For Unto You A Child Is Born

Luke 2: 1-20 KJ 

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
² (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
³ And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
⁴ And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
⁵ To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
⁶ And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
⁷ And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
⁸ And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
⁹ And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
¹⁰ And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

¹¹ For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
¹² And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
¹⁴ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
¹⁵ And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

¹⁶ And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
¹⁷ And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
¹⁸ And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
¹⁹ But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
²⁰ And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

We pray that you and yours have a blessed Christmas. 
May God and Peace be with you.

Frank and Fern

Blooms Abound

With the abundant rain we have had this spring, we are surrounded with flowers everywhere we turn. Some of these are domestic and some of them are wild, but all of them bring us pleasure and some bring the added bonus of food. 

No matter how dismal the future of our country appears to be, there are still these smiling, happy flowers all around. I sure am glad.

Until next time - Fern

Easter Is Here

Lady Bug decided to choose Easter Sunday to present us with a beautiful little doe. In keeping with the celebration of birth and new life the Easter season brings us, we decided that would be a great name for the last baby goat we had arriving here this spring. Please meet Easter.

Isn't she beautiful? Goats come in many different sizes, shapes and colors, but this is one of our favorites. The only color she has besides a dark, soft red is the black on the front of her legs and the end of her tail.

Lady Bug did very well for a first freshener. Once she decided to have her baby, she did so without any assistance and without complaint. These short videos show the birth. We started weaning our older kids the day before, and you will hear them in the background. Some of them obviously aren't happy to be separated from their mothers. The noise you hear, did not come from Lady Bug or Easter.

Lady Bug wasn't sure what to think of Easter at first. She spent the first 10-15 minutes smelling and nuzzling the baby, but did not lick or clean her at all. I was beginning to become concerned, but after a while, her instincts kicked in and she made up for lost time. Since the weather was cloudy and cool, I used some towels to dry off and stimulate Easter while she was waiting for her mom's instincts to start.

Easter arrived healthy, active and ready to eat. As I do for all of our newborn kids when I attend their birth, I helped Easter get her first meal shortly after Lady Bug stood up. Lady Bug has a good milk supply, nicely formed teats and udder for a first freshener and a great attitude. She is attentive to her baby and is exhibiting the signs of a great doe. We are very pleased. There has been something about Lady Bug that Frank has really liked, ever since she was born. That she has presented us with a beautiful, healthy doe her first time to give birth, has increased her value in our eyes. We look forward to watching the two of them grow, one kid into a doe, and one doe into a mother and milk producer.

Grace, a friend of ours who came over to see the newborn baby goats recently, told me something that has really stuck with us. As we all sat visiting and laughing in the barn while she was holding a soft, newborn baby goat she said, "You have a great life. You really do." You know what? She's right. And we give thanks each and every day for this wonderful life we've been blessed with. Is it perfect? Not even close. Does it have it's frustrations, difficulties and challenges? Regularly. But it is truly a wonderful life.

 

Easter, the time of celebration, the time of rejoicing over an empty tomb and renewal of life. Easter, our little doe, will be a constant reminder of these blessings.

Until next time - Fern
 

Why We Are Here

Hello, Frank here.

We received an interesting comment on our post, "I Can't Think of a Thing to Write", which, by the way, was the post before this one. We've been receiving comments from N.W. Illinois for a good while now and I'm going to try to give an accurate assessment to his question. I really don't know if it's a him or a her, but I'm going to respond as if it's a him. Then I don't have to him-haw around playing semantics.

His question is, why did we move to southeast Oklahoma. But, here is his comment in it's entirety. 

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"Hello Fern & Frank, For having nothing to say that was an interesting read. This is N.W. Illinois again, been a while. It's too cold to plant anything in the ground here. A week ago the ground was covered in snow! Yuck. The weather has improved this week, 65 deg. on Mon. 3/30/15. On the note of something to write, how about telling us why you picked Oklahoma to retire in, what's the advantages over say N.W. Illinois. Other than the fact our growing season is three months shorter or we have more snow."

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There are a lot of parts to the answer here, as to why we moved to Oklahoma. So I'm just going to start.

Fern and I were both born and raised in Texas, but we didn't know that about each other until we met in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She was

a normal aged junior, and I was about ten years older and trying college again on a full time basis. What brought us both to Oklahoma State University? Well, Fern's dad passed away when she was a young child, and in about ninth grade her mother married a man from Oklahoma. His wife had passed away a couple of years earlier. So her mom left her college teaching position and moved to southeastern Oklahoma where her new husband lived. That is how Fern ended up going to Oklahoma State University.

My case is a little bit different. I'm a big city boy, born and raised. I have pulled two tours in the military, both of them short tours. I had been researching major universities, not located in major cities. Oklahoma State University, OSU, was kind enough to offer me about 36 hours of good solid credits for my military training. So that's what brought me to OSU. 

Fern and I met in Biology 101, and just about two years later we got married. A couple of years later we completed our education we started looking for jobs. That started our teaching career in Oklahoma. We worked in Oklahoma for six years, not anywhere close to southeastern Oklahoma. We took jobs in Alaska for one year, came back to Oklahoma, and worked for nine more years. We are still not in southeastern Oklahoma. Then we moved back to Alaska and taught there for eight more years.

During our sixth year in Alaska ten acres of land became available that was in the vicinity of Fern's family. It was a nice, pretty, square ten acres, and each summer when we would come down here to visit her folks, we would look at assorted pieces of property. We really didn't plan on living on this land some day, it just seemed like it was a good investment. Even after we bought the ten acres, we still continued to look at other pieces of property.

Now, what brought us here? Well, let me back up a little bit. We had also very casually looked at locations in Washington state, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Oregon. But there was nothing that ever really flipped our switch. And upon doing a little deeper research, not all, but most of these states have restrictive water rights, and that's just not something we were looking for.

But the major reason for not moving to any of these states just mentioned, was the snow and the cold. We had just spent eight years in some climates in Alaska that were, to say the least, extremely bitter and harsh. As a school principal, I had to shovel snow on a regular basis. Then, about my fifth year, I injured my lower back, which I still suffer from that injury today. I knew that I never in my life wanted to shovel snow again.

Now I'm going to back up one more time. The last couple of years in Alaska, I started noticing some very dangerous trends in the

economy. This was about 2006. Now, I'm by no means an economist, but some things I saw going on in the financial world started to give me grave concerns. I started educating myself about the financial world, and to me it became apparent that the economy was in a death spiral. I did not want to be in remote bush Alaska when things spiraled out of control. So, in 2008 we quit two successful administrative positions, sold our condominium in Anchorage, rented two big UHaul trailers, and made our last trip down the Alaska highway. 

Which, on a side note, cell phones don't work on the vast majority of the Alaska highway. So we purchased two GMRS handheld walkie talkies, and that's how we communicated while we were driving down the Alaska highway. That was the beginning of my jump into ham radio.

I'm going to back up one more time. A really interesting thing happened about four months before we left Alaska. There is only one house that bordered our ten acres, and the lady that owned the house happened to know Fern's mom. She mentioned that she was going to sell the house, and asked Fern's mom if we would be interested. The day that we got here from Alaska, the next day we picked up the keys and the house was ours. I can't help but believe that we had some divine help there. We already owned the ten acres, and now we had one acre with a house that attached to it. That's how we got here.

Now, let me share some benefits of being here. A lot of folks don't know this, but southeastern Oklahoma is a mountainous area. Ok, ok, they're not the Rocky Mountains and they're not the Appalachian Mountains, and some folks would just call them big hills. But whatever you want to call them, they are what they are. And they are beautiful. There is one medium sized town about 30 miles away. There is a fully functional town about 60 miles away. And there are two big towns, or what we call big towns, in different directions about three hours away.

Taxes overall here are less than most other states, and that includes income tax. There is an income tax here in Oklahoma. We have crime here, but it is less than the national average, especially out in the rural areas. The schools here are as good as they are anywhere. Yesterday I was out in my backyard sighting in a rifle. About two miles away is a huge national forest. About a mile in the other direction is a large wildlife refuge. We can grow things successfully about seven months a year. And there are some things that will survive year round. It's hot in the summer, it's humid in the summer. I know most folks think of Oklahoma as the dust bowl, but not the southeastern part. We are heavily treed, with mountains. It says so on the map.

It can get cold in the winter, but on average it normally doesn't get any colder than 20 to 25 degrees. We get snow, but you can normally sweep it off of your porch. On occasion we get ice storms which shuts everything down. We do have tornadoes and some violent thunderstorms. But these are things you learn to live with, because you have violent thunderstorms just about everywhere. Most states have the occasional tornado. But we don't have hurricanes, we don't have mud slides, we do not have tsunamis, but we do have wildfires. 

Something that some people will find probably a little surprising is that not one precinct or district or polling station had a majority vote for Mr. Obama in either election. You read that right. Not one. You can take that for what it's worth. So, if you think that Wyoming is conservative, welcome to Oklahoma. 

We also have more churches than we do bars. That means that church has a significant influence in everything that happens here, especially in the rural areas.

This part of Oklahoma has a higher unemployment rate than the national average, and it has for many years. There's just not a lot of wealth in this part of the state, if you judge wealth by the amount of money someone has. But you will see a man driving a tractor with his child sitting on his lap. And you will see a family fishing together. I guess you can judge wealth by other values also.

Okay, I'll try to get back on topic now. When Fern and I left Alaska and moved here, we did not have jobs lined up. At first things didn't look like they were going to pan out. Fern would get an offer at one

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little school and I would get an offer at another little school, but our entire married life and teaching career, we've always worked in the same district. Maybe not the exact same building, but very close by. Then one day we interviewed at a school and the superintendent there offered us both teaching positions. That was around July 4th. It was starting to look like we might need to apply in Alaska again. But, again, the good Lord was with us, and He gave us two teaching jobs, me at the high school and Fern at the elementary. I taught there three years and retired. Fern taught there six years and retired. You see, God has been very good to us, and for that we are truly thankful. And I really believe that, too.

Okay, let's review. Why southeast Oklahoma? It's beautiful. The winters are survivable even if we didn't have heat, as long as we had shelter. There aren't many folks here in this area. We can grow food almost year round. If need be, we can harvest game. The climate is not harsh on our livestock. The water laws and rules are easily livable. The folks are ultra conservative. The vast majority of people are Christian. The folks here are just decent, hardworking people for the most part. The taxes are kind to retired folks, and to everybody for that matter. No national politician is ever going to retire in my neighborhood. That's another thing to be truly thankful for.

On a serious note. If there is a collapse, and for whatever reason there is no electricity or power, this part of the world is survivable. Those states I talked about earlier. If you live inland, away from the major population centers, the winters are not survivable without external assistance. Maybe a few very young and very hardy might be able to, but the majority will not. And I'm sorry to say that, but these are facts. A lot of folks may think that with -20 degrees below zero temperatures that they are going to be okay. Well, they're not. That is an illusion. 

So this is why Fern and I settled in southeast Oklahoma. There is going to be a collapse in our society, because it is already starting. It's a big ship and it takes a long time for it to stop. The economic and social trends that I seriously started following in 2006 have not halted or reversed, if anything, they have accelerated. This big ship is grinding to a halt. If you can't see it, I'm sorry. But this area is survivable. 


N.W. Illinois, I hope this answered your question. I want to thank you for the comment, and I want to thank you for reading. But first and foremost, I want to thank God for giving me the ability to see what is happening. And I want to thank my wife of 32 years for always being by my side. I am truly blessed. 

We'll talk more later, Frank