Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

:::UPDATED:::
Mama ER will have heart surgery from 12:30 p.m. to around 4:30 p.m. Friday. Going to be with her in the morning, then I'm going to work for a couple of hours rather than just sit around and worry, then I'll go back to the hospital.

(Exact times provided for those to whom "intercessory prayer" means something. As usual, rosaries, good karma, soft-and-squishy high-church prayers, holy-rolling pew-jumping praying in tongues, neo-hippy vibes and happy-happy thoughts cheerfully accepted.)

--ER


Repeat: Mama ER has landed, at the hospital here, 180 miles from where she started, about three hours faster than I figured it'd take, considering.

The weather outside is -- well, it's frightful.

Brudder ER reports her "nervous as a wreck" -- from being in an ambulance. Said she couldn't tell the roads were slick.

Off to see her now.

--ER

Way busy. Much happening.


Mama ER in ambulance
en route during worst
winter storm of decade


ER takes Ice-T to ER;
antibiotics to treat
undetermined infection



More, perhaps, anon.

--ER

And now, Dr. ER thinks Ice-T is sick. Lethargic. Not eating. SIGH.

--ER

First, Mama ER, fraidy-cat, will now be driven to Oklahoma City in an ambulance, rather than flown here! The doc said they'd *heard* that she didn't want to fly, so they'll accommodate her.

I'll be dadgum. She was not amused when I told her just now on the phone that the dang streets could be slick by the time she gets here!


I awoke this morning with two thoughts that have stuck with me since Sunday. They are as profound as you need them to be.

1. The preacher said, perhaps coming off a holiday weekend of encounters with his own family:

"Our task is not to fix our family members. It is to love them."

2. His sermon was on the Peter-Jesus walking-on-water scene from Matthew. The point, he said -- and I agree -- is not the primitive cosmology and limited theology that worries about whether Jesus actually walked on the water.

The point is this: Whether we sink or swim, Jesus is reaching out. God's love and care do not hinge on our faith as much as we like to think it does. God's love hinges on God's love.


Peace, y'all. More Mama ER updates as events warrant.

--ER

Mama ER, who has never flown, will be flown from Fort Smith, Ark., to Oklahoma City tomorrow, for surgery the next day or Friday. There's an ice storm coming, so they migth be trying to beat it.

She makes an ugly face when she thinks about flying. "I'll hitch-hike!" she says.

:-)

--ER

I love my daddy! Look what he did for me!

He felt so bad about chopping down my Hundred-Square-Foot Wood, the forest outside the living room window where I used to watch, and stalk, birdies, that he brought a whole tree inside the house! Just for me!

And that lady who lives here and the one he calls Bird and her YankeeBeau decorated it even!

What a daddy! And it gives me a new place to hide and jump out at that lady!

My daddy is heading to eastern Oklahoma and to Fort Smith, Ark., today to see Mama ER and his Brudder ER. He said he will be back late Monday night so he can work Tuesday, then have the flexibility to be off Wednesday or Thursday if Mama ER comes to the city for surgery.

In the meantime, I will sit here under this beautiful tree my daddy put up just for me, and try to bite that lady's calves as she walks by!

--Ice-T

Got you on my mi-ind! (Name the band!)

Nine years today that Dr. ER and I have been hitched! Still, all :-)'s!

We're going to The Mantel tonight for dinner, then to a Barnes & Noble where we can both feed our bibliophilic addictions.

First, however, there is the little matter of Bedlam, the university of Oklahoma at Oklahoma State, today at 1:30 p.m.

My recliner is the best seat in the house. Obnoxious OSU orange flag on the front of the house is clashing with the holiday colors.

GO POKES! What they say is true: OSU can lose every game but beat ou, and it's a winning season. :-)

Happy anniversary to us! GO POKES!


Granddogs -- l-r, Apollo, Fenway -- being cute.





Stepdog Riker, the regal Pembroke Welsh corgi, and Bailey, the "special" weinie dog!








Thanksgiving dinner entree -- for me, Dr. ER, Bird and YankeeBeau -- on ER's trusty Weber kettle grill. Cornish game hens. Yum.








ER still life: My perch, and distractions, between bastings!


--ER

:::UPDATED AGAIN:::

Brudder ER back home.

I'm headin' that way Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, it looks like right now.

--ER

:::UPDATED:::

This is a little mixed up, it turns out. Angioplasty in Arkansas, then they'll decide what to do next.

And, Brudder ER is now back in the hospital ...

Just told the boss not to expect me Monday. If I'm away from here, y'all know why.

--ER


Mama ER has a leaky heart valve. She is in good hands now in Fort Smith, Ark. The plan is: Come Monday, they will do some prep work -- then in a day or two, FLY HER TO OKLAHOMA CITY IN A HELICOPTER to do the surgery!

Mama ER has never flown! Wow!

And the hospital is within 10 miles of the ER household!

I told Dr ER that when I was growing up, in eastern Oklahoma about 180 miles east of where I live now, the idea of going to Oklahoma City for just about anything, let alone a medical procedure, would have seemed about as foreign and exotic as flying to Paris, France, now for something like that.

Dadgum if the world didn't change while I wadn't payin' attention.

Prayers directed to Fort Smith appreciated! ... Also, a good friend of mine's dad died Thanksgiving morning. Intercession directed to the W family in Oklahoma City, appreciated.

On a lighter note:

The ER house is decorated for Christmas! Bird and her YankeeBeau helped Dr. ER inside, and they helped me outside. Both make fine hands. We about ate up the turkey breast from Wednesday, and the game hens last night. A fine time was had by all.

--ER

Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Taken by ambulance to emergency room. Trouble breathing, even with oxygen.

--ER

Great article. This is *the* issue of the century for Christians.

--ER


By Oliver "Buzz" Thomas

What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality? I suppose, much as a newspaper maintains its credibility by setting the record straight, church leaders would need to do the same:

Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not to be condemned by God's followers. ...

It's happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo's challenge to the biblical view that the Earth, rather than the sun, was at the center of our solar system. ...

This time, Christianity is in danger of squandering its moral authority by continuing its pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has little or nothing to do with choice. ...

Read all about it.

(As seen at Grrrl Meets World.)

Turkey breast thawing. Check!
Pecan wood chips bought. Check!
Weber kettle grill cleaned and readied. Check!
Kingsfords charcoal in hand. Check!

That's tomorrow. To have ready ahead of time.


For Thanksgiving Day:
Cornish hens procured. Check!
Apple wood chips bought. Check!
Um, sweet potatoes for baking, white potatoes for smurshing, other various and sundry veggies, traditional cylindrical and gelatinous cranberry substance, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, mincemeat pie -- check, check, check!


Bird and Yankeebeau are coming tomorrow night! They'll help us decorate the house Thursday! And feast with us Thursday evening.


For my Bird and her Yankeebeau, I am truly thankful.

What are y'all's plans!?!

--ER

Sigh. For months, Ice-T has been sittin' his little kitty butt on an arm of our couch, perched where he could peer out a window at the birdies that would light in the branches of what looked like trees.

T would stalk said birdies and get all tensed up and sometimes seem ready to pounce.

But they weren't trees. They were WEEDS that I had let get so totally out of control in a flower bed that they were taller than me, and actually pushing up against the eaves.

Saturday, I cut 'em all down and dug them up. Even as I was doing so, Ice-T was freaking out so that Dr. ER opened the window and told me to pause and talk to him to settle him down.

Now, T sits and stares forlornly out the window, this important corner of his world devastated, with a look of shock, sorrow and bewilderment on his kitty face.

And of course, I feel terrible.

I'll be getting T a bird bath or something for Christmas -- something for the birdies to congregate on to keep him entertained.

I've said a time or two that this cat gas taught me more about God's grace than I've ever read in any book. It's filling in some of the gaps, the parental lessons I missed because Bird was 9 before her mama and I found each other. I don't see how anyone who has been a parent can be as judgmental as some people are!

The learnin' keeps on. Grace came into my life on little cat's feet about 18 months ago -- and the dang critter has been walkin' all over my heart ever since. A big ol' boy like me, smitten by a kitten!

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov."

--ER

By Ice-T

And this I saw in a vision, on the isle of Catmos ...

I heard the tinkly watery sound and the big swoosh sound come from the little room next to the room where my daddy sleeps, so I knew he was awake. I ran into the kitchen to stand by my feed bowl as usual.

Daddy came in and I watched his feet closely, as I always do, to see if he would go to the coffee pot or my feed bowl first. He didn't do either, which should have told me something was up.

All I know is I was just standing there in the kitchen one minute, and the next I was taken, and flying through the air! Then I went head first into some kind of portal! It was dark and cramped. There was one of my catnip toys and a comfy towel, but I was so scared I didn't play with the toy or pay any attention to the towel.

Then the dark, cramped place started moving for what seemed like forever. It got cold. Then it got warm and I heard strange noises and music and singing. I couldn't see anything but rays of light. I couldn't see my daddy but I could hear him. He was singing! I just knew it was The End for both of us!

After what seemed like forever, it got still. Everything stopped. Then I started moving again and it got cold, then it got warm again. It got still.

Then the face of the scariest-looking creature I ever saw appeared right in front of my face, separated from me only by some kind of mesh that I hadn't noticed before. The Scary Thing looked sort of like me, but was bigger and was white and gray and brown -- and had only one eye, as God is my witness, it had only one eye! Part of his head was even gone! I hissed! I hissed again!

Then I heard my daddy's voice. He was fussing at the monster, taking up for me, as usual. But I was so confused. I didn't know where I was, where my daddy was or what was going on.

Everything started moving again, then it got still, and another portal of some kind opened up and there were four strange hands and they had pointed sticky things in them and before I knew it I felt prickly feelings and I thought I was done for! My daddy's voice was faint, like he was far away! I was scared.

I thought, if this is Cat heaven, what must hell be like?

Then it all started over again! The portal disappeared. Everything moved again. It got cold, then warm, then cold, then warm and the world moved in strange ways and I heard the music and the singing again and my daddy's voice and all of a sudden I started smelling familiar smells and it got still.

And another portal opened. And there was my daddy! In our house! I climbed through the portal and jumped onto the floor. My daddy picked me up and held me and hugged me and said nice things to me.

I think it was just a dream. But I have a couple of sore spots. And I think I saw a new necklace for me with some new writing on it. My daddy left it in his big chair and said something about putting it on me later, since he needed to go to work.

That lady who lives here is sleeping late. I think I'll go bite her face.

--IT

The Baathist General Convention of Oklahoma -- oops, the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma -- apparently in Jesus's name, has voted to encourage businesses not to provide benefits to same-sex couples and other nontraditional families.

Read about it here.

Unless I'm mistaken, there is no rush by Oklahoma businesses to provide benefits to same-sex couples and other nontraditional families. So the Baathists, I mean Baptists, are taking a cue from Focus on Everybody Else's Family and are stirring up s--t just to be stirring up s--t.

What the Baathists, I mean Baptists are doing is asking people to deny benefits to children based on their parents' sexual orientation. That's just wrong. Strictly speaking, it's biblical (nod to the few verses that mention licentious homosexual behavior but say *nothing* about homosexual orientation) -- but it is nothing close to Christian, in the sense that the word means "Christlike."

Oklahoma Baathists, I mean Baptists should be ashamed of the messengers they sent to convention. Myself, while I love the little Southern Baptist church I grew up in, I have never been happier to have shaken the fundamentalist dust of mean intolerance off my cowboy boots.

Jesus loves all. The UCC lets him.

--ER

... so hard it slams the back door of your house open, even moving the NASCAR tire(Harvick, No. 29, Daytona a few years back, left rear) you use to block it shut and rolling it into the kitchen, and it gets so cold in the house that your cat, already unsettled because his master, lord and savior (me) left extra early, so he repeatedly goes to the bedroom door and sort of makes a trilling sound to wake up your missus, but she sleeps like a cement block, but eventually wakes up, late for appointments in the city -- then you might be a redneck, winter might have come blowing in finally, and your cat may or may not be something of a sissy no matter what kind of collar he wears. :-)

I must've been a Canadian, or denizen of the U.S. Northern Plains, in a former life. I LOVE this kind of weather: blowy (70 mph gusts!), COLD and wet, with a chance of sleet! Woo hoo!

What's the weather like where you are? Is it your kind of weather? What kind of weather do you prefer?

--ER

Long day yesterday, from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. at a hospital 45 miles away to be with Brudder ER, who had some surgery. Then, I couldn't get online last night. Everything is OK.

Now, Tuesday is Monday, which would have started out as late Friday anyway -- meanin' once again, the hurrieder I go the behinder I get at work. But hey (knockin' on wood), this one should be easy to untangle.

--ER

Thanksgiving came early this week for lots of patriotic Americans. This morning, people of faith celebrated changing winds. *This* is what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Let us work together. May God bless these United States of America.

--ER


By BEN FELLER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Responding to a humbling election, White House aides said Sunday that President Bush would welcome new ideas about the unpopular war in Iraq, even from Democrats he had branded as soft on terrorism.

As Bush planned to meet Monday with a key advisory group on the war, his advisers adopted a new tone, days after a dissatisfied public handed the White House a divided government.

"Full speed ahead" in Iraq, as Vice President Dick Cheney put it in the final days of the campaign, was replaced by repeated calls for a "fresh perspective" and an acknowledgment that "nobody can be happy" with the situation in Iraq.

Read all about it.

Pix by ER, at historic Fort Washita.

Four dead in Oklahoma fence dispute.

Have any of y'all ever even come CLOSE to this kind of dispute with a neighbor??

The only trouble I ever had was with noise in neighboring apartments, dealt with the old-fashioned way: by banging on the wall and hollering, "Turn it down!"

--ER

Do tell.

--ER

God help us, and damn ALL FUNDAMENTALISTS.

--ER

Ever since I tipped the scale at 294 at the doctor's office, I have eaten sensibly and, in fact, have eaten a lot less than I would have, with the help of a little pill almost every day.

That was Oct. 25. I didn't eat any Halloween candy. Except for a cookie or two, I haven't had any sweets. I've cut way back on Mr. Dickel and Mr. Hendrick.

Tomorrow and Saturday, I'm laying off the diet pill, which is recommended. And one of those days I am going to reward myself with a plate of ribs.

(Wiping drool up from keyboard; struggling, with one lame ear, to hear above stomach growling; trying to keep from going RIGHT THIS MINUTE TO A BARBECUE JOINT AND EMBARRASSING MYSELF.)

Ribs. Glorious pork ribs! Fried taters! Slaw! A beer maybe.

Then it's back on the wagon.

--ER

Meet the new effective leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Blue Dog Coalition.

--ER

Get used to it. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

--ER

(As seen at KEvron's; I think he actually had the privilege of voting for her yesterday.)

It's a joke!

Just for Nick and ELashley and the handful of other righties who darken my door from time to time!

Vote early and vote often! May the best party win!

--ER

P.S.: Jesus is a liberal. :-)

Lend me one! An ear, that is.

Still no improvement in the left ear, which has been stopped up since Iowa.

Called the doc's office and he called me in some more antibiotics, and some other meds to help it drain.

And he set me up with an ear-nose-throat specialist -- on Dec. 5.

It's the middle ear, he says, and so he can't just gouge out whatever has it blocked.

Dang it. I'm too young to be goin' deaf.

--ER

(Read/listen to Part 1 on Day1, formerly The Protestant Hour).

(Read/listen to Part 2).


The Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is senior minister of Mayflower Congregational (UCC) Church in Oklahoma City and professor of rhetoric in the philosophy department at Oklahoma City University.

For two weeks on this program, I have been talking about the imagination--that distinctly human faculty that makes time and space travelers out of all of us-and its role in making us more humane. For until we imagine what it is like, what it is really like to be the other person, we cannot love them wisely or well.

The imagination is a fantastic thing. It can take us anywhere, like mental stowaways, or what the airline industry calls "un-ticketed travelers," without having to leave the spot we are standing on. Long before there was something called cyberspace, the imagination could log us on to any address in the universe-across the street or across the galaxy.

I began the series by saying that the essential premise of the gospel is that when we are born we are locked into a prison of sorts, a prison of self, and that the empathic imagination is the key that can unlock the door and set us free. In fact, the same premise is assumed in the words of Jesus when he says, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

This assumes that most human problems result from our failure to embrace what we "cannot imagine," or what may seem impossible. ...

--ER

My Resistol's off to the Texas Longhorns, who didn't let my Oklahoma State Cowboys get close to corraling them last night.

My Pokes are good, but oh, so inconsistent. Now I'm back to bein' generally *for* Texas: Hook 'em Horns!

...

Drlobojo, among others, will be proud that I decided to blow off the local game yesterday -- Northeastern (Oklahoma) State University at Southeastern (Oklahoma) State University -- and instead Dr. ER and I went exploring.

We checked out the Caddo Indian Territory Museum & Library in Caddo, Okla. Caddo, back in the 1870s, was the site of the Oklahoma Star, one of the Indian newspapers I've researched.

The museum had a little information about the editor that I didn't know -- plus it had a portrait of him, which the lady volunteer docent person let us photograph, for my own files. Major cool.

Then, we went the back way, by way of the town of Bokchito (Choctaw for "Big Creek") to Fort Towson, which was a mile or so from the site, in 1849-1852, of another couple of Indian newspapers I've researched, at Doaksville, which hasn't existed since just after the Civil War.



We walked through what remains of the ruins, including a cistern where Confederate Brig. Gen. Stand Watie surrendered to the Union in June 1865 -- the very last general to surrender, two months after Appomattox. Major cool, again.

Then, we hauled back to the house we were house-sitting to watch Texas prevail over the Cowboys.

Fine day, all in all, considerin'.

--ER

The ghost of Teddy Roosevelt ...

And a fine, fine time was had by all.

Here ya go, Junior. Ride herd over the ER yahoos while I'm busy today! :-)

Check out a Cool Close Encounter at Junior the Bear's joint!

--ER

Dr. ER and I both have work to do tomorrow way back down over into southeastern Oklahoma, a.k.a. Little Dixie -- and allow me to correct Wikipedia again as to why Little Dixie is called Little Dixie.

It is only partly because, as Wikipedia says, Southerners settled what is now southeastern Oklahoma after the Civil War. It is *mostly* because the Choctaws, relocated to Indian Territory in the 1830s, came from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and environs, the mixed-heritage Indians were Southern in every way that matters, and they held slaves. Nothing to be proud of today. But factual. Hence, "Little Dixie."

Speakin' of political incorrectness, Saturday afternoon I think Dr. ER and I will go watch the Savage Storm (until recently the Savages) of Southeastern (Oklahoma) State University play host to the mighty Redmen of Northeastern (Oklahoma) State University on the gridiron. It oughta be a hoot.

Then, come Saturday night, is the Real Deal, wherein my beloved Oklahoma State Cowboys will take down the Top 10 University of Texas Longhorns. Burnt orange blood will run in the streets of Austin. Bright orange will prevail! I got a few bottles of Oklahoma-made Head Country barbecue sauce bet against a bottle of Texas-made Llano Estacado wine. :-)

--ER

Ice-T, black cat extraordinaire, survived another Halloweeen unscathed! No harm came to the kitty. No tricks. He never even knew Halloween was going on.

Dang. We pretty much missed Halloween this year. They canceled my Choctaw language class, but I didn't know it, so I went -- and by the time I waited a while and got back home, it was all but over -- just the teenagers still out mostly.

I came home to find Dr. ER, also ill-prepared for the events of the evening, with the porch light off, hoping no one rang the bell, but with a box of orange moon pies and a pile of those low-cal Oreo coookie wafer things by the door just in case.

And while Bird and YankeeBeau were in Texas Saturday and here on Sunday, some jerk stole their jack-o-lanterns off their little porch at their apartment! A--holes!

Oh, well. Onward and upward for the holiday parade! Up next: Thanksgiving and our anniversary, on Nov. 25!

--ER