Rare as the Proverbial Hen’s Tooth
A utility corporation that requests a DECREASE in rates
Local government that REDUCES property taxes
Airport screeners searching someone who actually might be a terrorist.
Airport screeners not searching blonde, blue-eyed young women.
A government program that requests a decrease in funding.
A government poverty program that actually helps anyone who deserves help.
An honest government spending bill.
A government spending bill without earmarks.
A modest neocon.
A politician who does not know the answer to every problem.
A politician who observes the rules of logic.
A newspaper that actually recognises and reports what is REALLY going on.
A President who REALLY CARES when young Americans die in foreign wars.
A successful high-level politician who is not a satyr.
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A preacher who gets God's call to a Church with less pay and less benefits.
A Christian congregation more attune to the pastor's character rather than his personality.
A father who takes his duty to be the priest of his own household seriously.
Children who honor their parents.
Students who are curious and in awe of the subjects which they encounter.
Teachers worthy of the students above.
A conservative who is actually not a right-wing liberal.
A Southerner who takes the battle to the anti-culture.
A Baptist who is not a dispensationalist.
A conservative who has never voted Republican in a national election.
Someone who does not consume himself with Christmas.
Someone who knew an ancestor who served in WWI and who knows even the propaganda version of that conflict.
A Southerner who consistently refers to the three main meals of the day as breakfast, dinner and supper.
A "Yankee" who understands why we do not like the term.
"A conservative who has never voted Republican in a national election."
I haven't!
Mr. Weber @ 2
One does, once in a while, find a hen's tooth!
A Church (Catholic or Protestant) that doesnt have a 'patriotic' mass/service at any point in the year.
@4: The Catholic Mass is offered in adoration to God, not the State.
Meng @ 5
I realize that, but tell that to my 'conservative' parish priest.
I take it Mr. Peters isn't waiting for the Rapture like most Southern Christians.
"A Southerner who consistently refers to the three main meals of the day as breakfast, dinner and supper."
I was born, raised, and have lived in Louisville, KY all my life. Despite what people waaay down in Loosiana might have to say about it, we are southerners here. We've always referred to the midday meal as lunch. Dinner is a formal name for what everyone calls supper.
I always suspected my family's little strip of Southern Indiana was more Southern than Louisville. Among my people in Harrison, Scott, and Washington counties, it's still breakfast, dinner, and supper.
Mr. Brendan @ 7
I cannot speak for Southern Christians. But, no, I am not waiting for the "rapture." I do, however, live in the hope of the Resurrection and the Second Advent of our Lord, be that ever so far from how and beyond my lifetime or unexpectedly on the morrow. Dispensationalism and the attendant rapture are, at the very least, grave errors in the thinking of Christians, particularly American Protestant Chritians of the "evangelical/fundamentalist" ilk." I am a member of a congregation associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, and I am, on this issue, in the extreme minority, both in the congregation and in the convention.
Mr. Collins @ 8
You made my point!
Well, OK, Mr. Peters. I have to say though, where Second St. veers off of Third St., in the heart of U of L's Belknap Campus, we have the massive Confederate Monument honoring our fallen dead. Down the street from where I live, there is a plaque on St. Boniface Catholic Church marking the site where Father Abram Ryan, the poet-priest of the Confederacy, died. Yet around here dinner has always been a fancy word for supper!
Mr. Collins @ 11,
I do not call the Southerness into question. The decay of our customs, traditions and way of life is about all of us in many forms. I was, in fact, in Louisville about ten years ago and had occasion to address the sitting mayor at the time. Referencing Kennedy's alleged remarks about D.C. - a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency - I stated that based on my observations, Louisville was a city of Southern charm and Northern efficiency.
who says the north is efficient? i have lived in michigan for 24+ years. efficient it is not.
"A conservative who has never voted Republican in a national election."
That almost describes me completely. I've never voted for a democrat either, though I do admit to having engaged in that demonstration of cluelessness: voting in a national election.
(Thanks to Professor Wilson for the identification of voting as "an act of cluelessness, like chewing gum".
To Mr Collins and Mr Peters: In Arkansas, it was traditionally breakfast, dinner, and supper, just like in the rest of the South. However, the idea that 'dinner' is a fancy word for supper exists, but I think it is a fairly recent thing, existing just during the last sixty years or so.
Mr. Wilson @ 16
The only time I ever had lunch in the South was in public schools with the federal "lunch program." In my climes, at least, it is an alien import of the general government.
When my cousins and I used to work for my great uncles in Fryeburg and Heflin, Louisiana, during the summers, we would be rousted about 4:00 a.m. to help slop the hogs and milk the cows. After about two hours of work, we would go in around 6:00 a.m. for a big breakfast: coffee, fresh milk, biscuits, eggs, sausage, grits, etc. Then it was off to work until noon. At noon, we had dinner: at least two kinds of meat, three to four vegetables, cornbread, sweet tea, and some dessert - apple pie, peach pie, mayhaw pie, actually all cobblers. Then our uncles took a nap. We did not nap but had to remain quite. About 1:30 p.m., it was back to work until it was nigh unto 6:00 p.m. Then it was time for supper with a lot of the stuff from dinner but often with even more. After supper, we did not leave the table. The old uncles sipped their remaining tea and broke into stories about WWI, the Great Flood of 1927, the Depression, WWII, etc. We would often adjourn to the front porch where we might have some watermelon or homemade ice cream. My great aunts would often do their churning in the cool of the post-supper evening on the porch. There the talk would usually turn to family. The old folks would delight in telling us about the exploits of our parents when they had been our ages. Then it was off to bed, with the boy cousins sleeping on the screened back porch and the girls in the "ladies room" up in the front of the house. By farming us out to our great uncles, our parents got fresh meat, butter, eggs and vegetables. All of that is probably against the law now or at least to be taxed.
One Saturday a month, little work was done. My uncle would load us all in the back of his pickup and take us to Minden for supplies - feed, etc. (I know that is now against the law). We'd ride up low in the bed and back high in the bed sitting on the feed sacks. The boys usually got their hair cut while in Minden. There we were initiated into the world of men. It was not a worldly world. The talk was about fishing, hunting and sports, usually LSU.
The uncles eventually got even older and unable to work their land as they once could. It got harder to make a living on forty acres. Air conditioning came and took people off the front porches and eventually took the front porches off houses. The late sixties and early seventies hit, and we cousins lost sight of what was really good in life, going off to our mal-adventures in the emerging anti-culture. Somewhere in all of that, supper quietly slipped away and with it the old men and their wonderful stories.
Thanks to all for your responses; it's been an education! But if you don't mind, I'm going to stick to calling lunch "lunch". It's all I've ever known.
Mr. Peters: my gosh! What a snapshot of what we have lost! God willing, maybe some of the young today will see something like that life.
#2. Mr. Webber. "A conservative who has never voted Republican in a national election." I tip my hat to you, Sir. With shame I admit that I sinned twice---in 1964 and 1980. But I plead that I have not sinned since.
Dr. Wilson,
Had I been able to vote in 1964, I would have also sinned in that year. I was an avid Goldwater supporter. I was a Wallace man in 68, 72 and 76, although I did not get to vote for him in any of those years - too young in 68, and he of course did not make the general elections in 72 and 76. In 80, I was out of the country and would have likely sinned by voting for Reagan had I been able to cast a vote. My sin came in 84: I voted for Reagan.
"My sin came in 84: I voted for Reagan."
Be sorry for your sin, say five Our Fathers and make a good act of contrition. Understand, my son, that Christ came so you have might have the abundant life he freely offers to those who seek Him in Spirit and Truth. Sin is an attempt to extinguish this abundant life that He wants for us, in favor of that empty life we "think" we want for ourselves. There were many of us who drank the kool-aid during Reagan,in spite of St. Clyde's obvious and notorious admonitions that nothing good can ever come from stupidity or evil. Thank God for giving you the grace to see Satan at work in both the Grand Old Party and our misplaced faith in politics. Our God is a jealous, God but his Mercy endures forever. Now go in peace and sin no more.
@9 Mr Peters
As far as waiting for the rapture induces a "hold the fort" mindset as opposed to the divine commandment, "Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations," the worst error in current end-time "theology" is believing that the modern, socialist state of Israel is an ordained act of God. All my studies show it to be more satanic than anything else. The modern church is also walking in many other errors, but there are none so blind as those who will not see.
Continuing the dinner/supper discussion. I grew up in the north of England, an area more in touch with its Viking roots, and for us the three meals of the day were: breakfast -- a fry up with bacon, fried egg, black pudding, fried tomatoes, fried bread and tea. Dinner at noontime featured meat, mashed potatoes and gravy, and at least one gree vegetable, pudding (dessert)of spotted dick (stop laughing) swimming in custard, and a pint of beer is perfectly acceptable for those of age. That fueled the afternoon of the common laborer. Supper served around six o'clock was light fare like sweet red onion, or cucumber sandwiches. You would seldom see any fat people in the 60s.
But that was then, this is the health-concious now, which is breakfast featuring Dunkin Donuts coffee and a delicious concoction of refined flour and sugar deep-fried by foreigners at a railway station concession stand in order to fuel a Blackberry-oriented, hour long commute. Lunch of salad and weight-lifting, and a dinner of sweetened alcoholic beverages accompanied with loud, tuneless noise generated by robots. The houses of the future will have neither porches or kitchens. Indeed our social decline has been meteoric.
Re dinner and supper, perhaps a little philology is in order here. Dinner, from French diner, refers properly to the main meal of the day. Traditionally in Britain and America, this was eaten at midday, but as capitalism transformed our habits and as the rich had more time to spend in the evening on their amusements, fashion changed and the main meal was taken in the evening. Supper, by contrast, was an evening meal and defined as such. Since dinner was the main meal, supper was light--as the word, from French soupe--suggests. The Gospels (Matthew 26 for example) make it clear that the Lord's Supper was an evening meal. A Jewish seder today is also held in the evening.
The word "lunch" originally referred to a snack taken between meals but is now used for the light midday meal. Some of my southern nationalist friends will refer to a grilled cheese sandwich or hamburger as "dinner." This is not only wrong (and pretentious) but an example of the empty ceremonialism that is embraced when a culture has fallen or disappeared. People with serious jobs find it very difficult to eat dinner at noon, and it is, therefore, quite proper for them to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as the French now eat petit dejeuner, dejeuner, and diner, or the Italians prima collazione, pranzo, and cena. As for the customs of Kentucky, a state I love and whose people I respect, its citizens not only voted for Lincoln in 1860 but voted Republican in 1862, when much of the Midwest went Democrat. It is truly said of Kentucky, it is the only state to have joined the Confederacy after the war was over. I have met more than one person in Louisville who insists he is a Midwesterner.
@24
Yes, a lot of Louisvillians call it a Midwestern city. I think it's a matter of class; people in the middle class East End tend to think it's Midwestern. Lower class rednecks, with a local accent to boot, think it's Southern.
My own great-great-(I don't know how many greats)-grandfather, on Mom's side of the family, had six brothers who fought for the Confederacy. He was the only one who wore the blue. As a result, he was disowned by the family. Hearing after the war that one of his brothers was in California, he spent two years fruitlessly searching for him before coming back to Kentucky.
Dr. Wilson has taken me to task for claiming that Kentucky went for Lincoln in 1860, when in fact he finished an abysmal fourth. In excusing myself I can plead, in addition to ignorance, the wretched habit of speaking without thinking that one picks up by writing blog responses.
TJF and Mr Collins: I remember picking up an old newspaper found lining an upper shelf in my grandfather's closet, and seeing Arkansas referred to in that paper as a 'Midwestern' state. That seems to have been a fashion back in the fifties among those who wished to appear 'respectable' in Arkansas and surrounding states. Today, the deceitful practice is utterly dead here, and I have never heard anyone refer to the state as 'Midwestern' in my lifetime, not among even those who wish to appear 'respectable'. Perhaps the situation in Louisville is a holdover from that era, which some 'respectables' there may try to justify in their own minds by the fact that Kentucky borders the 'Midwestern' (but actually more Southern) southern Indiana and southern Illinois.
So true.