My Christmas Tree (a repost)

As long as I can remember, my dad came home every December with a scraggly blue spruce, fragrant with the scent of winter, tiny icicles hanging from the branches. The frozen miniature crystal daggers would melt quickly on Mom’s well-scrubbed parquet floor. I never knew nor asked where he had found it, or how he could afford it. His modest salary of $70 a month barely covered the rent, utilities, and food. Mom had to work as well to afford our clothes. Prices were subsidized by the government and salaries were very low for everybody regardless of education and skill. We had to make do with very little.

No matter how bare the branches of my Christmas tree were, it was magical to me. Two metal bars forged by hand helped Dad nail the tree to the floor at the foot of the couch where I slept in the living room that doubled as my bedroom. Our tiny apartment only had one bedroom where my parents slept.

Decorating it was a fun job every year since I made new decorations from colorful crepe paper. We had to be creative; we could not afford glass ornaments. We made paper cones covered with craftily rolled crepe paper and filled with candy. I hung small apples with red string, tiny pretzels, home-made butter cookies, candied fruit, raisins, and an occasional orange wrapped in tissue paper with strange lettering, coming all the way from Israel. Each year we bought 12 small red and green candles which we attached to the tree with small metal clips. We were careful to clamp them at the tip of the branch to keep the tree from catching fire when the candles were lit. The tree would live for two weeks before the prickly needles fell all over the living room floor.

One year I spent Christmas with Uncle Nelu and his wife. A gifted mechanical engineer, Nelu could fix and build anything. He promised that he would fashion lights for his Christmas tree. He worked painstakingly for weeks, soldering tiny copper wires into bundles that stretched along the branches of the tree like a magical cascade to which he soldered at least 200 tiny bulbs sold as bike lights. It was a labor of love! When the wires were finally attached to a relay, the bulbs lit up like a waterfall. Nobody had such a fantastically blazing tree in the whole country. I was amazed at his dedication and craftiness and never forgot his fairytale Christmas fir. Uncle Nelu passed away recently. He is in Heaven now, probably dazzling God with his luminous creations for the angels’ Christmas tree and teaching him how to properly fix his automobile.

We did not have a tree-skirt but we used one of Mom’s hand-stitched tablecloths. The whole apartment smelled like the fragrant mountains and, for a couple of weeks we forgot the misery that surrounded us. We lit up the 12 candles on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day.

Every night for two weeks, I would admire my enchanted tree until I fell asleep, wondering what special treat I would find under my pillow on Christmas morning. It was never much, but it was such a cherished joy!

Saint Nicholas Day was celebrated on December 6^th. We really didn’t know much about the real St. Nicholas, Santa Claus’s namesake. St. Nicholas was a popular saint in the Orthodox Church and presumed the bishop of Myra in Turkey in the 300s. There were many legends of St. Nicholas - the more famous story that he was the son of a wealthy family in Patara, Lycia. When his parents died, he gave away his fortune. One such random act of kindness involved throwing three bags of gold through the windows of three girls who were going to be forced into prostitution.

On Saint Nicholas Day, I would put my boots outside the door, hoping that they would be filled with candy in the morning and not coals. Grandpa had a wicked sense of humor – he would sometimes fill one boot with sticks and another with candy and a chocolate bar.

Grandpa never bought a blue spruce - we cut a fir tree from the woods. We were careful not to cut down a tree that had bird nests in it. We decorated it with garland made from shiny and multi-colored construction paper. We cut strips, glued them in an interlocking pattern and voila, we had our garland. For ornaments we used walnuts and shriveled apples from his cellar, tied with Grandma’s red knitting wool.

The warm adobe style fireplace built from mud bricks mixed with straw cast a dancing glow on the tree decked with tokens of food, something our heathen Roman ancestors did during the celebration of Saturnalia. On December 17, the polytheistic Romans celebrated Saturnus, the god of seed and sowing, for an entire week. As Christians, we celebrated the birth of Christ and the religious traditions in our Orthodox faith, in spite of the communist regime forcing the transformation of Christmas into a secular holiday.

On Christmas Eve, after we ate at Mom’s traditional Christmas supper, roasted pork, baked chicken, sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls with ground meat and rice), and mamaliga (corn mush with butter cooked in a cast iron pot), we went to the midnight service at the Orthodox Church not far from our house. Sometimes it was a sloshy trek and other times it was icy and slippery. If we got lucky, a heavy snow would turn our walk into a winter wonderland with dancing snowflakes shining in the weak streetlights. We had to bundle up well – the church was not heated, and we circled it three times during the procession with burning candles in our hands. I always wore my flannel pajamas under many layers of warm clothes. To this day, pajamas are my favorite garment – cozy and comfortable, keeping my body warm.

I decorate my Douglas fir with beautiful lights and shiny ornaments now. My heart fills with loving memories of Christmases past and of family members lost who made our Christian traditions so special.

© Ileana Johnson

Echoes of Communism (available at Amazon)

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Another Invented Injustice, EVs and Chargers

I believe that some Marxists stay awake at night trying to find novel ways to subjugate the rest of the population whose free-market ideology they despise. They certainly do not believe in supply and demand, they believe in centralized communist planning and forced equity of outcomes.

In addition to environmental justice, gender justice, sexual justice, tree and shade justice, a recent Washington Post article dedicated an entire page to “A New Source of Inequality: Access to Charging Stations.” (Sunday, December 19, 2021)

Apparently Black and Hispanic neighborhoods have a complete lack of access to electric car charging stations in Chicago’s “preeminent Black neighborhoods” and are thus in danger of being left behind in the era of electric cars. Naomi Davis, an environmental activist, is determined to change that. She is the founder of the 14-year-old environmental advocacy group called Blacks in Green.

The author of the article points out that the lack of electric charging stations and the vehicles that depend on them deepens the environmental injustice that Blacks and Hispanics suffer as they are “relegated” to gasoline-powered cars that are cheaper to buy but “more expensive to fuel and maintain.”

Electric vehicles are quite expensive for the average American no matter what their skin color. I see in the Washington, D.C. suburbs a lot of Millennials driving shiny and bright new Tesla cars and SUVs. In the last few months, the Smart Cars seem to have disappeared off the roads.

And the EV electricity is not cheap, it is generated mostly by fossil fuels; electricity appears cheaper to fuel cars than gasoline because it is subsidized by the government largesse. The average consumer does not understand economics, so they believe what they are told by the MSM that the electric cars run on fairy dust and save the planet from man-made pollution and global warming Armageddon. The highly toxic lithium batteries, their manufacture and disposal do not come into consideration at all.

Gasoline prices have escalated due to gas taxes added to the price and because of the Biden administration stated policy to terminate fossil fuel use by shutting down pipelines and denying drilling rights beginning on his first day and week in office.  

A community partnership in Chicago is considering the lack of EV charging stations issue from the “environmental justice” standpoint. Billy Davis is quoted in WaPo, “Interstate construction disrupted the chain of wealth-building, and it has a negative health impact.”

According to WaPo, Davis believes that “Covid-19, which has stricken polluted Black communities harder than well-to-do White ones, emphasized the disparity,” he explained. “Our proximity to the negative effects of fossil fuel production, to the interstate highway, puts us at risk.” Why African-Americans may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 | Science News

Never mind that there is no such connection scientifically without a huge bias, but it sounds convincing in print.

The article connects, through extreme mental gymnastics, the lack of charging stations to white racism, to a Chicago 14-year-old resident, Emmett Till, “brutally murdered by White racists on a trip to visit his relatives in 1955 Mississippi.”

The environmental project purchased a house next to where the child lived with his family, and they want to install an EV charger there. “Historical injustices persist today” – no wonder there are 180 charging stations in mostly white areas and 39 in mostly black and Hispanic areas of Chicago. The numbers are not the result of basic economics of supply and demand, it is pure “historical racism” and “social injustice.”

Quoting a 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, non-Hispanic white people (there are Hispanic white people) have a “pollution advantage.” Through their consumption, they experience 17% less pollution, while Blacks and Hispanics have a “pollution burden” of 56% and 63% excess exposure. Apparently lower income folks suffer most from air pollution because they live in “transit deserts.” Inequity in consumption of goods and services adds to racial–ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure | PNAS

And the evil boils down to combustion engines and the inability to charge in the street a highly expensive car that most middle class white, black, or Hispanics cannot afford to purchase or maintain.

I own a 15-year-old combustion engine vehicle and have no desire to buy an $80,000 Tesla nor do I feel deprived or discriminated against in any way by those who do. It is economics not racism or injustice.

But I do get angry every time I have to fuel the engine at double the cost of gasoline from a year ago, thanks to Biden’s purposefully destructive energy policies. And the false allegations of racism continue to pay off for Blacks and Hispanics even when, in Shakespeare’s words, there is “much ado about nothing.”

Uncle Nelu Has Gone to Heaven

Uncle Nelu, March 2021
With his youngest sister, Elena

Mom’s youngest brother, Ion Ilie, died on December 18, 2021, on his son’s 40th birthday. Uncle Nelu died in a hospice from the stroke he suffered two months ago.

Nelu was born in 1940, a child who experienced the German occupation of the village and the communist occupation later. He was a child but had vivid memories of those times. The communist party did not see him in a positive light as nobody in our family was a member of the communist party or aspired to be one, they supported the monarchy and the times when the country was rich, and the people were self-sufficient and happy.

Mom and I talked to Uncle Nelu two months ago on a warm October 18 morning, on the patio of her nursing home. It was amazing how clear, cheerful, and happy his voice sounded. He had just returned from the grocery store, pushing his little cart of supplies.

At 81, he was vigorous enough to walk quite far to the local grocery store, to bring back food to his ailing wife who can barely walk and has not left their fifth floor Bucharest apartment in two years.

He told my mom that day that he had just had his booster Covid-19 shot and we should do the same as soon as possible. We talked about family, health, and the latest news.

It is amazing how a tiny cell phone could connect us from anywhere in the world outside on the patio and cheaply. We have cheap, fast, and reliable technology now but there are fewer and fewer relatives to whom we can talk.

There was a time when making a call was awfully expensive per minute, few people could afford it, it was time consuming, and required the intercession of an overseas operator, and sometimes 24 hours to make a connection that did not sound garbled like we were speaking from a barrel at the bottom of the ocean.

There was also a time, thirty years ago, when all phone calls under communism were listened to by a human being who decided whether the call was important enough to record and file on record for later use. Now, they record everything automatically in that mythical I-cloud in the sky.

Uncle Nelu had a “vascular accident,” meaning a blood clot to his brain, a few days following his booster. Due to his age and the benign tumor removed from his brain ten years prior, it was easy to assume that his stroke was a natural occurrence. But it was so close to his Covid-19 booster that one must wonder. He clung to life for two months, paralyzed on one side.

Ion Ilie was a remarkable person who completed his engineering degree while working part-time as a mechanic. Grandpa Ilie had taught him how to be the outstanding mechanic who could fix anything.

Recognizing a natural talent, Grandpa Ilie devoted more time and monetary investment to his youngest son who had the gift of invention. His extensive list of accomplishments fills the government files dedicated to his engineering life.

Sadly, he never climbed to the top; his non-communist background became an issue for the communists in power who decided the fate of those working and creating engineering marvels in their communist machine. He was a useful cog but not worthy of promotions.

Uncle Nelu made Christmas magical for me when I was 17 years old. Painstakingly he wired and soldered a hundred or more tiny white bulbs with thin copper strands who fell down the branches of the blue spruce tree like a cascade of moving lights, controlled by a relay.

His engineering skills were so exceptional that he was often called upon by appellate judges to make decisions and testify about accidents he investigated. His painstaking measurements and technical analysis often decided the outcome of a trial and the fate of those involved in terrible industrial and road accidents.

Uncle Nelu helped many people in our extended family with advice, volunteer work, money, and emotional support.

He visited us twice in 1990 while we lived in the southern U.S. I flew with him to San Diego, to show him the western side of this beautiful country and we took a day trip to Tijuana, Mexico. He was fifty years old, full of life, jocular, sun-tanned, tall, and was confused for a Mexican even though he spoke no Spanish and no English. We laughed about it because we were prepared and brought our passports with us to cross the border from Mexico back into the U.S.

The world has lost another brilliant mind. He will be sorely missed by our family.

I personally hope he is in Heaven, advising God on how to fix his engines.

NOTE: Uncle Nelu never cared much for my writing because, he said, what good is it, nobody in Romania can read English, why don't you write it in Romanian? 

My answer to him was, because Romanians have already experienced what I am writing about, I would be preaching to the choir. 

Rebecca Duncan's Covid Pneumonia

Last year today was when I went into the hospital with Covid Pneumonia. I tested positive on December 16, 2020. I woke up on Dec 19 and told my mom that she had to take me to the hospital because I could not breathe.

My symptoms had gotten so bad that I knew if I did not get help that I was going to die. My fever was 103 something. I could not breathe deep enough to last me until my next breath. So it was like I was panting. And I was coughing so much and so hard I cannot even explain how violent it was. 

I couldn't eat, think, drive, talk, text, type, read, or see clearly. I had heartburn, indigestion, fever, headache, stomachache, Diarrhea, chills, hot flashes, sweats, body aches, & fatigue.

My Mom was hesitant to take me because she knew that I had never been to a hospital or the ER before and also that I was going to be all by myself. But I told her that was the least of my worries and that I needed help breathing, or she was going to have to call the coroner.

Mom had to help me get dressed and get in the car. I could not physically do for myself or think how to do anything. She dropped me off and into the ER I went. They put me on the oxygen; they did several tests and then informed me that I also had pneumonia.

Off to the Covid floor. I stayed for 4 nights there on oxygen. This experience was the hardest of anything I have done so far in life. I cried, coughed, prayed, coughed, napped, coughed, and then coughed & coughed some more. They pumped me full of vitamins, IV drips, & shots. Don't ask me what because I have no idea. I could write a whole book about my hospital stay but some things you just have to be there. 

I was discharged on Dec 23 and came home still coughing violently, short of breath, and greatly fatigued. I was told by the doctor that my symptoms would get better over the next 2 weeks, which was true. 

But surprise, my next hurdle was the Covid Fog and the side effects from Prednisone. I noticed on my last two days in the hospital that I was off. By the time I got back home I knew something was wrong with me. I was having hallucinations, psychotic episodes, insomnia, paranoia, mood swings (good & bad), anxiety, depression, memory loss, sensory issues, confusion, restlessness, and trouble focusing. It was quite scary. I felt crazy. 

I cleaned everything and at the same time everything was dirty. I remade my bed from scratch every day. It would take me hours just to get dressed. My senses were out of whack. I would go outside with shorts on and no shoes. My mom would have to come get me because I did not feel temperature correctly. Food did not taste the same. My hearing was extremely sensitive. My vision was blurry, I could not read, and I could not process my thoughts or understand what anyone was telling me. I could not ride in a car or remember how to drive. My parents and friends were not like my memory was telling me they should be. They were strangers to me, but my memory was also telling me they were ok. When your brain is telling you two different things, you are stressed and anxious.

I couldn't go back to work when my two-week quarantine was over like I was supposed to due to all of these effects. It took me about another two weeks to get back to normal. I will never take Prednisone again in my life.

Also, sadly, my Pomeranian Poodle was so sick when I returned home on Dec 23. My Mabel was 14 years old. For the last two years she had liver failure and Cushing’s Disease. She had taken a bad turn while I was hospitalized. She was no longer eating and was so weak due to her conditions. It was time. I put her to sleep on New Year's Eve 2020. I knew the day was coming but I wish I had been in better health physically and mentally for her last days. I miss her so.

I went thru a lot in the last two weeks of December 2020. God still wants me to be here alive on Earth. I still have a few glitches from Covid, but I am so blessed to be here. 

I have a new dog, Masha. I got her in April this year from the Humane Society. She has been a true pick-me-up. Turns out that I needed her as much as she needed me.

NOTE: This is her story as narrated on her FB page. (She gave me written permission to repost with minor grammatical corrections.)

Wise Words from C.S. Lewis in 1948

C.S. Lewis wrote this advice in 1948, when people were concerned about atomic bombs. His words are just as applicable today as they were then:

"In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. 'How are we to live in an atomic age?' I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.'

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."

Note: Hat tip to my journalist friend, Uzay Bulut.

Quotes from the AAPS

 I cannot post these four highly informative paragraphs from the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, (Volume 77, no. 11, November 2021) on social media without being further banned:

"Ivermectin vs. Remde$ivir. This 'Tale of Two Drugs,' by Daniel Horowitz (tinyurl.com/yjwcmstm) leaves no rational argument for continuing hospital inpatient treatment with remdesivir while disallowing or hindering access to ivermectin. This is one of many anti-science practices by which the system is either unwittingly or with malfeasance contributing to U.S. Covid-19 mortality that is substantially higher than in many less advantaged countries."

           Bose Ravenel, M.D., Winston-Salem, NC

"Politics and Junk Science Rule Medicine. Too many physicians have given up their professional autonomy by defaulting to corporate hospital-clinic employer managers. The process of buying out and neutering private practices began well before the Covid-19 pandemic. Physician loyalty to the corporate employer (brand) discourages independent patient-physician decisions. For challenging public health orthodoxy, Dr. Scott Jensen's license to practice medicine was threatened by complaints (from whom?) to the Minnesota medical board."

            Lee Beecher, M.D., Maple Grove, MN

"Rationing by Race. Before September 1, facilities could simply order Regeneron monoclonal antibodies from a national supplier - easy and efficient. Then Biden stepped in. Allocation is now skewed toward metropolitan areas and large hospital systems, and the recipient's race or ethnicity must be reported. The requirement to have at least one risk factor for Covid complications is waived for blacks and Hispanics. Healthy 'equity' in action."

             Joseph Guarino, M.D., Reidsville, NC

"Treatment Works. People are dying in hospitals not because they are vaccinated or unvaccinated but because the hospitals are withholding treatment. People call me from all over the nation wanting me to help get their family out of the hospital. It's heart-wrenching knowing that even in later stages ivermectin and budesonide help. I know because between my clinics and telehealth we see more than 200 sick patients a day and more than 500 total. After 80,000-plus patients I can tell anyone who will listen that Covid is treatable and preventable. How evil can it be to deny treatment? It is not true that vaccinated persons don't get very sick. About 30% of our very sick patients are vaccinated. We'll see whether there is antibody-dependent enhancement when the wild virus hits in the winter."

                Stella Immanuel, M.D., Houston, TX

"No Time for the Sick. Some pharmacies no longer fill prescriptions as their number one job, they vaccinate and vaccinate. My prescription at a CVS pharmacy was not filled after 36 hours. The pharmacist claimed that she needed another hour since she had to do 20 vaccines per hour, especially boosters; that's a shot every three minutes. She did not seem to care that I needed my prescription yesterday. Our medical system is quickly coming to resemble the socialized care under communism."

                  Ileana Johnson, Ed.D., https://tinyurl.com/u33tawm3

Kill Switch in All Cars in Five Years

Since 1992, billionaire globalists with money to burn, have been actively seeking to remove us from fossil fuel cars to save the planet from global warming/climate change/climate crisis Armageddon which U.N.’s Agenda 21/2030 has been actively seeking to do.

Since we are in love in America with the open roads and the freedom to travel by car, another no-no globalists seek to rectify while they fly around the world in their personal jets, sail in their huge yachts, and drive the most gasoline-guzzling vehicles their fat bank accounts can buy, we have been reluctant to buy their smart cars.

Elon Musk managed to sell Millennials and some baby boomers on the idea of the EV Tesla.  Millennials and rich liberals have been plunking the $80,000 plus to buy a sporty-looking Tesla EV car or SUV, especially since the energy is “free, non-polluting,” and it comes from an endless supply of fairy dust.

Biden’s infrastructure bill is going to rectify decades of mistakes environmentalists have made in pushing their green energy agenda. According to former Georgia Representative Bob Barr, the regime’s infrastructure package comes with a well-hidden present, a kill switch in cars. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2021/11/30/build-back-bummer-bidens-spending-spree-includes-a-kill-switch-for-your-car-n1537903

This kill switch will “passively monitor” impaired drivers, but it can be accessed by third parties such as law enforcement, a government agency, a company that decides that you must be watched, hackers who are up to no good, and even a foreign power.

The thought that we are monitored 24/7 for our own good just conjures up kumbaya thoughts of “safety” and “the government is here to take care of you if you behave.” If this kill switch is “passive,” it stays on the whole time and cannot be turned off. What the parameters are for deciding that a driver is off or impaired is not known. The kill switch is marketed to Congress as a wonderful tool to prevent drunk driving and within five years it must be built in every car manufactured. BARR: Biden’s ‘Infrastructure’ Bill Contains Backdoor ‘Kill Switch’ For Cars | The Daily Caller

The techies and the greens have been salivating to stop us from using fossil fuel cars for a long time, and to drive cars powered by lithium batteries (toxic and hard to recycle) and hydrogen fuel. “More than 30 public retail hydrogen fueling stations are online in California, with plans to install 100.” They are attached to existing gas stations to give people the false sense of security that they are just like fossil fuel cars but better. You can sleep soundly at night that your vehicle is only emitting water vapors.

The “net-zero” emissions pop up non-stop in the green tech narrative in the MSM and the climate “crisis” fear-mongering crowd. In their long-standing agenda, elitist billionaires want you to ride a train, walk, bike to work, school, and shopping, to give up your cars altogether, stop traveling anywhere, stop using meat, dairy, and eat their fake food.

The “cleantech movement” is primarily pushed by billionaires, green NGOs, and their useful idiots who volunteer to spread the message to the masses that the planet is dying, and we must fundamentally adjust society, kill heavy industry, steel, cement, kill harmful agriculture, rice production, the meat, and dairy industries, and replace them with synthetic alternatives.

By 2050, the green billionaires plan to eliminate fossil fuel use in all industries. Can you imagine the destruction to the U.S. economy and to your pocketbooks, not to mention the invasion of your privacy, freedom, and rights by a government emboldened to apply and use such a small item in your car’s computer as a “kill switch?”

Can you also imagine how little electricity you will have from solar and wind power when the energy of one natural gas power plant located on 4 acres of land must be replaced by 2,500 acres of large wind turbines? Will you have enough land left for agriculture, for food? According to Dr. Jay Lehr, “… the landmass of the contiguous 48 states is not large enough to fit all the wind turbines required.” And where will you place the solar panels? The simple arithmetic of wind power - CFACT

Without heavy subsidies from the federal government, none of these are competitive viable options for a population as large as the U.S. Prepare yourself to walk a lot and to have a limited mobility, closer to home, be cold in winter, be hot a lot in summer, while you are being watched all the time by your government.