Understanding Luther's Galatians - Introduction Complete - For Now

Introduction by Gregory L. Jackson

By stealth, Lutherans have steadily eroded the Biblical doctrine of the Reformation, which established them as Evangelicals and Protestants, but now allowing others to use those names and surrendering to the worst inclinations of Calvinists, Pietists, and Roman Catholics. The uniting cause, to soothe every worldly conscience, is to declare that God in His grace has already declared the entire world absolved of all sin. After meeting together and devouring the perks of Thrivent publicity, the LCMS-WELS-ELS stated –

 

"Last but certainly not least, there was special joy to understand that we all hold to objective justification—that God declared the world righteous through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and that we all recognize it to be the urgent mission of the church to take this gospel to the entire world."

That particular shout of celebration may be difficult to find verbatim now, apart from a certain blog seldom named but often read. However, the gloating superiority and arrogance can be found in 60 or more essays in the WELS Essay Files.

 

Apostate Lutherans like to call themselves Confessional Lutherans, as if they have a special relationship with the Book of Concord and the doctrinal confessions within that masterpiece, a one-volume guide to the Bible. However, the most basic characteristic of a doctrinal confession is to state the affirmative belief as well as the rejected belief. The Objective Justification advocates behave as if only one truth exists – theirs – that Paul and Luther taught God absolved the entire world of its sins for all time. The key phrase is usually “God declared the world righteous,” dishonestly designated Justification, deceitfully portrayed as Biblical truth.

Dead silence often accompanies guilt, and the Objective Justification Lutherans are morbidly quiet about Luther’s Galatians Commentary. However, the Book of Concord editors, which these chameleons pretend to honor, wrote this in the Formula of Concord article on The Righteousness of Faith –

67] Concerning what is needful furthermore for the proper explanation of this profound and chief article of justification before God, upon which depends the salvation of our souls, we direct, and for the sake of brevity herewith refer, every one to Dr. Luther's beautiful and glorious exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians. (emphasis added)

Who is more neglected and scorned than Luther, mocked with silly trinkets for the 500^th Anniversary of the Reformation, supplanted by rationalists and Calvinists like CFW Walther and JP Meyer? What book of Luther’s forgotten works is more unmentioned than Galatians?

 

What is more fitting for Crypto-Papist McCain to produce than a dog shirt and collar for the Reformation's 500th Anniversary?

The Lutheran Librarian (Alec Satin) and I discussed whether to use the shorter or longer version of Luther’s Galatians. We decided it was better to have people read the shorter version first rather than not own and not read the longer one. Anyone who loves Luther’s shorter version will seek out the later and longer exposition, truly a goldmine of insights about the Gospel, one he valued himself as a work worth keeping (with the Small Catechism) if the rest of his works were burned. 

Alec Satin will also produce an ebook and print version of Luther’s Galatians by itself, which will be more appealing to the never-Ichabods. 

I Leave All Things to God's Direction, He Loveth Me in Weal and Woe;

I am impatient for certain flowers to bloom, although there is plenty to see already. The Pink Neon Spirea bushes bloomed in abundance all at once, and the Veterans Honor roses are showing off, one perfect rose at a time.

I would like the Star of Gold and the Oriental Lilies to bloom. Instead I have Cat Mint glowing with its purple flowers inviting bees. The mint family (Bee Balm, etc) is the McDonalds of food plants for bees - open early and always available for another stop.

The Military Gardening Group noticed the Cat Mint blooming overnight. Often the visitors point out what I am missing, but that was difficult to overlook. The tiny flowers glow as if lit from within.

I find myself being pushed along because each plant has its own destiny, planned by the Creator. All the creatures - and weather - share in the outcome. One example is coddling the Blackberries until they became strong, rose in revolt, and conquered the corn patch. Squirrels showed me who was boss by stripping the Silver Queen in the corn patch while we were out of town, leaving the stalks bare and straight, like so many sterile tent poles.

 "I say, old chap, we are better off with berries than corn. We can get sunflower seeds daily, but Silver Queen corn only once. The berries will stay and spread, mark my words, youngster."

I know the squirrels are rubbing their filthy paws together in glee. They are three moves ahead of me in 3-D garden chess.

Uncertain about what to do with a shaded corn patch over two rainy summers, the Blackberries decided for me by using their shallow roots to extend the family. The first year growth was unheralded, because I was always figuring out how to get the garbage barrels out to the front without disappearing into the clay soup path to the garden gate.

One can wish to use the Wicket Gate without being able to approach. I was like Christian, with arrows shot at me and hands pulling me back from that goal. I counted three times when I rolled the barrels through the kitchen and living room to effect the removal and return. I dreaded being caught by the Altar Guild with barrel in the living room.



Over the winter, the Blackberries got ready for their second, blooming and fruiting year. The spring began with me wondering about what to do with their aggressive growth. Unbidden, the first few white blooms began to show. Knowing how greedy and hungry the squirrels and birds are, I was not mentally filling baskets. But the entire Blackberry invasion suddenly burst into tiny white blooms, starting with the original patch. That will give us:

• Bees calmly floating from flower to flower
• Berries forming
• Instant treats for all creatures.

Once upon a time we were invited to a Blackberry farm and allowed to pick and eat as much as we wanted. Now I have one, and yet the execution of the plan was completely out of my control. As if to show solidarity, the Wild Strawberries have a broad patch which they staked out for themselves, next to the Blackberries.

From the Bethany Lutheran Hymnal Blog 

 Norma A. Boeckler's Art

Tune - Wer nur den lieben Gott - linked here

"I Leave All Things to God's Direction"
by Salomo Franck, 1685
Translated by August Crull, 1845-1923

1. I leave all things to God's direction,
He loveth me in weal and woe;
His will is good, true His affection.
With tender love His heart doth glow.
My Fortress and my Rock is He:
What pleaseth God, that pleaseth me.

2. My God hath all things in His keeping,
He is the ever faithful Friend;
He grants me laughter after weeping,
And all His ways in blessings end.
His love endures eternally:
What pleaseth God, that pleaseth me.

3. The will of God shall be my pleasure
While here on earth is mine abode;
My will is wrong beyond all measure,
It doth not will what pleaseth God.
The Christian's motto e'er must be:
What pleaseth God, that pleaseth me.

4. God knows what must be done to save me,
His love for me will never cease;
Upon His hands He did engrave me
With purest gold of loving grace.
His will supreme must ever be!
What pleaseth God, that pleaseth me.

5. My God desires the soul's salvation,
Me also He desires to save;
Therefore with Christian resignation
All earthly troubles I will brave.
His will be done eternally:
What pleaseth God, that pleaseth me.

Hymn #529
The Lutheran Hymnal
Text: Romans 8:28
Author: Salomo Franck, 1685
Translated by: August Crull, 1923, alt.
Titled: "Ich halte Gott in allem stille"
Composer: Georg Neumark, 1640
Tune: "Wer nur den lieben Gott"

Living Roots in the Soil

 Carbon Cowboy Gabe Brown found he had to use the roots of cover crops to hold water in the soil and also to drain excessive rainwater downward.

A gardening or farming leader will often emphasize one particular concept and make that central to the plans made:

1. Beneficial insects
2. Adding organic matter to the soil to very large amounts
3. Companion plants
4. French intensive gardens and similar wide row gardening.

All of these work well and I try my hand at them. This year, when I was tempted to dig up all the wild roses, I remembered #5 from the Carbon Cowboys - keep living roots in the soil as long as possible.

 Buckwheat is a great cover crop, except when it rains and rains and rains. Then it is a shroud crop, covering entire rose bushes with luxuriant growth. Cutting them unleashes the seeds for a second crop of the same shrouding effect.

I did not really want to dig wild roses out of clay soil and there was no clamor to do so, not even from the small but influential altar guild. I remembered the Fifth Irrefutable Truth of Gardening - living roots improve the soil with stupendous growth and pathways for microbes and worms. 

I could cite the astronomical figures for total root hairs or the length of fungus connecting plants in the soil. However, big numbers are so gigantic that they stop meaning something. That has to be reduced to - Living Roots - Good!

My solution for a big, mysterious and fast-growing plant where it was not invited: try to identify it, then lop it off at ground level. Poke Weeds are not a mystery and they can grow 7 feet in the garden, so I let them grow a little in the rose garden and chop them off at the base. They will grow more but not dwarf the roses the way the Buckwheat did in the summer of endless rain.

Face-saving conclusion about the Buckwheat - the plants engulfed the roses twice, but the roots were great for the soil. 

Lots of rain means lawn duties tomorrow, so I will lop all the big plants that need lopping - most wild roses, Poke, and mystery plants. The roots will continue to improve the soil.

Hold the presses! Here is another double-blessing from the Carbon Cowboys. Deep roots are not only 

• Humus producers, but 
• Drought stoppers and 
• Flood quenchers. 

Deep roots take rainwater deep into the soil and keep it there to refresh all life. The nature of Creation is to thrive on water and therefore to serve as water and fertilizer units. 

The test for this is simple and startling. Take a large bucket of water and pour it on a deeply rooted plant, whether a bush or sunflower or Poke Weed. The water disappears as if poured through a grating over the storm sewer. The plant does not move b because it is deeply rooted. 

In contrast, the tiniest amount of water on a young plant will flatten it and threaten to wash it away. But that also applies to those deluges of rain that we have had the last two summers and again this year. Rain tends to wash topsoil away, as people can see from the rich growth of weeds on their front sidewalks. Deep roots are just as much a solution for drought as they are for standing water and gully-washer rains.

One might think this was all planned in advanced and engineered to perfection. Like Jesus, the Lord of Creation, the Biblical authors move effortlessly from the Creation to faith in the Savior. 

Ephesians 3: 16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 

17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

 Norma Boeckler's Christian Art

 Norma Boeckler's Christian Art Books

Understanding Luther's Galatians Has Started - Parts To Be Published

In the unlikely event of a typo, send corrections - in a kind, understanding, compassionate, and sensitive tone - to greg.jackson.edlp@gmail.com. I keep suggestions in a folder for the initial edits of the book.

Some view the morning post as a health and wellness check, growing alarmed if I have not posted by 5 AM. I may post early and go back to the book most mornings. I will try to post my comments on Galatians as I move fowad. Everyone is moving fowad now, so I want to move fowad and be as transparent and diverse as possible.

WELS-LCMS-ELS-CLC (sic) should welcome what I write, because it proves there is another side to Lutherdom today - a Biblical one.

Upcoming books in approximate order are:

• The American Calvin: CFW Walther
• The Bible - Text and Translations

Understanding Luther's Galatians

Introduction by Gregory L. Jackson

By stealth, Lutherans have steadily eroded the Biblical doctrine which established them as Evangelicals and Protestants, allowing others to use those names while surrendering to the worst inclinations of Calvinists, Pietists, and Roman Catholics. The uniting cause, to soothe every worldly conscience, is to declare that God in His grace has already declared the entire world absolved of all sin. After meeting and devouring the perks of Thrivent publicity, the LCMS-WELS-ELS stated –

"Last but certainly not least, there was special joy to understand that we all hold to objective justification—that God declared the world righteous through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and that we all recognize it to be the urgent mission of the church to take this gospel to the entire world."

That particular shout of celebration may be difficult to find verbatim now, apart from a certain blog seldom named but often read. However, the gloating superiority and arrogance can be found in 60 or more essays in the WELS Essay Files.

Overjoyed - They Reject the Chief Article of Christianity - And You Re-Elect Them!"This article concerning justification by faith (as the Apology says) is the chief article in the entire Christian doctrine, without which no poor conscience can have any firm consolation, or can truly know the riches of the grace of Christ, as Dr. Luther also has written: If this only article remains pure on the battlefield, the Christian Church also remains pure..."BoC, FC, SD, III, 6

KJV 2 Thessalonians 2:10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

A Report on the Meetings of ELS, LCMS, and WELS Leaders 2012–2015

https://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=3864

"Last but certainly not least, there was special joy to understand that we all hold to objective justification—that God declared the world righteous through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and that we all recognize it to be the urgent mission of the church to take this gospel to the entire world."

https://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-lcms-els-wels-and-elca-agree-on.html

Drains and Mrs. Gardener's Sons

The rain has left all the local yards lush with grass, no matter how soon it is mowed. When our neighbor's sons showed up, I expected the roar of the real estate son's machine. But no, they left after considerable work and the front yard was a showcase for the nitrogen found in rainwater.

The mystery was solved when Sassy and I walked home from our book distribution trip. I am the source of inexpensive Chilton repair manuals. Ranger Bob ordered one for his co-worker, and I got one from "the useless Internet - except for books." It was brand new and a bargain. We spotted a Haynes for $500 but bypassed that. The useless Internet is also handy for bargain military and theology books. I was going to give my copy of Alias Shakespeare to a member, but found it easier and faster to use Alibris. Plot twist - the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare and used the actor as his front-man.

Sticking out of the ground was a black plastic drainage pipe, which I often see at hardware stores. Behind the pipe was the mark of digging from the backyard to its opening. Perhaps the water was backing up more in that backyard than mine.

Multiply this many times over, and one cause for floods is obvious. People used to tolerate standing water in the fields and ditches, but now they are inclined to lay drainage materials out to move the water away, downstream. Local levies also raise the level of rivers and transfer the flooding to a southern location.

We have been near - but not in - various floods - Moline, Midland, St. Louis, and New Ulm. People worry about our flood warnings, but our street drains down to Scott, which slants down to White Road, and then even lower.

Norma Boeckler Is Getting Her House Back from the Flood

Norma Boeckler is getting help from friends, family, and neighbors.

Norma Boeckler, our artist-in-residence, wrote to me about recovering from the flood caused by the Edenville dam breaking.

County residents are suing the state for causing the flood.

The basement was wrecked but the flood did not reach the upstairs. Her son was there to help, and neighbors showed up as well. Another church member lives in Midland and is in touch with Norma.

Mennonites showed up to haul the trash away. Three neighbors' homes were destroyed, so it was a close call.

The dam failure from space.

 The basement of this beautiful library was destroyed, just after its multi-million dollar renovation from  the last flood was completed. The library, including the children's section, was my Harvard and Yale in gardening. They had everything, from all the Rodale books to Don't Call It Dirt!

Bilbo and His Garden at Twilight

 Bilbo the Hobbit

"Gandalf: Always remember Bilbo, when your heart wants lifting, think of pleasant things... Bilbo: Eggs and bacon. A good, full pipe. My garden at twilight."

Just as my need for fresh coffee took over, Ranger Bob knocked on the door and brought Sassy out of her rest barking in excitement.

It was late afternoon and the sky was a dark grey, the air still. We had some Brazilian coffee and crackers outside with Sassy.

Bob was stunned by the Veterans Honor roses in full bloom. Sunny days are great and rare, but the filtered light of the looming storm really lit up the pure red, perfectly formed flowers. He began pointing them out, and I added a few more locations. I only planted Veterans Honor roses this year. Politely, they let Easy Does It have all the glory for Mother's Day.

Bob also has his eye on the Butterfly Weed that grows along the little picket fence in front of the patio. Mrs. Ichabod liked the touch and it does slow down trampling on that row of flowers. Butterfly Weed is slow to develop but the flowers last a long time. This time we have a stately row, tall and starting to bud.

We are in a budding and blooming frenzy. The Elderflowers are turning white. The Triple Crown Blackberries are showing off their white blooms too. New Joe Pye plants are showing their vigor, and the older plants are already 5 feet tall.

I was trying to build a Butterfly Garden on the sunniest side of the house, but it is also where we seldom look. That area is now the site of very large Yarrow plants, Comfrey, Joe Pye, and Chaste Tree - so overall a magnet to all pollinators.

 Yarrow

Partial sun will grow almost anything, so the butterfly concept - where we might actually see them - was added to the Rose Garden. The view from the porch now includes:

• Two Clethra - aka Summer Sweet or Sugar Spice.
• Numerous Joe Pye Weeds
• Butterfly Weed
• Hostas sending up their flower spikes for the Hummingbirds
• Cat Mint
• Pink Neon Spirea bushes
• Bee Balm in vigorous growth, not yet blooming
• Whoops-a-Daisy blooming and Shasta Daisies only starting to grow

I used to wonder how my mother had flowers blooming at all times. Now I realize that if enough flowers are planted, something will be blooming, even at the end of summer (Beauty Berry).

We all look forward to the early spring flowers, but we would be very downcast if they finished in June.

When that party-changing billionaire Bloomberg described how easy farming was, I just laughed. "Drop a seed in the ground and water it." He did not comprehend the predatory nature of birds, rodents, rabbits, squirrels, and man - nor the complexities of fungus, nematodes, springtails, slugs, and weather.

The Garden Path Not Taken

That is why I would prescribe a semester of gardening for all the seminary students and two years of gardening for the synod officials. Mowing the lawn would not count. They would have to treat the soil kindly, improve it Creationally, and grow plants in the midst of hostile forces - man, nature, and Lowe's.

That would teach them the long, patient joy of labor rewarded many times over by the living seed of the Word. They would understand the efficacy of the Word as no different from rain and snow. One morning, when an entire row of seedlings popped out of the ground, they would recall the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly (St. Mark only).

They would go over Luther's sermon on the Parable of the Sower and say to themselves - and others - "Now I see what we have been doing wrong. The old farmers knew this. The older Lutherans like Loy, Reu, Lenski, Passavant, and Krauth lived it. The rain and the snow demonstrate the efficacy of the Word, the divinity of the Word, the exclusive relationship of the Spirit and Word."

  Triple Crown Blackberries

Elderberry Ambitions

First there are enormous green formations, which turn white and delightsome for pollinators.

"Although elderberries grow well in moist soils, it's a myth they can grow in poorly drained, wet soils." Call me Myther Gardener - we have soggy clay soil, poorly drained, overloaded with rain.

 This bush is weighed down by the ripe berries. My two elderberries are currently about 10 feet tall and not yet ripe. I would gladly have a green wall of them, but the birds planted their own favorites.

Bad Behavior of the Political Left = Model for the "Conservative" Lutheran Synods

 Rejects the Chief Article - not apt to teach. Rejects the Chief Article - not apt to teach. Rejects the Chief Article - not apt to teach.

The more I read about the corruption of the Mueller prosecutors, the top floor of the FBI, and the neo-Nazi governors of the Wuhan Flu states, the more I think of WELS-LCMS-ELS-CLC (sic). I can easily add their Lutheran cheering sections - LutherQuest (sic), Steadfast (sic) Lutherans (sic), Logia (sic), Christian News (sic) and other pests too numerous to list.

 Mussels have the Michigan Attorney General in place to protect them from the possible ill effects of lowering the dam water in flood season. Who protects the citizens?

Flood waters from the burst dam, Holy Scripture ELS Church in Midland, illustrate the results of Stalinist state politics.

I do not need to mention many details about Left-wing politics. The People's Republic of Michigan threatened the dam owner with a lawsuit if he did not raise the water level of his fragile Edenville Dam to protect some mussels. As predicted, the dam burst and flooded the entire area with great devastation and the loss of many mussels.

I predict the mussel-heads will defend the Attorney General and her boss, the Governor of Michigan and VP Wannabee, Whitmer.

 Those who read The Frog in the Kettle hopped away from these conservative, orthodox, confessional, too-good-to-be-true Lutheran sects.

"We Are Here To Save Holy Mother Church"

The soi-disant conservative Lutherans behave and carry out their Leftist agenda with the same Stalinist moves and propaganda of the politicians. To seize and hold power, they united behind the Barthian Church Growth agenda devoured by their bedmates - the Church of Rome, ELCA, and the other failing mainline groups.

 To have a great hymnal, one must cross the center line and erase the evidence.

WELS-LCMS-ELS-CLC oligarchs hated the fact that I was onto their schemes and their intimate communion with ELCA. Tiefel's Calvinist Worship hymnal was a clone of ELCA's Liberal Book of Weirdness - same typeface, same templates, same hymns, same avoidance of doctrinal war lyrics, plus copyrights from ELCA.

Worship was the key. If the Lutheran Stalinists could wrench worship to the Left - "for the children" - they could own the next generation of digital-addicted, pot-hazy Lutherans. One WELS leader said in New Ulm, where I had a unique listening post - "What if we lose all the older Lutherans in order to attract the younger ones with CW?" The WELS also began promoting gay marriage in the 1990s.

 "We did it. We fooled them all."
The next WELS SP will need the NSA to find the remnants of their sect.

As bad as CW was, the next WELS hymnal promises to be everything expected from the chameleon administration of Mirthless Mark Schroeder. WELS members will be paying royalties on 25 new Calvinist jingles for their entertainment evangelism agenda.

 Harrison shaved his beard for this photo-op.
Everything is worse than the reader imagines, much worse.

Said "Orthodox Lutheran" Father Steve Spencer - SP Schroeder and DP Buchholz would be Reformers for WELS. When both politicians proved to be as sinuous and slippery as previous Leftist church parasites, Steve was there to provide billows of smoke and excuses. "What pleases them, pleases me."

The Left requires a powerful propaganda wing. That is why each synod, locked in an embrace with ELCA, pretends to be as pure as St. Agatha.

WELS loathes the Chief Article but promotes Sodom. Does it take a computer to figure it out?

No Wonder You Have Birds - You Feed Them All the Time

Ranger Bob went outside and saw birds feeding on the tops of the garbage barrels. We have Blue Jays, Cardinals, Goldfinches, Starlings, Grackles, and Doves. Squirrels will jump up and land on or near a bird, scaring it away. A Jay kept jumping up and screaming at one feeding squirrel. He didn't care.

Turning over the soil when planting or weeding will excite the interest of birds, who know fresh food will be wiggling and squirming near the top. I had an ultra-compost spot at our Midland parsonage, overseen by a flock of birds. As soon as I began working on that area, they all began to chatter and make happy sounds, like fans waiting to get into the rally or the World Series.
The reason was that the compost ingredients were welcomed by a mass of earthworms, because I was testing how much they could grow in numbers in that location. The birds knew that my labor would provide a feast of fresh worms in softly stirred soil.  Sometimes people left the kitchen door, spooking all the birds into flight - lots of noise. "Why didn't you warn me?"

Similar things happen when the faithful stir up the classics of the past. When they are suddenly visible again - though they were always present, if hard to find - people begin talking about them. One reader said, "I would never know about Loy, Reu, Jacobs, and Schmauk except for you writing about them."

Likewise, we would not have instant access to them without the Lutheran Librarian making them public in print and in ebooks.

Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry

Lutheran Librarian Print Books

God creatures expand according to the food, water, and shelter available. When soil creatures are encouraged with organic matter and deep roots, plants increase and so do birds and bunnies.

Ranger Bob mocked my "backyard jungle," but it is a food jungle for birds. The corn patch is solid with Blackberry canes, The other patch has Butterfly Bush, Poke Weed, and Chaste Tree.

The tool shed is overshadowed by a giant Elderberry bush on each side. Some Raspberries grow and so do Beauty Berries for the late fall.

Too many congregations want the results, not the cause. The cause is an abundance of the Means of Grace - the Word and Sacraments.

Planting roses is easy. The results come from fertile soil and beneficial insects. Light work after is mulching with fertility products like Peat Humus and shredded wood.

Sermons are tough for ministers who do not study the Word. They realize they are trying to grow in dry sandbox, so they steal from others. Those sermons are like flowers delivered by mail on a Phoenix summer day - dried out and wilted. Reading another's sermon is as thrilling as reciting the phone book. No wonder live online services caused universal clergy panic.

Veterans Honor for Ranger Bob's Step-Father and Army Ranger

 After Peter Ellenberger died, we put this Veterans Honor rose on the altar. He loved telling us how he was put up for discipline for "threatening an officer" with a potato knife. When the commander saw Peter's 100 pounds of skin and bone and the spud knife, he laughed and dismissed the case.

Ranger Bob came over Sunday afternoon. I wanted him to take the altar flowers to his step-father's grave. Both were Army Rangers. We had a vase of Veterans Honor roses, which were kind enough to bloom on the right day. When I look at photos from previous years, I think, "They cannot be that perfect." And they are, far more than the photos indicate.




Sassy addressed the door knocking with ferocious barking, as if I were not headed for the door -  or  - as if I wanted to throw extra locks on. Her initial stage of greeting Bob is to feign great hurt about not getting her Milkbone, followed by a Pupperoni, followed by some cinnamon cracker. Many chastening barks are laid upon him, so we can hardly converse.

Bob scowls and says, "You chow hound. Can't you think of anything else?" Sassy is in heaven. Like all dogs, she reads the emotion and not the words or feigned scorn. She can hear the slight change in words as he tries to hold back his smiles and laughter.

We had some new dogs move in across Scott. They wanted to do the "Stranger come to kill us all!" bark. I said, "Who's a good boi?" Pause, pointing at each one, "YOU are a good boi." (Animal language is misspelled with bad grammar, so editors, sheathe your swords.) Now the dogs perk up and remain silent. They are good bois.

Try that on strange dogs. They will pull back, as if to say, "You know me? How do you me?"

Sassy sets up a security perimeter after her snacks. Outside she picks a spot where she can see into two back yards, across the street, and over to Scott Lane. No threat has ever come near with her on duty, and she never stops watching and listening.

Five Ellenbergers, German born, served in the US military.

Memorial Day - We Honor Those Who Died in Battle - And Those Who Served

Norm and Jean Woehrle

 Gary Meyer, Alicia, and their sons.

Peter Ellenberger

 Veterans Honor Rose on the Altar

 Medal of Honor, Sgt John Baker, Moline