The above title headlined a piece in Albany’s Times Union newspaper yesterday, written by a male U.S. citizen, 61 years old, whose adulthood stands framed by two tragic wars carried out under the banner of stars and stripes unfurled. Thanks to non-blogger myrln for emailing me about it.
The author of the piece, Brian O’Shaughnessy of Troy New York, states:

As a person of faith, I have consistently applied the Just War Theory to our country’s war deliberations. Dating back to St. Augustine, this theory reflects the Gospel presumption against violence and establishes numerous conditions as a firewall to war. All of its conditions have to be met before the expected violence can be morally justified. They include using all nonviolent means to settle a conflict before resorting to violent ones. Also, the good to be achieved must outweigh the probable costs and damages.

While the entire piece is worth reading, at some point it will disappear from the paper’s internet archives, so I quote here (and urge all my readers to widely share) the author’s suggestions for conditions that should be met before we wage any more wars:

I’ve lived here for a year, but, until today, I only had met one neighbor — and the only reason I ever met her was because I would pass her taking her baby for a walk while I make my occasional effort to get some walking exercise myself.
So, when we found an invitation in our mailbox inviting us to a holiday gathering at a new neighbor’s just diagonally across the road, we accepted. We even took my mother along. (Actually, I wanted to go by myself for a while but I was outvoted.) The gathering was in a house that I pass each time I’m out walking. It rests at the base of the mountain, and it has a three-car garage. I’ve always wondered what it looks like inside.
Here’s where the envy comes in.
The living room, dining room, and kitchen are one big area, and the kitchen area is huge, the cabinetry distressed white. But, almost best of all, the living room is all glass-walled, open to a breathtaking view of the tree-lined mountainside. And, even better than that, the living room has cathedral skylights across which the top of the cliffs stretch in craggy granite splendor.
The young family who own it actually live in New York City and comes up here on weekends. They have fascinating jobs, a new baby, and an amazingly well-behaved toddler. Most of the people there were also weekenders. One of these weekend famiies owns a farm on the other side of the mountain, where they keep llamas and chickens and other assorted small animals. I couldn’t help feel a little envy for their lives, their casual wealth.
Oh, there were some of my year-round neighbors, too, and I made a point of going over and introducing myself. While it was a pleasant couple of hours, I resented a little that I had to spend more time “mommy-sitting” than I spent socializing.
But my satisfaction from meeting and getting to know my immediate neighbors overrides my envy. It’s going to feel good to wave to them as they drive by or if we happen to meet up on their occasional walks as well. And, who knows, maybe someday I’ll be invited to another party. If that happens, I’m going to insist on going alone.

The delicious Jeremy Outerbridge has tagged me in the current blogtag game of “Tell five things about you that no one knows.”
It just doesn’t seem fair that Jeneane opted out of her tag. I know that her blog is one of the most truthful out there, but, c’mon Jeneane. There must be something you’re still hiding.
In the spirit of RageBoy’s and Kat Herding’s lists, here are mine. Are they all true? Heh. What do you think?
1. For several years while in grade school, I was the young virgin who led the procession and who carried the crown that went on the Virgin Mary’s head each month of May.
2. I was a virgin until I was twenty years old.
3. I have a passion for RageBoy.
4. I used to play the guitar and my favorite song was “Oh Lonesome Me.”
5. I have never indulged in any illegal substance.
All right.
Now I tag these good bloggers:
1. Roxanne
2. Betsy Devine
3. Doug Alder
4. Elayne Riggs
5. Stu Savory

My father wore a ring on the pinky of his left hand — a star sapphire set in white gold. The word for him in his time was “dapper.” Today is the 22nd anniversary of his death. The Christmas holiday has often been a trial for this family.
Surprisingly, this Christmas was not so bad. There were no arguments. My brother even did the dishes. My mother said it was the best Christmas she’s had in years. She’s right.
This afternoon, she sat at her organ and played Christmas Carols. Then, I sat her in front of my computer screen and linked over from Jack Bogdanski’s blog in Portland, OR, to a video of the St. Stanislaus choir in that city doing a program of Polish Koledy. She watched, teary-eyed, remembering how her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins would get together every Christmas Eve and sing those same songs. They had beautiful voices and knew how to harmonize. My generation of cousins would gather around and listen. I still remember many of those Polish lyrics.
My mother misses the big family that all used to live within a five-block area where I grew up. Now, there are very few left in her generation, and those of my generation have scattered. We spent much of the day today calling all over the state — and even out-of-state — so that she could wish what relatives there are a Merry Christmas.
I miss my kids a lot –-b!X across the country there in Portland, my daughter and her family in Massachusetts. It just doesn’t seem right not to have been with them all this holiday.
Who knows what will happen in the next year. Maybe next Christmas will be the best yet.

No, that’s not a typo. I really mean “sweeps” not “sleeps” (although she is doing that now).
When I finally got up this morning and went to see what my mother was up to, I found her standing over a pile of stuff she had swept up from the floors and rugs. She didn’t know what to do next — couldn’t remember where the dust pan was.
She likes to sweep because she remembers how to do that and seems to need to do things with her hands. This afternoon she had a couple of rubber bands on her wrists and kept putting them off and on, in between which she wound them around her fingers. I wish I could think of something I could give her to do, but the options are infinitesimal — given the limits of what she is able to do combined with what she is willing to do.
For supper I will go through the Christmas Eve food rituals — a meatless meal of soup made from dried imported-from-Poland mushrooms. and also pierogi, which I bought at Shop Rite. My mother used to make the best pierogi I’ve eve tasted. She had it down it a science. Although she can’t make them anymore, I probably could. But I just didn’t have the energy this year. Maybe next.

Manana.
Merry Manana.

Over at Blogher, Ronni Bennet (of Time Goes By) highlights eight women bloggers in her piece on “Some Elder Women of the Blogosphere.”
And I’m one of them, in extremely good company.
I recently had my fifth year anniversary as a blogger. I used to say that I was the longest-blogging female elderblogger over 65 out there. That might or might not be true; it’s impossible to know for sure.
According to Ronni’s post:

In July of 2006, The Pew Internet & American Life Project published a survey of bloggers titled, A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers [pdf] that is packed with facts and figures.
Fifty-four percent of bloggers are under age 30, reported Pew, and 14 percent are between the ages of 50 and 64. Just a tiny two percent are 65 and older.
But our numbers are growing. When I started my blog about aging late in 2003, I could find only about a dozen other bloggers older than 50. Nowadays, I can barely keep my Elderbloggers blogroll current; I find new ones every day.

Well, with only two percent over 65, I just might be the oldest-longest-blogging women blogger.
But that’s not as important as being included in Ronni’s list and having her write such good things about Kalilily Time.
Hooray for me!

As I was posting about the Wicker Man movies last night, I was remembering the buttons I have stashed somewhere that I picked up at various feminist rallies. My favorite was always this one:

That’s my 90 year old mom, doing a hell of a lot better than I am.

Merry Christmas, anyway.

It’s two for one Tuesday, since i missed last week. What follows are some news tidbits that you might not have heard about. Aw, c’mon, you know that your inquiring mind wants to know. You can check out the validity of these items by linking to their sources from last week’s review or this week’s.
&#9733 A Christmas party in Dublin was canceled after Gus, a camel starring in Santa’s Magical Animal Kingdom Show, got drunk on Guinness and ate all the mince pies. A 43-foot-tall Swedish straw Christmas goat was doused with flame-retardant chemicals so that only its hooves could be burned, and a mother in South Carolina had her son arrested for playing with his Christmas present early.
&#9733 The invention of rap was traced back to Muhammad Ali.
&#9733 Several U.S. cities were complaining that they had too many churches, and a man in Tampa was selling his soul on the Internet.
&#9733 A plane bound for Texas made an emergency landing after a female passenger lit matches to mask the odor of her fart.
&#9733 NASA announced that by 2024 it would open a space camp for astronauts at the south pole of the moon, and astronomers watched a giant black hole eat an entire star.
&#9733 A study found that standard-sized condoms were too large for the men of India. The National Institutes of Health said that circumcision is an effective method to limit heterosexual transmission of HIV, but Kevin De Cock, HIV/AIDS director of the World Health Organization, warned that circumcision was “not a magic bullet.”
&#9733 A hunter in Wisconsin shot a seven-legged deer, and a Texas lawmaker introduced legislation that would allow the blind to participate in “the fun of hunting.”
&#9733 British geneticists investigating the case of a 10-year-old Pakistani boy who could walk on burning coals announced that they had discovered a gene that influences the perception of pain. They could not examine the boy directly because he had died after leaping off a roof to impress his friends.
&#9733 The baiji, a species of blind white dolphin extant for 20 million years, was declared extinct, and two dolphins who had swallowed toxic plastic were saved by the world’s tallest man, who used his long arms to retrieve shards from their stomachs.
&#9733 Former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who is said to have strangled Emperor Haile Selassie with his bare hands and buried him under a toilet, was convicted of genocide by an Ethiopian court.
&#9733 Seattle-Tacoma International Airport removed fourteen Christmas trees after a local rabbi threatened a lawsuit if officials did not add an eight-foot menorah to the arrangement,
&#9733 An international war crimes court sentenced a Rwandan Roman Catholic priest to 15 years in prison for ordering his church crushed by bulldozers while 2,000 ethnic Tutsi remained inside.
The last three tidbits are so symptomatic of why organized religion is the scourge of humanity.
Now, as far as this next bit is concerned, I hope Iran watched 60 Minutes on Sunday as the long-secreted archives of the Nazi concentration camps were revealed. The Nazi’s extermination camps took the lives of 17 million individuals. 6 million of those were Jews ; that leaves 11 million “others” — gypsies, homosexuals, the “politically incorrect” intellectuals, and all those who might cause trouble. Nevertheless,
&#9733 Iran held a conference to examine whether the Holocaust happened.
Finally, it seems appropriate to end with this little bit, which Harper’s aptly combined into one sentence.
&#9733 Police and firefighters on Long Island rescued a veteran who had walled himself in with a seven-foot-high pile of fecal matter and other debris, and Representative Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) said President Bush was in “deep shit.”