Thursday--

Welcome to October.  Very chilly this morning--mid 40s.  It really does feel like fall.  Yesterday I harvested all of the remaining peppers and got about half of them cleaned and in the freezer.  Will get the rest done today.  I was curious how the sweet potatoes were doing so I dug up the first bed with four plants.  Got 2 lbs which mom peeled, cooked and mashed.  Split it into two freezer baggies which are also in the freezer today.  I still have another seven plants to harvest.  Not bad for my small spaces.

The (s)news media is making a big deal of Kim Davis' meeting with the Pope and I find the whole thing very distasteful--especially the notion that Davis is a "conscientious objector."  I see a distinct difference between Davis and the conscientious objectors who refused to either enlist (because their direct participation in any war was against their beliefs) in the military or refused to carry guns and kill (as opposed to serving their fellow men by saving lives and not killing themselves) because of their religious beliefs.  Some of them actually went to prison for draft evasion.  Others managed to serve in non-combat jobs and three of them were awarded the Medal of Honor for their heroism.  None of them insisted that others actions in choosing to serve and kill somehow tainted their souls.  Kim Davis argues exactly when she insists that somehow her signature, or rather her very name, on a marriage license for a gay couple somehow implicates her in a sin which somehow endangers her hope of salvation.  Poppycock!!!  She has made her disapproval known and her deputies can sign the licenses.  If that isn't sufficient she could resign but then she wouldn't make waves.  And she wants to make waves.  She reminds me of those we used to call "the blooming idiots" who arrived on campus with the spring flowers and loudly told all passersby they were going to hell for whatever sins they imagined we were committing. Shades of the Islamic State, sometimes for as little as wearing skirts an inch too short or wearing pants or just being on campus.  It is amazing how they focused on the women.  Kim likes to focus on gays but she is the same.  A shrill, haranguing, proselytising busybody who can't stand anyone doing what her god tells her not to do.  For an intriguing take on the possible behind the scenes machinations of the Pope's meeting with Davis look at this blog post.

The Daily Sheeple has a post today that makes a related comment on the news media but concerning the alleged "war on police" not Kim Davis.  We have noticed how the (s)news media obsesses to the point of nausea on certain stories.  It is nice that the Pope visited three U.S. cities but did we really need six days of nearly non-stop coverage of the minutia of his visit?  And in the middle of all that there was damned little real discussion of what he said.  I have noticed that every time a police officer is shot or killed the story dominates the news whether there is something new to the story or not.  Usually not.  There is a (probably) apocryphal story about a newspaper editor (back when we had real newspapers) who ran through his office yelling "What does a sex maniac do?----He SELLS papers!!!"  Well, sex sells anything it seems.  And the corollary is "If it bleeds, it leads."  And it doesn't matter if the story is accurate or even true--so long as it is sensational.