Peterkin

Toss in some ice cubes and a green plastic swizzle-stick.

The act of selling water automatically desecrates it; it would make the user break out in hives. Sanctity is not a commercial commodity. Just as churches repurposed for secular functions must be deconsecrated, and documents must be declassified with stable genius mind-waves before they go on the auction block, so the Jordan water needs to be decontaminated and unblessed before it can be mail-ordered.

One of the things for which I'm grateful to my mother is the enjoyment of work. Whatever we were helping her to do turned into a game - and not just when we were little tykes, either, but well into our teens. Even things like cleaning the poultry pens or tarring the roof, which are really crappy jobs on the face of it, can be fun when you're joking back and forth. I notice other people at various tasks: they can be grimly earnest about pastimes like football or a theatrical performance, while one of the happiest human interactions one can observe is a group of men conferring over a critically ill engine. Work and play are not mutually inimical concepts; they occupy overlapping ranges on a spectrum of human activities. In adult society, money perverts the entire spectrum. I would prefer to keep business transactions out of the family altogether, but children need some cash to get by in the world outside. Every parent needs to strike a balance of all the lessons and skills a human needs to become a fully functioning adult. What a great racket! Like the squeegee kids in the underpass. My daughter tried that with food prep - worked so slowly and badly, I had to fire her. Fortunately, just about then her younger brother developed an interest in cooking and turned into quite a useful sou-chef. She got stuck with his share of the dish-washing.

Which 'that'? 'It' certainly hasn't to do with school-learning. It's ignorance of other views, options and their own perceived power to resist that makes children more compliant at a young age than when they get closer to the parent's physical size. The comparison I made in ease of handling was between grade school and high school, and the experience to which I refer predates cellphones and personal computers for every middle-class child in North America. Odds are, it predates phones, electricity, railways and toothpaste, and maybe clothes. Adolescents are contrary because they're adolescents. Nature compels them to seek their peer group, mates, confederates and leaders outside the family; it's a step toward independent adulthood. When idiot influencers pop up - on You tube, on a podium draped with flags, in a pulpit, on top of a tank, in a lecture hall or on a hill in Judea, some of the youth will follow them. T'was ever so. Yes. That's why I would be concerned about the kind of people I was raising - what kind of values I was instilling in them - if I paid them money* for their investment of effort in their own future. *rather than praise for effort, solace in failure, encouragement, admonishment, guidance and whatever help they need

Yeah. A whole lot of pain for no gain. That's what happens when we let ourselves by ruled by the least sane of our species.

I did not share this experience. I found it considerably easier to deal with my kids in Grade 3 and 4 than in grade 10 and 11. Easier to help with the homework, too; at they actually listen when they're 8 or 9 years old; at 16, you're talking to a stone wall. Seems to me there would be more material benefit in sending them out to deliver pizzas than paying for their school clothes, books, busfare, lunches, plus wages for going to school.

But children should not be taught to view school as their "job". They have the privilege of a free (public school) education, in return for which they will become self-supporting, informed citizens. Their going to school brings no material benefit to the family that feeds and houses and clothes and cares for them; it's their personal contract with the society at large. The other reason monetary incentive should never be attached to learning or grades is the difference in children's ability to learn, and the quality of schools and the amount of parental help and intellectual stimulation. It's impossible to set a fair standard, and if there is one crucial principle in child-rearing, it's to not only be fair, but also seen by the children to be fair.

The whole country's about to fall down around their ears, and they're still rattling those rusty old sabers. There's no telling what it will take to back them into self-immolation on a global funeral pyre.

In New Orleans, I hear. And, of course, Taps for those who have served in or admired the military.

I think it's also useful to set a time commitment appropriate to the age, and allowing for personality, and hold them to it. I'm alarmed by the general diminution of attention-span over the last half century. I don't expect a six-year-old to stick to any [non-computer-related] activity as long as his twin sister and two years older brother. And some chores, as well as jobs, are more enjoyable; some tasks are easier for some children than others. I'm a big believer in lightening work - even grunt-work - through sharing and fun, whenever possible, especially in the early years when children are forming their habits of discipline and co-operation. By fifteen or so, boys and girls should be able to focus on projects of about equal duration: several hours, with short breaks. In between tasks, they should be given lax time and encouraged to let off a little steam. And, of course, we never gave them extra work on school days, or let them take after-school jobs. So many people brag about having had an early morning paper route. I was never a fan. The thought of sending kids as young as eight out on wet pavement, in the dark, in traffic gives me the willies. But, of course, if people are poor enough, they do what they have to. In the 19th and well into the 20th century, working class and agrarian children had to work from a tender age, as children in many countries still do. Makes me wonder how much more responsibility, competence and self-application our children are capable of than we give them opportunity or credit for. Makes me wonder how much of the alienation and rebellion among young people is a response to feeling surplus to their society.

It never occurred to me - or any of my cohort - to not help my parents. At three or four, children usually volunteer to help with everything, especially when the adult doesn't want to be hindered in some task. My mother assigned small tasks she knew we would enjoy, and could do with minimal supervision. (The very best one was polishing the floor. Anyone else do that?) Many opportunities for praise and appreciation of the children's effort. My father just gave orders and we obeyed without question. We didn't receive payment for routine house and yard chores: it was simply taken for granted that every member of the family contributes. The bigger we got, the more was expected. By my father, who was far from unique among immigrant fathers, exacted; to my mother, who was a lot more fun to be with and work with, freely offered. We started receiving a very modest allowance when we went to school, just enough for some little treat every week. It increased as we grew older, to cover the odd comic book, fries and coke with friends, movie tickets, that sort of thing. It wasn't a reward, just routine. Some of the immigrant children we knew had to work part-time during the school year, more in the summer, at their parent's business or an outside job, and they might be paid, or not. One ten-year-old friend of my younger brother was killed on his way home from strawberry picking; he was cycling along the highway and wandered out in front of a bus. When my turn came to raise children, I tried to take the path of moderation. Our kids were expected to look after their rooms and their pets, collect and bring down their own laundry. When old enough, help with house cleaning and meal preparation, and lend a hand every now and then with renovation or yard projects. They were given allowance commensurate with their social needs, no strings attached, even while under punishment for some infraction. If they wanted more money, they could earn it with extra work: car and window washing, house painting, garden digging, errands. When they wanted to save up for a big purchase, if we approved of the acquisition, we would offer to kick in the rest of the price, after they saved up half. (We rarely had to deliver on one of those; kids often lose interest in stuff they think they want; if we'd bought the telescope or tennis racquet for them, it might well have just sat neglected, rankling the parents every they passed the kid's room.) It worked well enough most of the time; some nagging and chivvying required, but no arguments over fairness: the jobs available came with an hourly wage for acceptable quality of work, otherwise, they'd be fired. (May as well get that idea across early in life.)

Going on vacation? I hear the sunbathing's pretty good in Puerto Rico this time of year.

The problem is, all the sane people are speculating on possible venues to sane containment of an insane situation driven by an unknown number of insane actors behind a known insane figurehead. We know the options and materials available to them; what we don't know is the breadth and depth and consilience of their insanities. It's always those pesky unknown unknowns that bite you in the ass.

And his dog. That's where I changed the channel.

He had a pantry? I thought he just stockpiled gasoline. We have cereal, rice, flour, canned goods, cooking oil and coffee to last through a medium-sized siege. But then, Dyer, like me, has guessed wrong before.

I live in a nothing place of no strategic value, and would probably survive the first two rounds. Lucky me! I get to die very slowly, unless a roving gang of marauding bikers happens by to raid the pantry. There are no good scenarios in the Rapture.

OK

He has zero chance of winning Ukraine. And he has an ego the size of the moon, and he's terminally ill. If he can't have what he wants - making the Russian Empire Great Again - he'll try to goad the rest of the world into dying with him. He may have some mad generals on his side, but getting killed faster than usual so who knows the mind-set of the officers coming up in their place? My bet - not the farm, just a small one - is that the upcoming top brass of the horribly abused Russian army will have had enough and assassinate the crazy bastard before he destroys the world. Hint to assassins: be very precise in the placement of that briefcase!

Firewood dries fastest when cut up and split, for maximum air circulation. OTOH, you don't want it drying out too much: wood that's been piled outdoors for two years burns so fast, we have to keep stoking the stove continuously, rather than be able to damp it down for a long smoulder. The best firewood we get is maple that's been cut up to 18"X10" max and seasoned from 6 months to a year. If you want it for carving wood, the seasoning time is shorter, average an 6 weeks: when completely dry, it's too hard for hand-carving, but better for power carving; carve when green and it dries unevenly, and cracks. For cabinetry, the optimal method of seasoning is to saw the green debarked lumber (sawmills normally spray their logs with water) into boards along the grain, stack them on an even surface with slats between layers to allow air circulation, and seal the cut ends. They should dry for one full year or longer, during which time, it's a good idea to restack the boards in a different orientation, to stop warping. We have some dead elms still standing after a couple of years, and they're hard as steel. They'd make a good raft or scaffolding, but a devil to cut. The other danger to standing dead trees is bird and insect damage. If the termites move in, you might not get any use out of the wood.

It wasn't meant to be. If the point I missed is that you have arrogated the authority, by virtue of aesthetic preference, to rewrite the creation myth of a long-dead culture, then there is no possible rebuttal/argument.

Well, good for you!

I'm sorry! I had no idea that you are a close relative and confidante of the author of Genesis. I assumed we both had access to the same version of the same translated text. In the light of this revelation, I defer to your interpretation in all particulars. Write God out, if you're sure it would make a more convincing story without him.

Yes, they would. Imagination and knowing about tomorrow wouldn't. And I pointed out that contradicting the explicit content of a story is not a reasonable explanation of the story. The limitations of written word may contravene our notion of what should have happened or how it could have happened, but if you don't like the story as written, make up your own, don't go stealing the characters from one story and putting them in a different one. I could explain as how Hamlet's father was a wife-beater and that's why Gertrude divorced him, which might be a reasonable explanation, but not in that story.

Okay. Conceptualization and abstraction are a product of sophisticated thinking, which includes reason, pattern-recognition and imagination. It's the 'tomorrow' part that doesn't fit as a causative factor in shame. Swedish people are just as conscious of the passage of time as Afghans, yet they have quite different dress codes.

Just before I responded to your doing that. If you meant some other Adam and Eve who also covered up, you should have specified, since most readers would, reasonably I think, assume you meant the Biblical couple who famously covered up.