“Number Of Dead Rises To 50 In New Zealand Mass Shooting”:
 
“Police say the number of people dead in the mass shooting that occurred at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has risen to 50.
“‘As of last night we were able to take all of the victims from both of those scenes, and in doing so we have further located another victim,’ New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush said in a news conference from the city of Wellington on Sunday.
“Another 50 people were injured in the shootings. Of those injured, 36 people are hospitalized, with two in critical condition.”  Updated at 8:01 p.m. ET (3-16-19)/ NPR


 

​Please give to the New Zealand Red Cross: P.O. Box 12140, Thorndon, Wellington  6144 – New Zealand/ Call: 04 471 8250

The Red Crescent Society is a part of the International Red Cross.

Happy St. Paddy's Day:

​

Lilith, Adam's first wife, was made from the same stuff as Adam and in the image of God.



added: 4/11/19, edited 11/16/19, 11/18/19:

Reverent Elmo (a fable with a moral):
This humor short appeared in Cradle Magazine, Portland, Maine, 1996 (taken loosely from a joke in the public domain that I heard years earlier, author unknown): 


He had a nose like the blade of a scythe and he sliced through life proboscis first.  How he kissed his wife without putting her eye out, no one ever knew.

Reverend Elmo was a rigid, self-righteous man with a fish white beach ball head that housed two suspicious little eyes -- two awful orbs which lay dead in their sockets like fermented raisins.

During the summertime, when Elmo would clank around his yard barefoot and bareheaded with the rhythm of a beshaded tin man, school children would flock from miles around to witness the freakish spectacle.  For many local children, summer smells and ice cream feelings would be forever eerily interlinked with images of Elmo.

The Rev was a no nonsense God-fearing, vulcanized orator, who preached that God was selective in his favorites.  Sinners were easily identified by their job description, clothing, political beliefs, religion, race, etc. and they would all burn, someday, in the everlasting and all- consuming fires of Hell.  But in the meantime, at least, Elmo preached, that these sinners shouldn’t be allowed to vote or own land.

One day, after lambasting the wicked on God’s behalf, it began to rain in Greater Portland.  And it rained.  And it rained some more.  At some point, the deluge became a flood.

To escape the flood, Mrs. Elmo went to stay at a penthouse suite in a local hotel.  While Elmo’s better half devoutly believed in God, she didn’t trust Him completely.  But Elmo wouldn’t leave his riverfront home, saying only to Mrs. Elmo, “God will save me if I need Him, but you better go to the Holiday Inn.  We can write it off as a business expense.”

An hour after Mrs. Elmo’s perfumed departure, the first floor of Elmo’s two-story home was flooded, and Elmo, slightly miffed, moved upstairs.  “There goes the waterbed,” sighed Elmo.

As soon as the flood waters rose high enough to lap at Elmo’s gigantic feet, a neighbor rowed over to Elmo’s rooftop perch and called from his small boat, “Climb aboard Rev and save yourself.”

But true to his beliefs, Elmo steadfastly replied, “No. God will save me.  Only the wicked shall down.”

When the flood waters rose chin level with Elmo’s humongous head, a man from a hovering rescue helicopter called down to Elmo by bullhorn.  The stranger screamed, “We’ll drop you a line Reverend.  Save yourself!”

But Elmo answered in a firm and practiced martyr’s voice, “No, God will save me.”

Shortly thereafter, bewildered and extremely irritated, Reverend Elmo drowned.

During Elmo’s spectral and expected rise to heaven, he became increasingly annoyed with God for letting him die.  After an unpleasant wait in line, Elmo was finally called to bask in God’s Glorious Presence.  He grouchily said to God, just as soon as he got over the tremendous shock that God looked a lot like a woman, “You know, God, I was your champion on earth, I terrified children with the images of Hell for over half a century.  How could you let me drown?!”

God looked at Elmo wearily and She sighed omnipotently, “I didn’t let you drown, Elmo.  I sent you a rowboat and then a helicopter, but you refused both.  Hell, you could have, at least, worn a life preserver, you knucklehead!” ​



Please give to Breast Cancer Research Foundation: 60 East 56th Street, 8th Floor, New York, New York, 10022/ bcrf@bcrf.org/  866-346-3228 

March is Women's History Month:

                                                                                     
Darlene McTavish jumped in a cab, her twenty-two-year-old Harley was in the shop, she’d dropped it on an icy corner a week earlier; fortunately she hadn’t been injured but the bike had been pounded.   

When the taxi glided to a stop in front of FitzGerald’s Grocery Emporium the cabbie said:
"Six smackeroos." 

To Darlene's surprise the meter was double-jointed or two-faced showing separate prices for males and females.  The fare for women was $6.00 and the ticket for guys, $4.62.
Darlene grumbled: "What the?  Where in the Constitution does it" --

'"Ahem.  Pardon me?  That’s just the way it’s always been," inscrutable with hoodie eyes the cabbie explained briskly, "ask anyone, missy."

Missy?  Darlene took a deep breath, a brilliant calming technique learned from her YWCA Lamaze lessons.  Though mystified as to why it was cheaper for a man to ride in a cab than a woman Darlene still shelled out a fair tip: two bucks. 

Inside Fitzy’s it was the same thing, the same inflammatory mystery lurked behind every price tag: milk was $4.00 for women and $3.08 for men, coffee $7.00 for women and $5.39 for men, and then the kicker, the final flipping insult, Tampons were $5.00 for women and $3.85 for men! 

Tampons?!

Ahhhhh --

Despite being outraged -- her little clamshell ears were fire-engine red (a real warning sign) -- Darlene gently -- breathing in and out -- asked the mustachioed cashier with the pug-lumpy face, "What's going on?  Y’know this is unfair -- un-American.  It's flat out wrong."

The cashier shrugged, and said with no small kindness, "Sorry, ma'm, but on the average women make seventy-seven cents for every buck a man makes in this country -- you do the math."   -end-                     -  Ms. McTavish by Kevin O’Kendley 


The wage gap as of 2/20/18 was 80 cents on the dollar.  - CNN

This blog was edited on 3/8/19.