Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

So. I have tried to compromise. If you are the perfect Catholic parent, you may stop reading right now because what follows will likely only irritate you. I salute you and maybe someday I will be like you but in the meantime…I have figured out a way to have Advent lights and Christmas lights and if you are interested in trying this too, you need to get busy and order what you might not have.

What I do is take one string of purple lights and one string of white lights and make them into “one” string by using tie-wraps. With these single strings of purple and white lights, you can decorate as usual but just plug in the purple side during Advent. At midnight on Christmas eve, you unplug the purple strings and plug in the white side which is ready to go. Voila! Christmas lights. We’ve done this for the past couple of years and other than the whining I endure from the children who must have multi-colored lights or die, it’s worked well. (I simply tell the children that if they are willing to wait until Christmas to have multi-colored lights, then they can have them. If they want lights on all through Advent, they can do it my way.)

Hear My Voice: A Children’s Translations of Gospel Readings of the Catholic Mass for 2009

This is from the letter sent to me by the author Jonathan Stampf:

From the preface:

What a useful teaching tool this is! I took my galley copy with me to my RCIA class and there was an enthusiastic response from all of the parents present.

In the interest of full disclosure, if you order via the link in my sidebar (or the above link) I will be “paid” a small amount of the purchase price. I will donate any proceeds to Kiva and make a matching gift to the building of my parish’s new education building.

1. Cook two cups of rice with appropriate amounts of salt and oil….or more or less rice  depending on how many you are feeding. Just adjust the amount of dressing you make accordingly. Pick a kind of rice that you like. Any rice will do but if you use Minute Rice, I don’t want to hear about it. I am quite partial to a mix of Lundberg fams wild rice blend with some Uncle Ben’s tossed for those who think brown rice is yucky. I’ve also mixed lentils and beans into the rice with very good results. I also cook the rice with about 1 tsp of curry powder per cup of uncooked rice. I am partial to Penzeys’ Maharajah Curry Powder for this recipe. I also like their garam masala for this recipe but if you use that do NOT cook it with the rice since it is best uncooked.

2. For the dressing mix together another tsp of curry powder per uncooked cup of rice (if you didn’t eat this at the diaconate potluck, then your version had a little more than that and I thought it was too much.) Add more or less to taste. I like things highly flavored so if you don’t, start with less. Then add approximately 1/2 cup oil, 1/3 cup white wine vinegar, and 1 tsp soy sauce for every two cups of uncooked rice that you started with. If you ate the diaconate potluck version of this, this following step is very important. Measure the soy sauce using the large refill bottle of soy sauce that you keep in the pantry and accidentally spill at least a quarter cup of soy sauce into the blender after you have measured out the requisite amount of soy sauce. It is cucial at this point that you say some spicy words to fully round out the flavor of the dressing and then resolve to change the name of the salad to Asian Rice Salad if anyone asks for a name. Combine the curry powder, oil, vinegar, and too much soy sauce (if you have followed the recipe exactly) pour over the rice and toss thoroughly.

3. At this point you may put the salad into the frig until you are ready to dress is for serving. This makes a particularly good lunch dish if you just scoop some into a bowl and then toss it with whatever looks good at the time., you can also serve it over mixed greens. What do you use to “dress” this….other than the above dressing? Whatever looks and sounds good to you.  Green onions and chives are a staple for me. Grapes work nicely and diced avocado is heavenly in this. Toss some cooked, diced chicken breast into it if you are looking for some protein but chopped hard boiled eggs, tofu, or black beans also work nicely. Other fruits/items that work, drained canned mandarin oranges (or fresh ones), dice pineapple of either the fresh or canned sort, raisins, currants, bananas, apples, olives, cheese, etc.

Let me be clear. I do not support either major candidate for the presidency. I have disliked McCain and his politics for as long as I can remember. I have disliked Obama and his politics for not quite as long. Nevertheless, I cannot cast my vote for someone who is campaiging on a promise to pass legislation that will surely increase the number of abortions in this country. I am not a one issue voter, but Obama’s absolutely uncompromising stance on abortion including voting against protecting babies born alive, and partial birth abortions, etc. totally disqualifies him for dog catcher much less POTUS.

But I digess. Back to voting third party. Unless a third party candidate is on the ballot in enough states to win an electoral majority and ideally in all 50 states (and yes, I know how hard that is to accopmlish for a third party candidate) they are simply not only not going to win. Furthermore, they are not prepared to govern if they do win.

The Constitution Party candidate (the one I have heard most often as the favored third party choice…although, he is not my particular temptation in the third party realm), Chuck Baldwin, is currently on the ballot (not as a write-in) in states constituting 318 electoral votes. That leaves 220 electoral votes that he absolutely cannot get. You need 270 to win.

So to be clear here, all Obama and McCain have to do TOGETHER is get 48 electoral votes in the states where Baldwin is on the ballot and he cannot win. Can’t. You think that Obama isn’t going to take 55 electoral votes in California? Or that Texas (34 electoral votes) isn’t going to McCain? That’s the reality.

And let’s just suspend reality for a minute and ask, “How is a third party candidate, that doesn’t even have the depth of support to get on the ballot in all 50 states going to govern in the event he actually got elected?” The whole idea of accumulating and spending “political capital” is a very real one and a third party candidate wouldn’t have ANY to start with.

I think that third party candidates for President help foster the notion that the most important vote we make is the one for President and that the only way we have to influence politics is with our vote. Meadow muffins. We’ve got a lot of options available to us. We can build a new party by doing the hard work necessary to get local people on the ballot and building from there, NOT by starting at the top and working down. We can have fund-raisers and talk to our neighbors for the the entire 4 years between presidential elections so that there is a base to build from. We can support the special interests that we care the most about with our hard earned money. We can write those people we do elect and send letters to the editor and hold our elected officials accountable ALL of the time and not just the 6 months before a presidential election.

It’s not our presidential vote that we “throw away.” It’s all the time between elections that is thrown away when we could have been working and investing some of our OWN political capital so that we aren’t faced with a choice of the lesser of two evils. If we are faced with a choice of the lesser of two evils, I don’t think that voting thrid party is the way to assuage our conscience. It’s how we use our time and money between elections that will truly fix our conscience.

You turn to microfinance organzations that make loans to businesses all over the world. Where do these micofinances organizations get money, well until recently the answer to that was wealthy philanthropists. But now small business owners all over the world can turn to people just like you and me through an organization called Kiva that matches donors to small business owners.

For just $25 you can change a business and through that business, you can change a family, a community, and with enough of us working together….the world.

And after your small business owner pays back your $25, you can take the money and spend it on a manicure or going to the movies….or you can lend it again. And again.

Please at least go take a look at Kiva and see if you might be willing to help with a loan of $25 or more. And if you go and there aren’t any available loans for funding, please know that it isn’t always that way. Sometimes there are 500 business owners waiting for loans. Recently, Kiva changed the policy of waiting until a loan was entirely repaid before freeing up the money that was paid back to withdraw or re-loan. This freed up a LOT of money to loan and there has been a temporary shortage of loans available for funding. But new loans are added all of the time and I am sure that the shortage of needs is only temporary so if Blog Action Day has things jumping on Kiva even more than it has in the last month, PLEASE check back.

What are the odds that these business owners will actually repay you? Pretty darn good actually. As of  October 13, 2008, the average default rate is 1.34% with a delinquincy rate of 4.03%. You can increase those odds by choosing to lend in politically stable areas with microfinance organizations with well-established track records of payment.  The choice is yours. You can make loans in particular sectors of the economy, to women, or men, or in particular countries or regions of the world. You can take a chance by loaning to those in Iraq or other troubled areas or choose a less troubled region.

Two more things. Would you let me “invite” you to Kiva? (Just email redneckwomandesign [at] yahoo [dot] com and I’ll get an official email invite to you from the Kiva website) I’d kind of like to see what impact my blog has made. And once you join, would you consider joining Team Catholic, the group of Catholic donors on Kiva? I know that there are more of us on Kiva than have actually joined.

Where else can you get such “interest” out of a small investment of $25? You can change a life, and when you are done changing one life, you can take the money and change another one. It feels good and I am not the only one who thinks so. Here is what one Team Catholic member says about her experience with Kiva

Blog Action Day Haiku

Blog Action Day: Microfinancing - Money & Investing