Four Hours of Music for Sleeping - Faux-Lutherans Also Asleep.Others Are Alert and Awakened

Classical music is like brussels sprouts, ignored and avoided for no reason.

The Lutheran world is like this drought. Nothing much is expected when the forecasts insist on too much sun and too little rain for the future. Many people are watering just to keep the plants alive, and they catch glimpses of the hardiness of Creation.

Rainwater is a precious commodity now. Name With-Held likes to kid me about my rain-barrels, poised to catch every drop from the roof. They are bare, except for a few dead leaves and two filled with stored water for safer watering.

One inch of rainfall will green up the grass, revive all the plants, and give animals a chance to drink and bathe, often in the same water.

I am starting to see genuine expression of love for the King James Bible. I read a little about its history each day. People write to me about their long-held love for the KJV. 

One author answered why Moby Dick - a strange novel - continues to be praised in American literature. The novel expresses the music and poetry, the grandeur of the King James Bible and Shakespeare. Our English language comes from only two sources - the almost anonymous scholars of the KJV and the Earl of Oxford, pseudonym - Shakespeare.

Today's children are sheltered from both and will largely grow up discussing social media stars, ignorant of the skies above them and the libraries abandoned but close by them.

Quality has a way of lasting, because that is a property of God's Creation. 

"What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow."

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers....

“...being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along ‘into the midst of the seas,’ where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘the weeds were wrapped about his head,’ and all the watery world of woe bowled over him.

“Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet- ‘out of the belly of hell’- when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;’ when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten- his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean- Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding.

“And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

“...Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,- top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath- O Father!- chiefly known to me by Thy rod- mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world’s, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
by Herman Melville
Chapter 9 - The Sermon

Fuhrman Has the Key to Food Craving. No More Dessert Zombies

I saw that look when we ran out of chocolate cream-filled berliners. "YOU ARE OUT? When will you have more?"

The overall Eat To Live argument is sound, because Joel Fuhrman replaces the processed salt-fat-sweeteners of the American menu with the old-fashioned greens, beans, and fruit of common sense nutrition - God's Creation.

Some have asked, "What about craving food?" I got to know that while dropping down to 195, after being at 224 and higher. At 195, I would grab a bag of kettle corn (sugar, salt, fat, high glycemic popcorn) or crave PBJs (sugar, salt, fat, bread). In a few days the scale screamed 198, or did I?. 

I realized I hated salad dressing - not plain fresh spinach, which is crunchy and good, loaded with nutrition, a super-food. Now I am eating spinach early in the day, no matter what, and eating a huge crisp apple as dessert several times a day.

1. Packed full of vitamins

It is a challenge to find other plants that can compete with spinach in terms of the range of valuable vitamins and minerals they contain. For example, spinach is an excellent source of calcium, magnesium, and iron. It also serves as an excellent source of vitamins A, B6 and C and niacin and folate. This is far from a complete least of all the important elements that spinach brings to healthy bodies. Another significant fact about spinach is that it has a very low amount of fat.

2. As good as a gym for muscle building

The cartoons illustrate how eating spinach causes Popeye to develop huge muscles on his arms. The physical transformation of spinach eaters lacks this drama in real life, but the cartoonist's association between spinach and muscle building is not simply a whim of fancy. Spinach contains a compound called Factor C0-Q10 that has muscle-strengthening properties. This could help those arm muscles develop, but scientists find that it is especially beneficial for the heart muscles. C0-Q10 is already in use for certain heart disease treatments.

3. The vegetable that helps improve vision - lutein - tomatoes have it too

If you ask people to name a vegetable that is good for eyesight, the carrot is the one they are most probably going to mention. Folk tradition contains the belief that carrots help you see in the dark, but maybe spinach has comparable properties. Researchers have discovered that it contains lutein and other elements that protect against vision loss. There is scientific evidence that eating spinach can stop the progress of the Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) that damages the vision of the over 60's age group.

Returning to pure spinach salad, I have now gone down from 198 to 191, with craving stopped by spinach, fruit alone, or spinach and fruit. Pineapple is a superb late night dessert and not loaded with sugar. Oranges are just as delicious. Ripe pears, papaya, blueberries, and other fruits are always available in variable amounts. 

Sugar-grease-pastry desserts actually numb the mind. I know, because I observed so many dessert zombies come into the donut shop and ask for donuts, Danish rolls, cookies, fudge, and peanut brittle - that hollow, vacant eyed, possessed look.

The cost is never an issue for the dessert zombie. Restaurants thaw frozen desserts from a service, so they talk about "getting it ready," which means warming it up. 😁 Desserts cost many times what the meal does, if people just take a look at size, cost, and value per ounce. 

Panera bread is another example: sweet bread and desserts to attract - salads for virtue signaling.

Since good foods are medicinal, we should carefully consider, with a doctor's supervision, over-the-counter remedies. I stopped daily Benadryl (allergies, sleep inducer) when I saw that it increased blood pressure and eye pressure. Blood pressure went down and sleep was easier. I slept better and no longer have antihistamine hangovers.