bags and a cooler in the back of the Jeep. It was dark all the way to the other side of the State, and the rain was heavy in some spots and lighter in others. Grand Rapids was particularly abysmal: pouring rain and I could not see the painted lines; the rush hour commuters did not care that we were from out of town and enjoying a day off work (while trying our damndest to get out of their construction-zone laden city). It cleared up a bit during the stretch to Muskegon, and we could see that somewhere in our great State the sun was coming up. Our first stop (not counting the McDonalds off of 31 where we got coffee) was the Muskegon State Park. We had been there before, but wanted to stop for some scenic Big Lake views (it was still pretty dark, but we got to take a couple of photos of the Lake we hadn't seen in 9 years and two months.)

Our first view of Lake Michigan on Friday at Muskegon State Park

We had time to kill before we could get into our room so we took a leisurely drive northwards - we wanted to see as much of the Big Lake as we could during our drive. We stayed near the coast on Scenic Drive, through Duck Lake and her State Park, then upwards to White Lake. This we followed inland and the houses were so beautiful and well kept-up everywhere there!  ( no photos - why?!? ... note to self).
We stopped for gas in Montague ($2.26 a gallon) and a bag of freshly popped popcorn (the marketing strategy of using smell to entice is affirmed here again) and were off northward. We hopped on 31 and exited at Hart eager to see Silver Lake and the dunes.

During most of my adult driving years, I have found it prudent to keep in the vehicle (or at least in a box in the closet by the front door, ready to be grabbed and taken to the vehicle) relevant maps: always a Michigan map showing US- State- and County- highways, city maps for local detail (Detroit, Lansing, Tri-Cities, Manistee, Ludington, Big Rapids, Mackinaw, etc), and county maps showing lake access, and where pavement starts/stops. Since the reign of the Computer with Phone Apps began though, paper folded maps with lots of tape on the worn spots and black penned lines showing well-traveled routes are become out-dated and not really necessary. Until you get to an area in northern Lower Michigan with no cel towers that your phone recognizes (which, for us, was everywhere past Grand Rapids).
So, while nearing our destination from the east and simultaneously looking out for a local establishment to provide us some breakfast, we might normally have said, 'breakfast nearby' to the phone, which would show local spots as well as give phone numbers and links to their web(s). But not here. No service was all we got, and that meant no texts, no calls, and no directions to Auntie Janes Good Eats.

So, we pressed on to Silver Lake, got into town and stopped at the first (and only, we found out) breakfast joint in town: the Sand Castle Restaurant. The parking lot was full ('that means the food is good!") and there was one booth available on the floor. After a few minutes, an elderly gentleman slowly (remember Tim Conway's old man character on The Carol Burnett Show?)  brought us menus, laminated and with about half the entries colored over with black marker. (It turns out the Oceana County Dune Riders Association had chosen this spot and time for their annual breakfast, and the place was packed).
We decided on our choices, and, after the same three waitresses rushed by us each about 12 times seemingly not even remotely interested in taking our order, we ambled across the street to The Sands Restaurant, which had very few cars in its lot.  As we got closer, we saw why: the sign in the window said 'Closed', or some such nonsense.

We had seen places open in Hart/Mears to the East, so we headed that way. Across 31 and just outside of Hart, we found That Place, who's parking lot was also full, and for which we had high hopes. Again (and this is about 10:00 am on a Friday morning), there was only one table available. The nice waitress dropped off menus and said she'd be right back. The restaurant was emptying at this time, and Butch the cook hadn't time to come out and bus the tables. Three quarters of the floor was void of people, but every table was still dirty. As more people paid and left, Butch was able to bus the dirty tables (but for some reason he must have been prohibited from killing the flies) and get the place looking respectable again. Our meat-lovers omelette with Texas toast came out hot and cheesy and we were satisfied and ready for our day.

Betty Boop and Moni, at That Place in Hart

My first selfie of the trip

Our hosts advised at that point that our room was not quite ready (check back at 12:30 or so), so we headed west again to see the Big Lake. Through Silver Lake, and then a little jaunt brought us to the Little Sable Point Light, where we could hear the waves pounding the sand.

The nice couple from eastern Illinoiz took this photo; he, a Vietnam Veteran who has gone through agent orange treatment, and she, whose  family had been coming to Silver Lake to vacation for over 50 years.          

The waves were huge, and there were several Amish families coming back from the beach. We decided to go see the Big Lake at the Township Park about a quarter mile back towards town. We had been there before, but hadn't spent much time on the beach because we had Sierra the Old Malamute with us.

Golden Township Park parking lot, next to the old house we are so enamoured with

We have photos of this old house near the Big Lake from 2010

We headed back to town to see if our room was ready and behold! she was. We brought in our bags and made ourselves quite at home.

The view from our deck looking west towards Silver Lake, the Dunes, and the Big lake

Neat room; small, but with a fridge and a very comfortable bed

We were initially quite happy with the room, and especially the breeze out on the deck, which we enjoyed all weekend.


We walked over to where the festival was right off main street - it was fenced in with the food vendors already set up and the smoke in the air was like nothing I have experienced! There were pizza trucks, bigass roasted corncobs, elephant ear trucks, popcorn and pretzel trucks, and of course mostly barbecue options. In the center of the park was the huge flag pole and pavilion with t-shirts, southward still was the band shell and beer tent. It was early afternoon and there still weren't many people there yet. We walked around and smelled the smells and took in the scenery for about and hour and then headed back to our room. I took a dip in the beautiful sparkling pool and, again, it did not disappoint.
It started getting cloudy again and the view from our room was quite beautiful, so we sat on the deck and discussed dinner options.

We decided on pizza from the Silver Pointe gas station/party store/general store/bakery and it did not disappoint. We had been up since two in the morning so we kind of crashed right about the time it got dark, but we were blessed with a beautiful sunset over the dunes.

Friday evening from our room, as the sun was going dipping toward Silver Lake, the dunes, and the Big Lake

We awoke well rested on Saturday morning and took an early walk through town. They already had main street blocked off for traffic and the craft and apple vendors were setting up their tents on the lake side - 80 spaces for about a half mile of road. We ambled down down the road and back before dawn and decided to try a place in Mears we had seen the day before for breakfast.

Nice place was The Golden Eatery, with good hot coffee and cute sayings all over the walls.

After breakfast in Mears, the view east toward sun-up

We followed the big setting moon back to town, and took another walk among the crafter's tents, then back along the Silver Lake shore. Beautiful homes there, well kept up.

We paused for another set for a spell on our deck, and took some moon photos.

Moonset Saturday morning over Silver Lake

We wanted to be near the pavilion by 10:00 as there was going to be a playing of the National Anthem at that time. Wonderful. Walked around and enjoyed the smells of the vendor trucks and then took another walk down through the craft and apple tents. At some point, the Classic Auto and ORV Show vehicles began coming west along the road.

Overall the festival was fun and we should have stayed there and enjoyed the day. NOOOOO, we chose to get back to the room to watch our football Spartans, which almost ruined the day.

We opted for pizza again from the gas station for dinner and after that called it a night.

We checked out early on Sunday and took a quick ride up to Pentwater to say hi. We visited Charles Mears State Park for a final look at the Big Lake and, yet again, it did not disappoint. We walked out on the pier and took photos and then said hello to Cenzo's, which was our main supplier when we camped here in 2010.

From the pier at Charles Mears State Park

Sunday morning dawn in Pentwater

Looking south on the coast toward Silver Lake

Pentwater Cenzo's!!

The drive home was pretty uneventful, except for a quick stop at a farmers stand we had passed a couple times in Hart, and an ill-advised stop at Burger King outside of Muskegon.

God blessed us with so much fun and good fellowship on this weekend! We met folks from Dearborn, Pinckney, Terra Haute, Harrison Township, and Frankfort, IL (not Chicago!).