Friday, November 05, 2010

Companion Volume to Born into the Wrong World Published

https://tsw.createspace.com/title/3498756 
 
The Beauty of Ordinary Lives is a 42 page tribute to my parents, a companion volume and supplement to my autobiography Born into the Wrong World. It is  available at Lulu.com and  at


Buy at Lulu.com: 
From the Preface:

       I was fortunate in that I chose my parents well. John Wilfred Cauthen and Nancy Beulah Harris Cauthen were ordinary folks from rural Georgia. They taught me what unconditional love was by their words and actions.  I will be forever grateful to these wonderful people who demonstrated the beauty of ordinary lives. This little booklet is a loving tribute to them. I focus on their last years as they confronted the necessity of giving up the home they loved and moving to a nursing home to spend the rest of their days.
Excerpt:
        Suitcases in the car, it was time. Mother held the kitty and said a long, sad, lingering farewell to her "Baby." My Dad gave me a big, tight hug, flung wide his long, skinny arms, and exclaimed with passionate resignation, "Goodbye, old house." I led one and then the other to the car, put the old, ugly wheelchair that had been Rosalie's in the trunk, and got in beside them. We all took one last look at their home place and drove off. When we arrived, Mother remembered something Rosalie had said when she came to make this her home years before. "This is the place where you come to wait to die."
    Some time ago my Mother told me about a couple several years ago stopping in their driveway and coming to the door. They asked directions to the nursing home where we now sat. In the back seat of that car sitting very still and drawn up was a sad, unsmiling old grey-haired woman looking very scared and downcast. It took little imagination to figure out what was going on. Now I sat at the door of this same unwanted but needed refuge, somewhere to live that was not and could not be home, a place both forbidding and welcoming, a sanctuary that promised care and safety without ceasing to be dreaded as the place you go when nowhere else will do, where you don't want to go but go anyway because you have to, the place where you come to wait to die.


Wednesday, November 03, 2010


Announcing the Publication of the Revised Standard Version of My Autobiography



http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

What's Wrong with this Country Anyway?

Let's get one thing straight:  By and large, generally speaking, for the most part, what the American people want is increased governmental benefits,  lower taxes, and deficit reduction.  You might be able to get two out of three, but nobody knows how to achieve all three. This helps explains the contradictions, absurdities,  and confusion seen so widely today.

Some rave and rant about the deficit and want a smaller government that spends less. But when asked what they would cut, they are short of specifics that would make a significant difference. Well, of course, there is always the tried and true waste, fraud, and abuse, and  there may be inefficiencies in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, etc. 

But the big bucks are elsewhere. We could cut Social Security Benefits.
Oh no, either we or our parents or grandparents depend on that.
What about Medicare? No, of course not, for the same reason that we can't deeply touch Social Security?

Medicaid? Well, no, too many poor people depend on that.

Ah, then, you want to cut the mammoth defense budge?
Hell, no, are you crazy?

OK, you want to reduce the deficit but don't want big cuts in either of the Big Four -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense. Your only alternative is to raise taxes!

Now you are getting crazy even weird. Taxes are too high now.

So it goes, The swingers who have voted against the ins in the last two elections and put Democrats are poised in 2010 it appears to turn out the ins once again. Independents and others in this class apparently have no defined ideology so they go back and forth between parties and persons apparently based on how the world is treating them at the moment, gut feelings, self-centered sentiments --presentism and selfishness, I call it. Because Obama came in promising change, hope, and a politics transcending party in the midst of the greatest depression since the 1930's not of his own making and did not make us all prosperous in two years, these fickle, confused, gut-driver party switchers want to be rid of the President and a Democratic Congress.

They can't get what they want--smaller government with lower taxes, greater benefits, and deficit reduction--so they act out of anger, rage, full of contradictions, confusion, ignorance, and incompatible demands.

As the most colorful New York  gubernatorial candidate summarized  his platform, "Rent is too damn high."  That's about as good as it gets in 2010 as I prepare to vote shortly.

Hooray for American democracy!

Quasi-acerbic Comment for the Day

A certain segment of the Republican party appears not to accept the moral and political legitimacy of Democrats, especially Barack Obama, to govern. It is contrary to the grain of the universe, a cosmic mistake. In their eyes Republicans clearly represent the powers, principles, and people that should be in charge. All this gives intensity, even rage, to the very fact that a Democratic President and Congress are presently in office.

Theological Question of the Day: Was Jesus saved?

Is there any New Testament evidence that Jesus ever accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior?