A Simple Love Story

In the days when the judges rules, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

          Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

          When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

          Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

          Then she kissed them and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

          But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me - even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons - would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me!”

          At this, they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her.

          “Look,” said Naomi, “you sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

          But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

          So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

          “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

          So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

          Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, from the clan of Elimelech, a man of standing, whose name was Boaz.

          And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”

          Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.

          Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!”

          “The Lord bless you!” they called back.

          Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, “Whose young woman is that?”

          The foreman replied, “She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”

          So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”

          At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me - a foreigner?”

          Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband - how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

          “May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant - though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls.”

          At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.”

          When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don’t embarrass her. Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”

          So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.

          Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”

          Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.

          “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers.”

          Then Ruth the Moabitess said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”

          Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with his girls, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”

          So Ruth stayed close to the servant girls of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.

          One day Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, should I not try to find a home for you, where you will be well provided for? Is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been, a kinsman of ours? Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”

          “I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered. So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do.

          When Boaz had finished eating and drinking and was in good spirits, he went over to lie down at the far end of the grain pile. Ruth approached quietly, uncovered her feet and lay down. In the middle of the night something startled the man, and he turned and discovered a woman lying at his feet.

          “Who are you?” he asked.

          “I am your servant Ruth,” she said. “Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman-redeemer.”

          “The Lord bless you, my daughter,” he replied. “This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. And now, my daughter, don’t be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All my fellow townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character. Although it is true that I am near of kin, there is a kinsman-redeemer nearer than I. Stay here for the night, and in the morning if he wants to redeem, good; let him redeem. But if he is not willing, as surely as the Lord lives I will do it. Lie here until morning.”

          So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized; and he said, “Don’t let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor.”

          He also said, “Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out.” When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and put it on her. Then he went back to town.

          When Ruth came to her mother-in-law, Naomi asked, “How did it go, my daughter?”

          Then she told her everything Boaz had done for her and added, “He gave me these six measures of barley, saying, ‘Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed.’”

          Then Naomi said, “Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today.”

          Meanwhile Boaz went up to the town gate and sat there. When the kinsman-redeemer he had mentioned came along, Boaz said, “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” So he went over and sat down.

          Boaz took ten of the elders of the town and said, “Sit here,” and they did so. The he said to the kinsman-redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our brother Elimelech. I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated her and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line.”

          “I will redeem it,” he said.

          Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi and from Ruth the Moabitess, you acquire the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.”

          At this, the kinsman-redeemer said, “Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it.”

          (Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing transactions in Israel.)

          So the kinsman-redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it yourself.” And he removed his sandal.

          Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelech, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabitess, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from the town records. Today you are witnesses!”

          Then the elders and all those at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”

          So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”

          Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her alp and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi ahs a son.” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

          This, then, is the family line of Perez: Perez was the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, Boaz the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.

Pressing Question

Hello, all! I have a pressing question, and was wondering if anyone could help me... ??? It has to do with the familiar verse from Psalm 139: "I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made..."  Now, I understand the wonderfully part, but I'm trying to figure out what it means to be "fearfully made".  It seems like people always quote this verse, and I have absolutely no idea what it means! Who is afraid of who?  If anyone has any insights, I would love to hear them... Thanks!

Cassy's Latest Updates

First, the good stuff. A couple days ago, I put my family tree in "public" mode so that anyone can see it. Or at least I think so. And I uploaded (ooh-a techy term!!) pictures of some of the people up there so you all can kinda get a glimpse of these relatives of mine. Most of the ones I have up there now are from my mom's mom's family...people that I dont know. And they are are strikingly Italian. My mom's dad's side is there too. Be sure to check it out! Last time I wrote I forgot the link...but I put it in the comments from my last post or I think you can go to ancesrty.com and search for "Wilbur Family Tree". Hopefully it can be found.
Now for the stinky part. Every time I try to put a comment, it ends up overlapping the last paragraph of the post Im commenting on!! Erg!! I dont know what Im doing wrong!!
So, instead of putting a comment, I wil write them here. I wanted to tell Laura that I liked her marble story and how Im too simple-minded to come up with those kinds of things...AND that Im glad Steph finally put up a post :) Which was also an interesting story............
Now Im ready to watch the Olympics Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Humans As Horses

The other day I was cleaning out the horses' barn, a chore that has to be done at least once, sometimes twice, a day. As I was dumping the heaping wheelbarrow in the corn field, an epiphany came to me. Well, actually I had two thoughts. First, if I could sell this stuff, I would be richer than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Warren Buffet combined. Second, humans are like horses.
I know that sound strange, but it's true; let me explain. All horses do the same thing every day-- they constantly create disgusting filth from the rich, fresh hay that is provided to them. They drop fecal matter just about everywhere, they step in it, and my one horse even lies down in it every night. It is smelly and repulsive, yet I walk into the barn and, feeling pity and love for the helpless creatures, scrape away every trace of the offensive matter. I put down clean bedding (also known as sawdust shavings) for them, not because they want me to (though I'm sure that if they could talk, they would ask me to clean the barn for them), but because I love them and want to make their existing habitat clean.
In the same way, we are like the horses. God gave each one of us a clean heart when he sent his incredibly beloved Son to die for us sinful humans. And every day, we sin. We create nasty, wretched sin out of the clean "bedding" that God has given us. We take His gift and adulterate it. We walk in our sin, sleep in it, and live in it. But because He loves us so incredibly much, and for that reason alone, he shovels out all of our sin, casting it "into the cornfield", or as Psalm 103:12 says, "as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."
God doesn't just cover up our sin with another layer of sawdust. He takes our manure and throws it out of our sight forever. And even though we keep on sinning, it doesn't matter to Him... It's funny how manure can remind us of such an important concept.

Chinese 10

Hello all!
Matti and I have discovered a very fun card called Chinese 10, and we wanted to share it with all of you, so I have added a page to our blog explaining how to play.  Here's the link: http://penandswordblog.blogspot.com/p/how-to-play-card-game-chinese-10_17.html.  To find it in the future, check out our handy-dandy toolbar on the right side of the page, where we have added a list of pages on our blog.  Enjoy the game!
Laura

COMING SOON: How to play the card game King's Corners (another amazingly fun game we want to show you guys how to play!).

The Marbles of Life

Have you ever heard the legend about the stork that delivers babies to the expectant parents?  Well, I was daydreaming about that a little and figured that if it was true, the stork would get its babies from Heaven. You can just imagine all the little babies, lined up in a row, waiting for God to send them off to Earth.  I can imagine God, sitting up there on His throne, holding each of them close, calling them by name, and breathing life into them.  He hands each baby a small bag filled with marbles and says, “This is your life.  Spend it wisely.”

Well, the little babies get down to Earth and start to grow up.  What do they do with their gift from God?  They spend it recklessly – giving it to different idols – money, music, television.

Finally, they spend their last marble and come crying back to God – not necessarily babies any more, but young men and women, ruined by alcohol, smoking, and premarital sex.  Their life is in shreds and all they have to offer God is their empty bag of marbles. They cry for forgiveness.  They cry for God to intervene in their life and make it whole.

God begins to run towards them, with open arms, saying, “Come to me my sons and daughters.  I’ve missed you. Come home to your Father.”  And the young men and women run to God, talking refuge in the palm of His hand.

Obviously, the above story is false.  We are not given a bag of marbles when we are born, but we are given a much more important gift – a life and a heart.  Every breath we take is owned by God – we are living on borrowed time.

God tells us to use our life wisely – we only have one, but we don’t listen.  We refuse to change our selfish ways.  Instead, we go into life looking out for ourselves.  We have the mentality that we are gods and we are the most important thing in this universe.  We give our lives away to whatever looks good.

I kind of think of it like a big circus fair, with many, many appealing, colorful tents set up.  There’s flashing lights and loud music, so we’re attracted.  The tents advertise alcohol, smoking, bad movies, and disobedience.  It looks good.  It looks like fun.  We buy into every offer we see.

And it is fun – for a fleeting second.  After that, it becomes enslaving and addictive.  We are trapped and there is no way we can get out.  Before we know it, we have spent all our marbles.  We are in a helpless predicament, stuck in the downward slide of sin leading only to death and destruction.  There is no exits or u-turns – it’s a one-way road.

The only way we can get out is if we admit that we are trapped and if we cry out to God.  He will listen and He will welcome you home with open arms.  He takes you off the side of destruction and sets you on the ladder of truth.  It looks harder, but you think it’s worth the effort.  Before you start climbing, He says, “I have another present for you.”

He reaches out His hand into that rambunctious, noisy fair and He collects all of the marbles – the pieces of your life that you had carelessly thrown away.  He puts them back in that little tattered bag of yours and hands it to you.

He has wiped your sin clean.  You are living on a clean chalkboard with no marks or scratches to ruin it.  You think about where you should spend your marbles this time and you know the answer.

  

You give it all back to Him.  You silently hand Him the tattered bag, no full, and say, “This is for You.”

In return, He gives you a small bottle.  This one doesn’t include marbles but a liquid of some sort.  The bottle is marked “love”. “I am Love,” God says. “There is no way you can love without Me.  You will have enough love for everyone.”

The next part of this life is where most of us are now.  We have given God our life and He has given us love.  We have love for everyone and that is part of what sets us apart in this world – our love.  Non-believers can’t truly love with God’s kind of love because they don’t have God.

Now, that we are on the ladder of truth, we have everyday choices to make.  You still stumble, you can still visit the carnival of the world.  The tents still seems very attractive, but you know better.  You know that all your marbles belong to God.

Gradually, though, we begin to want our marbles back and we begin to take them back.  We make excuses.  Maybe we say, “Oh, I’ll skip devotions today – I need to e-mail so and so.” And we grab a few marbles back or we say, “I know God wants me to witness to the girl down the street but she’s just so weird.” And we grab a handful of marbles.

Often our time and energy are filled with something else.  We spend more time thinking about the cute guy two rows away from us in school.  We think and daydream about Him constantly and God just doesn’t seem as important.  We grab another handful.

This is a day to day struggle for everyone.  Every day we need to consciously give our marbles, our whole heart, back to God.  We need to release the ones we are grabbing onto tightly and surrender control.

God needs to be the pilot of our ship or we’ll go off course.  Think of your life as a ship.  Only one person has the map of Eternity Seas and that is the pilot, God.  When you try to steer, you get lost because you don’t have the full map.  You only have a small piece of it.

God should be ruling our life – He should hold the marbles.  We mess up sometimes and take back marbles or give them away and once again we come crying to God.  He only has a few marbles left. You see the shabby marbles sitting in His hand and you cry.

God reaches down and wipes away your tears.  He says, “Do not cry.  Come home to me.” And you eagerly run into His outstretched arms, back where you belong.

Once more, God reaches down into your little world.  He gathers your marbles and puts them in your bag.  You give them all back to Him.

We mess up constantly, but God will always forgive us; He will always welcome us back and collect our marbles for us.  He will love us no matter what.

Twilight Parody

Matti showed me this really funny parody, and we'd like you all to see it (if you want that is).  Here's the link: http://otahyoni.livejournal.com/130432.html?thread=1883264.  Now, as a disclaimer, I haven't read any of the Twilight books so you shouldn't listen to me on whether or not to read the books.  I just found the parody funny; it could completely misrepresent the books - I don't know; I haven't read them! :)

Gun Control pt 2

In 1836, Colt invented the repeating revolver. This revolver could shoot up to six times without needing to be reloaded, which was an amazing development. The Colt .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol became the official handgun for the United States army for 50 years. Later, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson manufactured a sidearm that fired a fully self-contained cartridge in 1852. They became famous for the .375-Magnum revolver, the .44-Magnum revolver and the 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. Smith and Wesson sold the patent to Oliver Winchester who, in later years, founded the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
In the 1860’s, American’s owned 750,000 pistols, 400,000 shotguns, and 500,000 rifles. From 1899 to 1945, American’s bought more than 44 million guns, and private Americans owned 220 to 230 million guns, 70 million of which were handguns.
Today, People buy 4.5 to 5 million new guns each year, and thirty to forty percent of American homes have guns. Gun makers made around 5 million firearms in 1994 and American gun ownership has doubled in 30 years, despite the laws.
In 1997 something drastic happened. England completely banned handguns and confiscated them from permit holders. By 2000, England had the worlds’ highest violent crime rate, and it was twice what the United States had. A 2002 report of England’s National Crime Intelligence Service found, “Britain has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, yet it appears that anyone who wishes to obtain (illegally) a firearm will have little difficulty in doing so.” To this day, England still will not give up its stand on gun control.
In the United States, however, gun laws have remained more lax. In the 1973 court case of United States vs. Miller, two suspects in a bank robbery were arrested for possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Sawed-off shotguns were illegal under the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. The presiding judge said that the NFA violated the second amendment, and the case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court unanimously declared there to be no problem between the NFA and the second amendment . “[sic] No evidence that sawed-off shotguns had any reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.”
The District of Columbia passed an ordinance in 1976 that made it illegal for residents to keep and own handguns in their homes. It also regulated that rifles and shotguns are to be kept unloaded and disassembled at all times. Dick Heller filed a lawsuit against this ordinance in 2008 (DOC vs. Heller), because he applied for a permit to a handgun and was denied. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the second amendment guarantees people can have, own and keep firearms in their homes.

Gun control pt1

Disclaimer:I did do research on this topic, not all of this is mine, is you really want to know who came up with what leave a message and I'll get you the source.



Gun control is an oft debated topic, and a very controversial one. The two sides of the battle about guns are both passionate about what they believe. So all of America knows about gun control, but not all of America likes it. The two main groups that are featured in this battle that rages around the 50 states are pro gun advocates and anti gun activists.
There are an estimated 200 million privately owned guns in the United States according to the FBI. Since there are so many guns, firearms’ manufacturers propose that their industry not only creates jobs, but that it “generates 20 billion dollars in economic activity per year". Also, the National Center for Policy Analysis notes that armed citizens save the U.S. 90 million to 38.8 billion dollars per year preventing crimes. In the United States a survey taken in 1990 found that even though most Americans wanted more gun control, they also thought that if more firearms’ laws went into effect, crime would stay the same or increase.
So why the rush to lock up guns if they save money, promote business and do prevent crime?
The history of gun control must begin with the history of guns themselves. In 1631, all “able-bodied” men of the Massachusetts Bay colony were required to join the colony’s militia and provide their own guns. Men of this era had guns because earlier in the 1600’s, colonial law entailed that every household was to have at least one gun. The government was so insistent that houses have guns that if the family was too poor to buy a gun, the government would loan them a gun until the price could be paid back. Officers even searched the homes periodically to ensure that the law was being followed. Yet murder was rare, and the few murders that happened did not involve guns. Later in 1981, in Kennesaw Georgia, the law dictated that people had to have a gun. Seven years later, burglaries were down from eleven per one thousand houses to two point six per one thousand. That is a four hundred percent decrease.
In 1840 however, murder went up because gun ownership was not required, but by the start of the Civil War, guns were once again being bought and kept in homes. After the Civil War, Union soldiers brought their guns home, Confederates were required to turn their rifles in. They were, however, allowed by U.S. Grant to keep their handguns, as Grant did not want to humiliate them. The war determined, among many other things, the future of guns in America. The war had increased the deadliness of the typical gun used, particularity because of the work of Samuel Colt.

ASL....Finale!

Deafness can be cause by many things—for instance, in the 1960’s there was an epidemic of rubella. This caused a large number of deaf or hard of hearing babies to be born. There are also the factors of prematurity and prenatal exposure to a virus.
Even within deafness there are classifications. A person born deaf is congenitally deaf, but a person that becomes deaf after birth is adventitiously deaf. Pre-lingual deafness refers to a child three years or younger, and post-lingual is after the first three years of life. Pre-lingual and post-lingual refer to childhood deafness, lingual referring to language. Also there is pre-vocational (still a teenager) and post-vocational (after age nineteen).
Congenital and hereditary deafness are not the same thing. Congenital simply alludes to being born deaf. Hereditary deafness on the other hand can be caused by repeated doses of either very deep or very high noise. A rock concert, commuting on the subway, constant exposure to pneumatic drills or even lining too close to an airport can all damage or eventually take away one’s hearing. Elderly people are especially prone to otosclerosis, which is when the bones of the middle ear start hardening.
A person may be adventitiously deaf for many reasons which are often caused by accidents. There are the physical injuries, such as getting hurled of a motorcycle, experiencing a bomb blast, and suffering from extreme chill. Then there are the medical reasons: a disease like neurofibromatosis (tumors in the auditory nerve), and viral infections like mumps, measles, meningitis or encephalitis. Reactions to certain drugs may also trigger adventitious deafness.
The answer to what Deaf culture is is that it is many things; in fact it is almost impossible to label. From their history, with all its people, to how deafness is classified within itself, deaf culture is a pleroma of things.


So, I've been thinking...should I do a bunch of posts on gun control?
I know I originally started with this blog to do book reviews, but that is a little inconceivable at the moment.
So...Gun control?

My True Love

I created this title only to trick people into thinking I was going to talk about some guy... but I'm not! In fact, it's not even referring to any sort of homo sapien. It's about my current project.
Since last summer, I've been a member of ancestry.com and have made it all the way to 1490!! My Finnish descendant, Olof Seppe, owned a farm in what is now near the border of Sweden and Finland. Awesome! I am also on the verge of putting pictures to go with the mysterious names in my family tree...thanks to my grandma! My tree is called "The Wilbur Family Tree" (this reminds me of "The Vonn Trap Family Singers!" and triumphant music...) If you are interested you can try to find it on the website, but I'm not sure if I'll have it on the "public" setting or not...perhaps I can regularly make it public for a day or so. Hey- I'll start with today! So if you want to see it, today is a good day to try it out! And if you want to make a tree for your own family, you can get it free (though limited) or pay a lot of money each month...your choice!

Asl part --3 misc.

Oralism was and is one of the most hated subjects in the history of the Deaf people. The main proponent of oralism was Alexander Graham Bell, the man who invented the telephone. He is known as the enemy of sign language and the Deaf and what he did is considered to be eugenic. Bell proposed legislation against the intermarriage of congenitally deaf people and suggested three ways to prevent the marriage of more deaf adults. He said that hearing people should eliminate the residential schools which would've alone “eliminated” the Deaf people. Many deaf families believe strongly in special schools for their children and would even relocate to get the best one. He also wanted to forbid signing, and prohibit deaf adults from being teachers. Bell also founded the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, and was the leading oral advocate of the 1860’s. He believed that deafness was a horrible curse, as he called it a pathological aberration.
Although Bell was not the only person in the recesses of Deaf history to be racist, one name is hated almost as much as his. Jane Bassett Spilman, who was on the Board of Trustees for Gallaudet University, worked with deaf people day in and day out. Yet, she made an inflammatory quote when the Gallaudet students demanded a deaf president. Gallaudet was in the process of selecting a new president for the university and the deaf students started a movement which is now referred to as the DPN (Deaf President Now). It was 1988 and rallies were held in support of the deaf candidates Dr. Harvey J. Corson and Dr. Irving King Jordan. These men were running against the lone hearing candidate Dr. Elisabeth A. Zinser, with the odd stacked two to one the students were hopeful that Gallaudet would have is own deaf president. But Zinser was selected and the Deaf community rioted. They marched to the hotel where the candidates were being housed and that is where Spilman, in an effort to address the crown made her infamous remark. She said “Deaf people are not ready to function in a hearing world.” Within a week Spilman was forced to resign and Zinser followed suit. Irving King Jordan became Gallaudet’s President and the deaf community rejoiced.

ASL part 2---Language part 2

On the subject of words, there is the indispensable art of fingerspelling. Essential to ASL, and easy to learn, one thing never to get wrong is that clarity is better than speed. Fingerspelling is indispensable because if a word is not know it can be fingerspelled, thus enabling the conversation to move on smoothly. Some fingerspelled words are, over time, made into signed words. For instance, the word job was originally fingerspelled j-o-b. Over time it has become so fluid that the o is almost omitted as the hand slides along. It is now called a “lone sign,” which is when a fingerspelled word is considered a sign because it is fingerspelled so smoothly.
Not only is there fingerspelling, but there is also lip-reading. Many Deaf people are somewhat skilled at this tactic to understand a non-signing hearing person. Keep in mind however; holding a hand in front of the face or signing in the semi darkness will drastically reduce the ability for the other person to understand anything. Also, any kind of facial hair will cause a problem—trying to lip-read a person with a moustache in almost like listening to half a conversation as it obscures the orifice.
Fingerspelling itself was often made “illegal” in the past. There were two main ways to teach deaf people back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The combined method was constantly changing but started with signing being forbidden and fingerspelling supplementing speech. In other cases only speech was used but sign was allowed outside of school, and then there was speech used in class, and sign was “reserved” for the adults who never went to school to learn speech, the “oral failures.”

The World is Flat: A Book Review

The world is flat?! What are you talking about Laura?! Everyone knows the world is round. Well, yes, geographically the world is round (don’t worry; I’m not challenging Colombus’ findings!), but when Thomas L. Friedman named his book, he was referring to a different kind of flatness.  He was talking about a global flatness or, as some people call it, globalization. This refers to the “a process whereby an increased portion or economic or other activity is carried out across national borders.” (www.developmenteduction.ie/glossary/) In other words, most businesses are no longer limited to one country.  They are global companies, manufacturing, producing and marketing in many different countries all across the world.  And those businesses that do choose to stay in one country are no longer competing with only local companies.  They are now competing with huge global companies that have extended their reach into many countries.

How did this flat world begin to occur?  A lot of factors helped it along, but the main development was technology.  With this new century has come the rise of the internet, personal computers, PDA’s, cell phones and endless amounts of electronic gadgets.  This has connected everyone more quickly and easily.  Before this time, international phone calls were expensive and international mailing was slow.  Now, anybody with a computer is only a click away from instant messaging or e-mailing someone halfway across the world.  New software technologies have also allowed companies to share documents, photos and files more easily and collaborate on projects over the internet.  All of this has allowed businesses to communicate more easily and effectively with employees in different locations.  Essentially, it has knocked down the barriers that stood between different countries.

Because of these developments, more countries are entering the industrial world, namely China and India.  In those countries, a pool of talent sits willing and able to work for less.  Many companies have begun to out-source certain parts of their work to Bangalore and Hong Kong factories and phone centers.  Almost every company in this modern world takes part in out-sourcing.  Probably 95% of the items you use every day were in some way designed or manufactured in a country other than the United States.  This flattening of the world is revolutionary for industrialization.  It makes things possible that were inconceivable several decades ago.

This is the world that we live in, and this is the business world that I will be trying to find a job in.  So what does this mean for me?  To put it simply: We now have competition.  America is no longer at the top of the manufacturing world.  China and Japan are catching up, and we need to be ready for them.  America as a whole needs to be able to keep up its high academic standards and continue to churn out top-notch engineers, scientists, educators and business majors.  American youth need to apply themselves to studying and learning, so that with further training, they will be able to rise in the ranks of the world and compete globally.  Much of America has fallen into complacency, and we need to shake out it and continue to compete globally, because we have no other option in this flat world.

Asl part 2-- Language part 1

American Sign Language, which was derived from the French form that was brought over from Paris with Clerc is one of the main languages for communicating with the Deaf. There are many different forms of Sign Language, in fact, every country has there own. There is Israeli Sign Language, Ethiopian Sign Language and even Mauritanian Sign Language. If there are deaf people, there will be some form of sign language. And where there is Sign Language there will be accents. Languages have accents, and sign is no different. If a deaf person from America went to Thailand, they would find that they could sign to a deaf Thai person, but they would have an accent. Thai sign is very formal, almost stiff, but on the other side of the spectrum is the very emotional American sign which, while still recognizable, is completely different. British sign, which one might think is perfectly compatible with American sign, is altogether at variance with what most Deaf Americans know. They have an extensively changed alphabet and their signs are either smaller or bigger than that of the Americans.
Not only are there accents but there are different dialects—Amslang, PSE, SEE and ASL. Amslang is a cross between Signed Exact English (SEE) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE). ASL (American Sign Language) has is own sentence structure—for instance, in ASL one would say “I am going to the store” like “store that one I go now.” In PSE one would say “I am go to the store” which contrasts to SEE, as it would be said in proper English “I am going to the store.” Amslang would translate it as “Store I go now,” so there are many different ways to say this simple phrase that only differ in a word or two.