No. 145 – April 23, 2015 – Snow Flakes, Heart Aches and Prayer

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

It's not that there were a lot of snow flakes today – it was having any of them still with us when Mother's Day is right around the corner and stories are starting to receive 4^th of July merchandise. Of course, I'm from California and there we expect winter to last maybe a weekend. So I watched the snow flakes drift down for a while trying to make it to the ground. Our lives are like snow flakes, you know. Living can be tough, even when gravity is working with you instead of against you.

For all of us life is uncertain. Good and bad, things happen. That is one of the reasons I signed up to pray.

At St. Peter Church we have a Cycle of Prayer. Pat Hazeltine sends out the names of people who need our prayers and we send those prayers out to God for them. It is a wonderful experience to know you are not alone. As you pray, others are as well. We connect and grow.

There was a time when requests came in over the telephone, now we receive these via the internet. So sometimes I open my email box and there is a Prayer Request waiting for me. I always open them first. You never know what you will find. Sometimes you know the person; sometimes it is a complete stranger whose life you will touch – and it does not matter.

As Christians we know we are One in Christ and so praying for someone we will never meet, holding them in your mind and heart as you reach out for them in prayer, matters.

There are no rules for prayer. You pray for those who have died, those left to mourn and those struggling with the problems to which each of us are subject. Prayers are given for those who have made it through surgery and those facing any kind of hardship you can imagine.

Praying always makes me feel closer to Christ, that ineffable presence which is always there if we will put aside ego and receive Him.

Prayer brings insights to your own life as well. The act of praying breaks down the barriers within which life builds even without our knowing it. Prayer has become a path to self-discovery for me, and for millions.

Snowflakes and prayers. Unexpected blessings releasing us to more fully love one another.

No. 144 – April 17, 2015 – Bushnell, Zenger, and the Shot Heard 'Round the World

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

His last name was Bushnell, and if his voice had not been raised during jury deliberations in 1670 William Penn, who had defied the Crown and preached his Quaker faith, would not have lived to found Pennsylvania. Many in Ashtabula have roots in the former colony east of here, which he named.

Bushnell and his fellow jurors were confined and fined for their temerity when they defied the royal mandate to find Penn guilty. The lives of Penn and his friend, Mead, hung by two dissenting votes.

The judge sent the jury back three times to reconsider their verdict saying, “a verdict that the court will accept, and you shall be locked up without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco....We will have a verdict by the help of God or you will starve for it."

It took a writ of Habeas Corpus to free the jurors, Penn and Mead. Penn came to the colonies and so was Pennsylvania founded.

The English tradition for the Common Law and the rights of the people to defy the dictates of authority again influenced the writing in 1735 during the trial of John Peter Zenger, who had defied the Royal Governor of New York and published the truth about him.

Zenger languished in prison for eight months before standing trial. But the publication of his newspaper continued, overseen by his wife.

Words, the truth, are the first defense against oppression. Disinformation and the suppression of truth destroy freedom. The Founders, who were certainly aware of both precedents, Penn and Zenger. They understood the nasty tendencies of government to use its power to stifle dissent and the truth.
The ratification of the Constitution hung in the balance as Mason traded with Madison and the deciding factor was the inclusion of the Bill of Rights that secured to each of us guarantees for the limitation of government power.
It is the ideas thus enshrined that connect us to the truth of America's Mission Statement. America is made up of people who are, themselves, the government. The truth matters.
Today, it is the suppression of the truth by authorities by redaction, evasion and deceit again threaten the essential freedoms won for us by our ancestors. We need the facts because truth is the foundation of freedom.
April 18^th marks the 260^th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Get the truth, it matters to each of us.

No. 143 – April 9, 2015 – Family History, Family Pride

By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

My cousin, Peni Jo Renner, wrote a book last year about a mutual ancestor, Rebecca Eames. Titled, “Puritan Witch - The Redemption of Rebecca Eames,” the brief volume tells Rebecca's story as she is accused of witchcraft, tried, found guilty, and waits for the sentence of hanging to be carried out in a prison where, unless your family paid, you would be left to starve to death.

The books shines light new, and a very human light, on the a period of American history which has been detached from the descendants of those who lived it. By so doing the real roots of conflict were buried. Until Renner's book was published it was easy for many who do not share this heritage to fictionalize these very personal histories, providing salacious scenarios to those who were not touched by the morality story played out in the lives of a people who confronted an abuse of power by those who saw opportunity for profit. Using the gullibility of those around them significant transfers of property took place.

In 1649 law was passed which made witchcraft a capital offense, opening the door for the trials, which took place in 1692. After the accusation of a capital crime was made the property of the accused could be seized immediately. Asset forfeiture remains with us today.

Royal Governor William Phips released those imprisoned on February 21st, 1693. The reaction of the accusers was to beg for his protection from just retaliation. None occurred, these were lawful people, determined to do right.

For five generations there were no marriages between the descendants of the accursed and their accusers. They remembered. I suggest this baptism of pain awakened their descendants to the dangers inherent in the abuse of power.

What was the impact of these events on people who saw the ugliness play out and then lived with the aftermath in the same small communities for generations? How were their ideas about freedom, individual rights, and their relationship with God affected? Accusers and accused, how did it shape today for all of us?

Myself, I am proud to be a descendant of Mary Barker, twelve when she was imprisoned, and her cousin, George, thirteen. This history still has much to tell us about our world today.

What we take away from the experiences of life defines us and our descendants, if we remember. And read Puritan Witch.

No. 142 – April 2, 2015 – They Got Mail! The Back Channels Connecting Big Oil with Bush and Clinton

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Andrew Kreig's coverage of Hillary Clinton's secret email system, written in three parts, delves into the issues which he says provide, “scant scrutiny of the most sinister implications for the public.” These are certainly riveting, named by Kreig as, “Arms Smuggling: The Obama-Clinton-Petraeus 'Iran-Contra' Scandal, the Duplicity and Disloyalty by Gen. David Petraeus and the Conflict of Interest In Clinton Foundation/Hillary Clinton 2016 Funding.”

Enough there to generate multiple books and even conferences for journalists digging into the morass to extract hard evidence.

Kreig's book, “Presidential Puppetry,” as mentioned in his article on Clinton's mail system, “What's Important About Hillary Clinton's Emails,” ties back to a similar evasion of transparency for emails by Karl Rove during the Bush W. administration and then the revelations hacked into public sight by Romanian hacker, Marcel-Lehel Lazar of, “19 political intelligence memos totaling 66 pages from former 1990s Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal to Clinton between August 2012 and early February 2013.”

As the narrative marches back in time we encounter the covert involvement of the CIA in Benghazi and a plot of overthrown the Syrian government of President Bashar Al-Assad. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have promoted the same kind of operations. Kreig neatly points to the similarity between Obama's training and arming of 'rebels' and the Iran-Contra run-running of the Reagan Administration.

Oil figures largely in the picture.

Ensuring actions which violate the law and are prohibited by Congress presents a probable need to ensure these actions do not come to the attention of the public. This is clearly a need for the individuals in all administrations since emailing began. This leads to the questions, “who wrote the email system used by Hillary? Was this her own system, used only by her? “

As you read through Kreig's article you find some names popping up or recognize that some individuals, for instance Karl Rove, have long understood the need for tight security when engaging in illegal actions, for instance, election fraud carried out so these same individuals could control the White House.

Is this a system which was written because some earlier event brought this vulnerability to the attention of a group of individuals, Democrats and Republicans, who realized it was necessary their convert communications had to be protected from public view? This had to have happened after communication by email became ubiquitous, say in the early 2000's.

Just asking.

No 142 – March 26, 2015 – Blow Back from the JFK Assassination

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Andrew Kreig, founder of the Justice Integrity Project, is not the first to point out the inconvenient truths surrounding the 1964 report of the Warren Commission. His continuing series of articles on the details contain a series of shocks which bring into high relief the falsehoods sold to the public by the major media. His book, Presidential Puppetry, has built out a picture of events both compelling and frightening.

Kreig has been thorough, building a monumental data base which, along with following the action, examines the impact of the assassination on American politics, those who report the news, and the many incidents following the death of JFK and continue to take place today.

Today most Americans, according to the polls, believe the Warren Commission Report mislead the public. The question of what happened on November 22, 1963 remains a hot topic, with between 1,000 and 2,000 books written on the subject.

People still care what happened. They still want to know; they still don't.

Bill O'Reilly was an ambitious young reporter when he lied about having been on George de Mohrenschildt's porch when the shots were fired which killed the man who was a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. It was a dramatic claim disproved by audio tapes of only within the last several years.

Mohrenschildt was supposedly about to testify before congress that Oswald did not kill the President. Thereafter local authorities ruled the death a suicide. The chief counsel for the Congressional investigation, then ongoing, was replaced by one who deferred to the CIA. Bill O'Reilly also wrote a book, the best seller, Killing Kennedy. It accepts the facts as laid out by the Warren Commission.

From that day to now Kreig claims many parts of our lives have been impacted and the course of our history altered.

Now we know Oswald could not have acted alone. New forensic evidence indicates Kennedy was shot at least once from the front, twice from the back.
In 1963 Americans were more trusting of government. Americans, dissatisfied with what they get in print and on television seek news and facts online. Mislead on many issues a reaction has been building. This is one of the reasons the ratings for the Main Stream Media have been dropping.
Blow back is, “an unforeseen and unwanted effect, result, or set of repercussions.” Sometimes it is a long time coming, but it always arrives.

No. 141 – March 19, 2015 – Jennifer MacLeod Asks Three Questions

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

In the late 90s, Jennifer Macleod,PhD, a retired marketing executive in Princeton spoke to a group of girl scouts on equality for women. Still active in the chapter of NOW Jennifer started at Princeton in the early 1970s the scouts learned the ERA had failed ratification in 1982. They were moved to action and asked Ms. MacLeod for a project they could do as part of their scouting related to the Equal Rights Amendment. 

 

Jennifer, one of the first women through the glass ceiling, an expert in polling, made up a short questionnaire. She showed the girls how polling must be done to accurately reflect the opinions of those polled. 

 

There were three questions. Jennifer expected to find a sizable percentage of Americans opposed equality for women. Shocked, she discovered in every category those polled by the girl scout troop affirmed equality by around 96%.

The three questions were simple, answered with a YES or NO. 

 

Question 1: "In your opinion, should male and female citizens of the United States have equal rights?"

Question 2: "As far as you know, does the Constitution of the United States make it clear that male and female citizens are SUPPOSED to have equal rights?"

Question 3: "In your opinion, SHOULD the Constitution make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?" 

 

By the late 90s most Americans believed the ERA was ratified. They are still wrong today.

The Constitution, the highest law in the land, does not recognize the equality of women today. 

 

For equality to be more than a provisional privilege an amendment to the existing Constitution must be ratified by 2/3 of the state legislatures. 

 

In 1972 everyone expected the 38 states required would rapidly ratify. Instead, it became a political football linked to issues having nothing to do with simple equality. The effort for ratification fell three states short when the deadline tolled in 1982. 

 

On March 5 this year the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a resolution asking Congress repeal the 1982 deadline. Other legislatures are following their lead. If Congress repeals the deadline the 15 states yet to ratify the ERA can consider the question anew and ratify. 

 

When that happens Americans will be finally be right about the ERA. Jennifer's questions and the girl scouts who asked the questions, are a big part of the reason this is happening now.

No. 140 – March 12, 2015 – Is It Spring Yet?

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

An exciting moment occurred when I went out to the car this morning and noticed the area where the snow had melted over night. Bending down to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me I saw....green grass. Several square inches of it. Amazing.

The tiny patch now visible was surrounded by extrusions of mud, which looked like mounds of chocolate. I learned when I was around 18 months that appearances in this regard can be deceptive. We all remember such moments, which teach us discernment. I looked closer. Definitely a new green, filled with life.

Since Ashtabula has been shrouded in snow which came down over and over again, each time leaving an uglier residue of brown and gray had I found myself wondering if spring would ever arrive – at least before the 4^th of July. That faint touch of spring-green flattened, but triumphant despite the load of snow which weighed it down, provided the answer.

Spring comes in its own time, but it arrives bringing renewal of life and hope. Getting into the car I felt uplifted, as if a great weight had been lightened.

I know not to expect too much too soon. It will be some days before those first buds burst from the skeletal bushes and trees along the street. The dire piles of shrinking sludge must continue to melt into the soil and paving, sending water captured as snow many weeks ago on its way into the ground. But the Mud does not last for very long. Now, we can see past it to the rioting of flowers which seems to say, “all seasons bring gifts.”

When you see that first glorious daffodil you forget, like a mother after a three day labor first holding her baby close because what you hold is so essential to the journey of seasons, and years which comprises the whole of our lives as individuals.

Watching a flower bloom, first unfolding from the enclosing green to reveal its colors and scent touches us, reprising as it does, our own journey from someplace to here. Watching the full cycle of life, the wilting and curling into itself, also carries its message.

The whole of life carries in each part messages for each of us. What do you see first? What is your own experience? What have the seasons said, tiny whispers in your ear, as you discovered them?