We've lived in Florida almost our entire lives and never made it up the road to the historic Tarpon Springs. We had a wonderful time just spending the day together as a family. We went to the Sponge Factory and watched a film about how they gather and make sponges. We later walked the old streets, now fashionably touristy in nature, and soaked in the Greek culture.
It was also great how their faith is engrained into their daily lives, with pictures of Jesus, Mary and the saints all over the place. Below are some pics from the day.
Dea and I in Tarpon Springs
DC and Gabe in front of one of the murals.
There was one store in downtown Tarpon Springs called DC's Downtown. We had to take a picture of it.
I was listening to the Glen Beck radio show on my way to lunch and he read a long article from Newsweek in 1973... about the impending doom of... Global Cooling.
That's right.
See, it appears that there was almost a one degree Celsius increase from the 1800s to 1940. Then, something very ominous happened... there was almost a one degree Celsius decrease from 1940s to 1970s. Shoot up the flares! Sound the alarms! All of the scientists of the time warned of the crop damage and mass starvation that was to occur in the next 30 years due to this cooling trend.
So, if we were to believe the scientists then, we'd all be dead by now.
If we are to believe the scientists now... we'll all be dead soon.
Back then, the solution to this alarming decrease in temperature could be solved by, get this... melting the ice caps! That's what the top minds in the world came up with at the time. Cover the ice caps in black soot and let the heat from the sun melt them.
Melting ice caps saves the world!
Now, melting ice caps destroys the world!
Intelligencia, make up your mind! We simpletons are easily confused. To quote Mr. Beck, "this is why people think scientists are all quacks... it's the "eat butter is good for you, eat butter is bad for you" mentality."
We live in a dynamic world that changes every minute of every day. To expect the temperature to remain constant is ludicrous. Maybe the 1970s scientists should have a sit down with the 2000s scientists to see just which dooms day scenario is the one we should be avoiding.
All of us ignorant masses are anxiously awaiting your expert advice. We'll never survive without it.
It's official, I'm an old fart. My wife and I popped in the DVD from Netflix for The 40 Year Old Virgin the other night and after about ten minutes, we turned it off. The bathroom humor laced with F-words and descriptive sex acts just wasn't funny for us anymore.
There was a time where movies like Porkys and American Pie were funny. Now, I don't know... something clicked and it ends up being more offensive than funny.
And that makes me an old fart. Officially. And I'm okay with that.
I didn't watch the Academy Awards this year, but I did stumble across the video of the opening. The Oscars was hosted this year by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame. He's a very funny man who is critical of both sides of the political aisle.
The opening was very funny this year, playing up the Brokeback Mountain punchlines and the political nature of the nominated films. And Stewart's rant on Hollywood, calling it, among other things, an "atheistic pleasuredome" is hilarious. The opening is PG, but worth a look if you dare.
For those who remember Noah, my nephew who was born with some kidney problems and was not expected to survive... well, its almost been a year and he's due for surgery to resolve some of this kidney issues.
Today, around noon, please pray for Noah as he endures a five hour operation to have his bladder put back into his body (it was a stoma on the outside since birth), his urethra unblocked and his left kidney removed. He'll be in the hospital a week and may end up spending his first birthday there, poor kid.
So, continue your prayers for this brave young man and for the family as well.
I'm not a UFO nut or anything... I think the odds of an alien race stumbing across our little planet is pretty slim. However, I do remember seeing this video below. When I lived in Orlando we used to watch the Shuttle launches from the second story balcony at Nickelodeon Studios. In the evening, local cable would broadcast live camera feeds from the Shuttle on the NASA channel. It was very cool and oddly relaxing because you could see the Earth below and the sun rising and setting every 90 minutes or something like that.
One night, during one of the Shuttle missions, the NASA channel showed the following live footage. I don't know if it is aliens or not, but it is certainly not identified. After this was broadcast, NASA stopped showing live feeds from the Shuttle. Maybe they were tired of having to cover for covert military operations or explaining how space dust can be construed as space ships, but the footage below is pretty amazing. You can see a circular vessel approach from the bottom right, approaching a smaller object coming from the upper left. You can also see flashes of lightning from a thunderstorm below. As the vessels near each other, the circular vessel begins to glow and slows to a stop as it meets the other, smaller vessel. What you don't see on this video is, after this clip ends, the circular vessel continued flying around the sky for a while, then disappeared.
I remember watching this and thinking "did I just see that???"
Did you know that Bill Murray's sister is a sister, as in a Domenican nun?
Me neither.
Did you know that Murray, fondly remembered for his work in the film Caddyshack, has shared peformance genes with his sister, because she's performing a one-nun show as St. Catherine of Siena?
From LifesiteNews.net the Scottish Catholic Education Service lost a court battle for not promoting a teacher that was an athiest. Instead of cowering to future threats of litigation, the SCES decided to go the other direction... now, all teachers must not only call themselves Catholics, but actually be practicing Catholics.
"You can't teach religious education in a Catholic school without being of the Catholic faith and having a complete knowledge and commitment to that practice" said SCES director Michael McGrath.
It's about time a Catholic organization has stood up for its faith. Read the entire article HERE.
In a story in the St. Pete Times about the two recent deaths by women taking the abortion RU-486 pill, it was determined that Planned Parenthood had told these two women to take the pill in a way that was in conflict with the FDA approved instructions and therefore caused their deaths.
What is so interesting and biased in this reporting is that Planned Parenthood is mentioned only as "the organization" in the beginning of the story and only identified by name later. Why? Because this was a front page story and the editors obviously didn't want Planned Parenthood to get a bad name to the casual reader, so they called PP "the organization" on the front page and didn't mention it by name until the story continued on deep into the section of the newspaper.
You can read the entire article online HERE, but you won't get the full effect unless you're holding a newspaper in your hand.
Secondly, where's the public outrage against Planned Parenthood? They are responsible not only for the deaths of the innocent babies that were aborted, but of those two mis-guided mothers as well. Where's the call to justice now?
In another subtle liberal spin, I recently read an article about the creation of the Ave Maria city and campus down near Naples, Florida. I don't have an online link handy, but in it the author of the article tells about the upcoming battle over the ACLU against the plans for this Catholic city (no birth control, no abortions available in city limits, etc.). In this article, the writer mentions that the city is being built near Naples in a location where migrant farm workers used to work. Why is that sentence in there? Does it have anything to do with the subject of the article? No. It's there to make it seem like this city creation was at the expense of the poor migrant farm workers.
I have two reactions to this. First, the migrant farm workers are probably not U.S. citizens, so I don't care. Second, I'd bet those migrant workers, and more, are currently being hired by the construction companies building the city itself.
So, when you read the paper, look for these subtle ways the liberal media spins the story toward their social or political opinion. They're tricky, but we're smarter.
When I was growing up playing little league, one of the standing rewards in our family was a hot fudge sundae if you hit a home run.
This was a very big deal.
Our family never ate out to eat. Whenever we'd pass by McDonalds we'd plead to our father to let us get a meal there, but he'd respond "wave to it as we go by." We rarely went out for ice cream and we hardly ever had dessert at dinner. As a matter of fact, the sure fire way to know whether we were going to have dessert at dinner was whether or not my mother had put down a spoon with our silverware. If we had a spoon, we had dessert. No spoon, no dessert.
So getting a hot fudge sundae for hitting a home run was a really big reward. In a family of eight kids, getting one on one time with my Dad was tough, but if you earned a sundae, it was a special moment that we shared with each other, just the two of us.
I was lucky to have earned one, solitary single sundae in my little league career. I was not a very talented hitter, but I was a very good pitcher. One game when I wasn't pitching, one of the only games my parents were unable to attend, I hit a high 3-1 fastball over the Corkers sign in left center (Corkers was the name of our team)... a solo home run. Later on I knocked in the only other run we got that game. We lost 14-2 that game, but it was a personal memorable game for me on the offensive side of the ball.
I have passed on the sundae for a home run tradition with my son. He earned one last year in fall ball and earned another one today. He hit a line drive high over the left fielder's head, earned a triple standing, but a bad throw allowed him to run home. He immediately ran over and jumped into my arms. He was so excited.
After the game we headed over to the Whistle Stop, a local family run ice cream shop by the train tracks in downtown Safety Harbor and enjoyed some father/son time while he savored every moment of his hot fudge sundae.
Its a great tradition started by my father and I love passing it on to my children.
Dea and I in Tarpon Springs
DC and Gabe in front of one of the murals.
There was one store in downtown Tarpon Springs
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