Peace, Be Still

Praise the Lord, the noise is no longer.  Or at least this morning, I noticed that the noise sounded farther away, and seemed to go farther until it was no more!!  

It's 65 degrees in my house... because it's 31 degrees outside.  I don't like having to go out when it's freezing, especially if I have to bundle Olivia up.  I need to get my transcripts from Bryant & Stratton.  I'll be at an orientation for Substitute teaching on March 11th.  I'm super excited about that!  

I also need to come up with an idea for Olivia's birthday, the 21st of March.  I just checked the calendar, and it's on a Friday... sweet!  I was thinking something like, the zoo with a Safari theme.  Or something super simple at home with family and friends.  Or maybe Chuck E. Cheese?  She loves that place, but probably not more than Bill and me.  

More later.  

Spaceships?

For the past two days, I've been hearing this crazy, deep, bass-like noise from somewhere or some neighborhood behind our house.  It didn't annoy me at first, probably because I didn't notice it.  When I began to notice it yesterday, I figured it would end soon.  It lasted all afternoon until about 5 pm.  

Strange morning, it's 11:16 am.  I woke up late this morning to Jehova's Witnesses at the door.  As I got out of the bed, I noticed the crazy noise from outside of the house.  "It sounds like an ..... orb," I said out loud.  That really is the best way that I can describe it.  It's such a low frequency, and it pulsates.  It's literally shaking the walls of my house and my head.  What IS that noise??  Then after the Jehova's Witnesses left, I turned on my mac to look some stuff up, and my power went out.  

The only logical explanation, is either a diesel engine is parked right behind my neighbor's house and won't stop the engine... or there is a new commercial building going up nearby.  

Make it stop.  

Have a nice day.

Follow Up on MF Ad

In reply to my asking if they've already picked someone for the ad...

We did find someone for the design contest...your was rad though but we found another.

Better to be rad than..... bad?

Baby, Baby

Upon Olivia's 23rd month of life, I decided last night that I would do a thorough inventory of all the stuff that she has.  Her room and all her stuff that she's acquired over the past 23 months of her life is driving me CRAZY.  It's my fault... we have so many friends and a loving church network, I didn't see all the gifts and hand-me-downs coming.  HELLO.  Her clothes!!  Literally mountains of clothes!  I put all her clothes into three piles. 

 

1)  Keepers, still fit (even out of season.)

2)  Store for next baby girl.

3)  Give it away, now.

The Give it away now pile is enormous.  Goodwill is going to have a baby hay-day when we bring our stuff up there.  A lot of the give away pile is brand new, too!  She has so many clothes that I couldn't even get to all of them.  She also didn't wear some of them because she was either too small or now, too big for the season specific clothing.  Or I was just particular about the style.  

In light of all this, I'm also trying to find her a cute birthday outfit.  In the process, I've found a new children's clothing brand, a bit on the expensive side, that I will be checking for sales on their website or finding deals on e-bay.  Maybe other moms out there are already savvy to Tea Collection.  The styles here are definitely one of a kind, not your average "Carters" clothing.  I like a lot of Carters style, but you'll see what I mean.  I just don't get how some people put their adorable chillens in some stuff.  I'm not so much talking about the newborns, I mean more toddler age.  

 

   

CUUUUUUUTE!

An Interesting Read re. Pro Life

The American Holocaust

"Every person has the right to choose. It's unfair to restrict a woman's choice by prohibiting abortion." So say the prochoice advocates. So says a generation that has grown up immersed in an ocean of abortion-rights thinking. In a society controlled by bumper-sticker slogans, what can be said in response to the fact that opposition to abortion is routinely framed as opposition to "a woman's right to choose"? When I present the prolife position on college campuses, I often begin by saying: 

"I've been introduced as being anti-abortion, but I want to make clear that I'm really prochoice. I believe a person has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body. It's none of our business what choices she makes. We have no right to impose our morals on others. Whether I like someone's choices or not is irrelevant. She should have the freedom to make her own choices." 

I'm normally greeted by surprised looks and audible affirmation, including smiles, nods, and even applause. I have used the sacred buzzwords of the prochoice movement: rights, freedom, and choice. I have sounded tolerant, open-minded, and fair. Then, having won over my audience, without warning I say this: 

"Yes, I'm prochoice. That's why I believe every man has the right to rape a woman if that is his choice. After all, it's his body, and neither you nor I have the right to tell him what to do with it. He's free to choose, and it's none of our business what choices he makes. We have no right to impose our morals on him. Whether I like his choices or not is irrelevant. He should have the freedom to make his own choices." 

When I see the shocked expressions, I ask what they're upset about. Aren't they prochoice? What's wrong with my logic? I ask them to show me the fallacy of the "it's his body and he can choose what he wants" argument. "But it's not just about the man's body. There's another body involved in a rape - the woman's!" 

"Oh," I finally say. "I see. So, what you're saying is, it's not always right to be prochoice. It's wrong to be prochoice when the choice involved seriously hurts another person." They nod their agreement. I respond, "So what you're saying is, if I can show you that abortion hurts another person, in fact kills another person, you would no longer be prochoice about abortion. Is that right?" 

I then go on to show them the compelling scientific proof that the great majority of abortions stop beating hearts and measurable brainwaves, and every abortion (including early chemical abortions) kills a genetically unique member of the human race. Of all the smoke and mirrors involved in prochoice rhetoric, perhaps the biggest and most important obstacle we can get around is the myth that it is inherently virtuous to be prochoice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes being prochoice is downright reprehensible. 

All laws impose a moral viewpoint and restrict the individual's behavior. This is true of laws against drunk driving and child abuse. Laws against false advertising restrict a businessman's right to free speech. Laws against discrimination infringe on the freedom of choice of those who would treat minorities unfairly. When others' rights are at stake - and particularly when their very lives are at stake - any decent society can and must restrict the individual's freedom of choice. 

The idea of "freedom to choose" is too vague for meaningful discussion. We must always ask, "Freedom to choose what?" It is absurd to defend a specific choice merely on the basis that it is a choice. Yet if you read the literature and listen to the talk shows, you know that this is constantly done by prochoice activists. "The right to choose" is a magic slogan that seems to make all choices equally legitimate. 

All of us are in favor of free choice when it comes to where people live, what kind of car they drive, and a thousand matters of personal preference that harm no one else. We are also prochoice in matters of religion, politics, and lifestyle, even when people choose beliefs and behavior we don't agree with. But most of us - including those who always talk about a "woman's right to choose" - are decidedly not prochoice when it comes to murder, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, and child abuse. 

When we oppose the right to choose rape or child abuse, we aren't opposing a right; we're opposing a wrong. And we're not narrow-minded and bigoted for doing so. We're just decent people concerned for the rights of the innocent. To be prochoice about someone's right to kill is to be anti-choice about someone else's right to live. Whenever we hear the term prochoice, we must ask the all-important question, "What choice are we talking about?" Given the facts about abortion, the question really becomes, "Do you think people should have the right to choose to kill innocent children if it's more convenient for them or if that's what they want to do?" 

People who are prochoice about abortion are decidedly anti-choice about other issues with less at stake. After I spoke at a public high school on the prolife position, the prochoice instructor took me to the faculty lounge for lunch. He pointed to a table where four teachers were smoking and said, "Fortunately, this is the last week smoking will be allowed in here. We've finally gotten the district to make the teachers' lounge nonsmoking." Good naturedly I said, "I see you're not really prochoice." With a surprised look he explained, "But cigarette smoke hurts other people." I said, "So does abortion." 

Many people who are prochoice about abortion support laws requiring people to wear seat belts. They are anti-choice about seat belts because seat belts save lives. When lives are at stake, "freedom to choose" is legitimately restricted by society. Both smokers and nonsmokers have rights over their bodies. But we recognize that the smoker's right to smoke ends at the moment it violates the nonsmoker's right to be healthy. Nonsmokers should not be subject to unhealthy fumes without their consent. Children should not be subject to dismemberment and death without their consent. 

The one-time choice of abortion robs someone else of a lifetime of choices and prevents him from ever exercising his rights. How to deal with a pregnancy is one among thousands of choices a woman will make in her lifetime. But if that choice is abortion, her child will never have the opportunity to make any choices of his own. A woman will have opportunity to exercise many legal rights. But if one of those is abortion, her child will never be able to exercise a single right. The unborn have been a glaring exception in the efforts of the modern human rights movement. 

Everyone is prochoice when it comes to the choices prior to pregnancy and after birth. Men and women are free to choose to abstain from sex or to use birth control or to do neither. But when a woman is pregnant, the choice she has made has produced a new human being. After a woman is pregnant, it's too late to choose whether or not she wishes to become a mother. She already is a mother. The only choice involved now is whether to deliver a live baby or to kill the child before birth. Once the baby is born, the woman is again free to choose: she can keep the child or give him up for adoption. The only choice prolifers oppose is the choice that takes an innocent life. 

Somehow the media and pro-abortion advocates have managed to take the attention off of abortion and put it on choice. This is why prolifers are routinely referred to as "anti-choice." Nearly all violations of human rights have been defended on the grounds of the right to choose. The slave-owners in this country a century and a half ago were prochoice. They said, "You don't have to own slaves if you don't want to, but don't tell us we can't choose to. It's our right." Those who wanted slaveholding to be illegal were accused of being anti-choice and anti-freedom, and of imposing their morality on others. 

The civil rights movement, like the abolitionist movement one hundred years earlier, vehemently opposed the exercise of personal rights that much of society defended. It was solidly anti-choice when it came to racial discrimination. Whites historically had a free choice to own slaves, and later to have segregated lunch counters if they so chose. But the civil rights movement fought to take away that free choice from them. Likewise, the women's movement fought to take away an employer's free choice to discriminate against women. 

Nearly every movement of oppression and exploitation - from slavery, to prostitution, to pornography, to drug dealing, to abortion - has labeled itself prochoice. Likewise, opposing movements offering compassion and deliverance have been labeled anti-choice by the exploiters. At least with prostitution, pornography, and drugs, the victim usually has some choice. In the case of abortion, the victim has no choice. 

The prochoice position always overlooks the victim's right to choose. The women don't choose rape. The blacks didn't choose slavery. The Jews didn't choose the ovens. And the babies don't choose abortion. 

**Thanks to Theresa Schnurbusch for sharing this with everyone, too.  I feel it's spot on.**

I'll Call it Art Now.

As with the movie Cloverfield, I'm beginning this blog with mixed emoticons, except this time about the name.  iKennon.  Cheesy or awesome?  I can't decide.  It just came to me as I was filling out the "create Blog" information.  It's the first I've heard of the mp3 player name spin-off, and I already know people are going to keep doing it.  Okay, it's the second I've heard of, after that one kid's TV show.  Whatever.  

I realized that I'm somewhat of a "late bloomer".  I guess that term is relative.  There were definitely areas of my life, such as the hatred of "girly" anything, that I grew out of later than most.  I'm pretty sure this was because I was raised with friends that were boys and all we wanted to do was play kick-ball or flag football in the cul-de-sac.  I was good at it then, and I enjoyed it!  All my clothing was a size and a half too big... and let's just say I looked rough more than I looked prim and proper.  I didn't have any boyfriends in high school, though there were many offers.  I didn't have my first "real" boyfriend until I was 20 (and this is the one I eventually married).  Some might say that it was due to my late "bloomage" but that would be incorrect.  There were a couple of boys that I liked then and the thought of being in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship deal seemed nice, but I simply made a conscious  decision not to get into one.  

This realization came out of, finally, my recent decision to become a Graphic Designer.  And I mean recent as in about three days ago.  I want to be a graphic designer when I grow up.  I am 27 years old!  Why am I just now realizing this??  

After graduating high school, I had zero direction.  I felt like there were several things that I was decent at and could really enjoy studying and become good.  So in the meantime, I decided to go for an AAS degree, Information Technology, at my dad's urgings.  "It's a good fall back" dad said and it's true!  You know, my dad suggested Graphic Design after high school for me.  Go figure.  So this first, and then I'll go on to film school.  With much prayer, I'm on a mission to find out what the best plan will be.  I'll be looking for info on financial aid, schools in nearby, etc.  I'm super excited!

This here is my recent art.  It was a very non-organized idea at a shot for a music and fashion magazine ad that I did overnight.  Not my favorite work, but fun.