In The Eye of the Beholder - You Are Beautiful

The video below may be the best thing you see today. Please take 3 minutes out of your busy day to watch it. If you are a NiftyWoman, you may want to have a hanky handy!

Sure, it's an ad campaign, but this is the best kind of use of corporate clout writ large. These Dove campaigns give wide exposure to crushing toxic notions of femininity that feminist groups have been struggling - and failing - to overcome for decades.

Harmful, demeaning cultural pressure on women to conform to an impossible fantasy of beauty is propped up by the constant barrage of media objectification of women and an unquestioned beauty culture. Girls soak up that poison early, too, so that self-criticism will usually fill in on the rare occasions when another person might try to reassure her that she is beautiful just as she is - that her beauty is in her humanity and all that makes her her, not in whether she wears a certain dress size or has a certain set of facial characteristics.

Just as rape continues to be epidemic even in so-called egalitarian, progressive societies because few powerful voices challenge the notion that most rape is not really rape, so the toxic beauty culture persists because few powerful voices challenge it either. One such powerful voice could be a large corporation with a robust advertising budget.

I think these promotions may and should pay off for this company. They have invested in ideas that matter. They have given corporate sponsorship to a recognition of the value of humanity - of women - beyond the superficial. And, as we have learned, well-funded campaigns really do change societal opinions and  bring meaningful shifts in cultural norms.

Someone at Dove decided to pair corporate self-interest with a social conscience. I call that a win-win.

What a NiftyIdea!

via doveunitedstates

101st Anniversary of Titanic Sinking and The Myth of "Women and Children First!"

One hundred and one years ago, late on the evening of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic entered an icefield near the island of Newfoundland, off the northeastern coast of North America. That night, disaster struck and in the early hours of the morning of April 15, the Titanic sank, taking over 1500 people to a watery grave.

The "unsinkable" Titanic was built to withstand both head-on and side collisions, because of it's steel skin and the system of separate water-tight chambers which ringed the vessel's hull. Engineers imagined dangers from head on collisions, and even the possibility of the ship being rammed midship by another vessel, and they believed that their remarkable new design would allow the ship to withstand such accidents without sinking.

What no one seemed to have anticipated was that a ship running alongside an iceberg - or even the deceptively flat-looking fields of pack ice commonly found in the north Atlantic in spring - could possibly experience more than a single glancing blow or even a direct impact in just one section of the ship. The vastness of underwater ice from which the saying "that's just the tip of the iceberg" is derived, poses a much graver risk to vessels.

What we call an iceberg is merely
the tip of an iceberg.

What brought down the Titanic was not a single devastating point of collision with an iceberg. The ill-fated ship entered the icefield at speed, heedless of the danger lurking below the surface of the water. She may not have even been close enough to collide with the part of the iceberg which was visible above the surface of the sea - but the great spreading hulk of ice below the water was nearer than the berg itself.

The fantastic design of the Titanic's many-chambered hull failed to avert catastrophe because when the ship scraped along the underwater edge of the ice for about ten seconds, that was long enough for the ice to score a thin, deep tear along the hull exposing not just one water-tight compartment or even two (apparently the worst-case scenarios envisioned by the engineers who designed her) to a deadly inundation of frigid seawater, but five. The fact that there were five breached compartments overwhelmed the ship's ballast. When the water entered the first five compartments, the hydraulic doors - which were meant to be able to close automatically between compartments in the event of a breach of one or two of them - failed, allowing compartment after compartment to begin filling with water.  The ship began it's fatal list as the perfect storm of events that led to its horrific destiny was set in motion.

The disaster was further intensified by the outdated safety measures in place and the shortage of life boats on board. Those inadequate safety measures - and the gallant Captain's attempted response to that situation - helped establish a silly, false and pernicious (to women) myth about maritime history (often generalised to all historical disasters).  Some people (I'm looking at you, MRA's) point to the persistent myth that "women and children first!" has been the chivalrous cry during ocean disasters for centuries as evidence of an historical gender advantage resulting in preferential treatment for women at the expense of men.

I hate to puncture that particular heroic fantasy of resentful MRAs - wait, I don't hate to do it at all: I insist on setting the record straight! Although the Titanic story helped popularize that myth because an order to that effect was given by the chivalrous Captain E. J. Smith. When he realized the imminent disaster facing his passengers and crew, Captain Smith knew he was in the unenviable position of having to allot too few lifeboats to too many passengers. He made the choice to offer women and children places on lifeboats first and remaining places on boats would be given to men. This decision was then horribly misapplied by his crew who clearly did not understand what to do because it was not and never had been ocean-going protocol - the assertion that men have died for centuries for the sake of women on board sinking ships is a lie.

Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson of Uppsala University in Sweden published an exhaustive study of maritime records and studies of disaster survival to investigate whether women have, in fact, enjoyed a gender-based advantage during disasters due to the chivalry and sacrifice of men.

Women's lower status and oppressive social mores
dictating gender isolation and restrictive dress
ensured that women were (and still are) nearly always
grossly disadvantaged in emergencies.

Our results provide new insights about human behavior in life-and-death situations. 
By investigating a new and much larger sample of maritime disasters than has previously 
been done, we show that women have a substantially lower survival rate than men. That 
women fare worse than men has been documented also for natural disasters (Frankenberg et 
al., 2011; Ikeda, 1995; MacDonald, 2005; Neumayer and Plümper, 2007; Oxfam 
International, 2005). We also find that crew members have a higher survival rate than 
passengers and that only 7 out of 16 captains went down with their ship. Children appear to 
have the lowest survival rate. Moreover, we shed light on some common perceptions of how 
situational and cultural conditions affect the survival of women. Most notably, we find that it 
seems as if it is the policy of the captain, rather than the moral sentiments of men, that 
determines if women are given preferential treatment in shipwrecks. This suggests an 
important role for leaders in disasters. Preferences of leaders seem to have affected survival 
patterns also in the evacuations of civilians during the Balkan Wars (Carpenter, 2003).
Moreover, we find that the gender gap in survival rates has decreased since WWI. This 
supports previous findings that higher status of women in society improves their relative 

survival rates in disasters (Neumayer and Plümper, 2007). We also show that women fare 
worse, rather than better, in maritime disasters involving British ships. This contrasts with the 
notion of British men being more gallant than men of other nationalities. Finally, in contrast 
to previous studies, we find no association between duration of the disaster and the influence 
of social norms. Based on our analysis, it becomes evident that the sinking of the Titanic was 
exceptional in many ways and that what happened on the Titanic seems to have spurred 
misconceptions about human behavior in disasters. Every man for himself
Gender, Norms and Survival in Maritime Disasters, Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson, April 2012.

The terrible loss of men's lives in the Titanic disaster was an exception to the rule in the history of disaster survival. The numbers might not even have been as terrible as they were had there actually been any sort of coherent tradition of "women and children first" in place because then the crew would not have misunderstood Captain Smith's meaning, allowing empty life boats to be put into the sea. Because they had clearly never heard of such a thing, they thought he meant no men were permitted to get into the lifeboats at all. The Titanic story actually confirms that the legend of male chivalry that it spawned is patently false because the crew of that ship clearly had no idea how to execute it whatsoever. The myth that women and children have always come first is yet another of the twisted revisions of history which some men - notably, the  subset of "men's rights activists" whose intense hatred of women is frightening and whose delusions of male persecution are flabbergasting in their total departure from reality - use as an argument against any movement toward equal rights for women in society.

Some writers have argued that the entire concept of putting women first in an emergency may be merely a means of promoting an idea of essential gender differences which may then be used to justify other inequalities that disfavour women.[14] According to Lucy Delap of Cambridge University, the British ruling class used the myth of male chivalry at sea to justify denying women the right to vote, as there was no reason for women to vote since men would always put the interests of women ahead of their own interests. women and children first, wikipedia.

Further support for the argument that the Titanic experience was never, in fact, the law of the sea or even a maritime tradition comes from the testimony of James McGann, a ship's fireman who survived the Titanic sinking. As their inevitable doom rapidly approached, Captain Smith released his crew from his earlier orders:

“He gave one look all around, his face firm and his lips hard set. He looked as if he was trying to keep back the tears, as he thought of the doomed ship. I felt mightily like crying as I looked at him.
“Suddenly he shouted: 'Well boys, you've done your duty and done it well. I ask no more of you. I release you. You know the rule of the sea. It's every man for himself now, and God bless you'. Titanic Wiki.

Anyway, back to the anniversary. Did you know that before the collision with the iceberg, the wireless operators on board the Titanic were so swamped with work sending out newfangled transAtlantic telegrams on behalf of exultant passengers - everyone wanted to try out this new technology! - that they literally ignored warnings about ice? When other ships in the area sent messages warning the Titanic that it was entering an ice field, one overwhelmed operator, Jack Phillips, replied, "Shut up! I am busy! I am working Cape Race!". The poor fellow's reputation suffered terribly after the disaster thanks to that harried message. I did not know about that until I heard it on NPR!

To commemorate the date, let's look at a brief video from my favorite place on earth (in case NiftyReaders had not already gathered that!) which gives another little tidbit of information about Cape Race and the Titanic story which many people did not know.

 

Hitchens on Free Speech

There was much to admire about Christopher Hitchens. His incredible facility with language, his rapier wit, his impressive intelligence. He was extremely well-read on a wide range of topics, but his passionate defense of free thought and free speech are perhaps his greatest legacies to humankind.

 I don't agree with everything Christopher Hitchens said and did (I think his vehement support of the invasion of Iraq combined with the sharply rightward tilt of his ideology in the last decade of his life were deserving of the criticism they received), and I find some of his remarks in this speech discomfiting, too. However, if one allows the full arc of the speech to be heard, the overarching message is of essential importance. The discomfort he evokes in his audience is necessary. With his trademark eloquence - and the inevitable poke in the eye for 'political correctness' - Hitchens makes a powerful argument for the urgent need to protect Free Speech.

Context: In November 2006, Christopher Hitchens was invited to speak at the University of Toronto's Hart House Debating Club to voice his opinion on the subject of the evening's debate: Be it resolved: Freedom of speech includes the freedom to hate.

In honor of Christopher Hitchens birthday: On free speech:

(It is better to watch and listen, but if you prefer to read, here is a transcript courtesy of how to play alone):


Fire, fire, fire, fire. Now you’ve heard it. Not shouted in a crowded theatre, admittedly, as I seem now to have shouted it in the Hogwarts dining hall. But the point is made. Everyone knows the fatuous verdict of the greatly over-praised Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, when asked for an actual example of when it would be proper to limit speech or define it as an action, gave that of shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre.

It’s very often forgotten what he was doing in that case was sending to prison a group of Yiddish- speaking socialists, whose literature was printed in a language most Americans couldn’t read, opposing Mr. Wilson’s participation in the First World War, and the dragging of the United States into that sanguinary conflict, which the Yiddish-speaking socialists had fled from Russia to escape. In fact, it could be just as plausibly argued that the Yiddish-speaking socialists who were jailed by the excellent and over-praised Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes were the real fire-fighters, were the ones shouting fire when there really was a fire in a very crowded theatre indeed.

And who is to decide? Well, keep that question if you would — ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, I hope I may say comrades and friends — before your minds.

I exempt myself from the speaker’s kind offer of protection that was so generously proffered at the opening of this evening. Anyone who wants to say anything abusive about or to me is quite free to do so, and welcome in fact, at their own risk.

But before they do that they must have taken, as I’m sure we all should, a short refresher course in the classic texts on this matter. Which are John Milton’s  Areopagitica, (Areopagitica being the great hill of Athens for discussion and free expression). Thomas Paine’s introduction to The Age of Reason. And I would say John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty in which it is variously said — I’ll be very daring and summarize all three of these great gentlemen of the great tradition of, especially, English liberty, in one go: What they say is it’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear. And every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view. Indeed as John Stuart Mill said, if all in society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person, it would be most important, in fact it would become even more important, that that one heretic be heard, because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous or appalling view.

In more modern times this has been put, I think, best by a personal heroine of mine, Rosa Luxembourg, who said freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently. My great friend John O. Sullivan former editor of the National Review, and I think probably my most conservative and reactionary Catholic friend, once said — it’s a tiny thought experiment — if you hear the Pope saying he believes in God, you think, well, the Pope’s just doing his job again today. If you hear the Pope saying he’s begun to doubt the existence of God, you think he might be on to something.

Well, if everybody in North America is forced to attend, at school, training in sensitivity in Holocaust awareness and is taught to study the "final solution", about which nothing was actually done by this country, or by North America, or by the United Kingdom while it was going on, but let’s say as if in compensation for that everyone is made to swallow an official and unalterable story of it now, and it’s taught as the great moral exemplar, the moral equivalent of the morally lacking elements of the Second World War, a way of stilling our uneasy conscience about that combat.

If that’s the case with everybody, as it more or less is, and one person gets up and says, “You know, about this Holocaust, I’m not sure it even happened. In fact, I’m pretty certain it didn’t. Indeed, I begin to wonder if the only thing is that the Jews brought a little bit of violence on themselves.” That person doesn’t just have a right to speak, that person’s right to speak must be given extra protection. Because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with, might contain a grain of historical truth, might in any case get people to think about why do they know what they already think they know. How do I know that I know this, except that I’ve always been taught this and never heard anything else?

It’s always worth establishing first principle. It’s always worth saying what would you do if you met a Flat Earth Society member? Come to think of it, how can I prove the earth is round? Am I sure about the theory of evolution? I know it’s supposed to be true. Here’s someone who says there’s no such thing; it’s all intelligent design. How sure am I of my own views? Don’t take refuge in the false security of consensus, and the feeling that whatever you think you’re bound to be OK, because you’re in the safely moral majority.

One of the proudest moments of my life, that’s to say, in the recent past, has been defending the British historian David Irving who is now in prison in Austria for nothing more than the potential of uttering an unwelcome thought, on Austrian soil. He didn’t actually say anything in Austria. He wasn’t even accused of saying anything. He was accused of perhaps planning to say something that violated an Austrian law that says only one version of the history of the Second World War may be taught in our brave little Tyrolean Republic. The republic that gave us Kurt Waldheim, as Secretary General of the United Nations, a man wanted in several countries for war crimes. The country that has Jorg Haider the leader of its own Fascist Party in the cabinet that sent David Irving to jail.

You know the two things that have made Austria famous and given it its reputation by any chance? Just while I’ve got you? I hope there are some Austrians here to be upset by it. A pity if not. But the two greatest achievements of Austria are to have convinced the world that Hitler was German and that Beethoven was Viennese. Now to this proud record they can add, they have the courage finally to face up to their past and lock up a British historian who has committed no crime except that of thought in writing. And that’s a scandal. I can’t find a seconder usually when I propose this but I don’t care. I don’t need a seconder. My own opinion is enough for me. And I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, anytime. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

Now, I don’t know how many of you, don’t feel you’re grown up enough to decide for yourselves and need to be protected against David Irving’s edition of the Goebbels diaries for example, out of which I learned more about the third reich than I had from studying … and … combined, when I was at Oxford. But for those of you who do I recommend another short course of revision.

Go again and see not just the film and the play but also read the text of Robert Bolt’s wonderful play “A Man for All Seasons”, I am sure some of you must have seen it – where Sir Thomas More decides that he would rather die than lie or betray his faith. And one moment More is arguing with the particularly vicious witch-hunting prosecutor: a servant of the king and a hungry and ambitious man.

And More says: “You’d break the law to punish the devil, wouldn’t you?”

The prosecutor - the witch-hunter - says: “Break it?" he said, "I’d cut down every law in England if I could do that, if I could capture him”.

And More says,“Yes you would, wouldn’t you?” And then “When you would have cornered the devil and the devil would turn around to meet you, where would you run for protection, all the laws of England having been cut down and flattened? Who would protect you then?”

Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that every time you violate – or propose to violate – the right to free speech of someone else, you in potentia you’re making a rod for your own back. Because (…), to whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful, or who is the harmful speaker? Or to determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent? To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the task of being the censor?

Isn’t the famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what is fit to be passed and what isn’t, is the man most likely to become debauched?

Is there anyone you find eloquent enough to decide for you what you could read? You would give the job to decide for you? To relieve you from the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?

Does anyone have a nominee? Hands up?

You mean there is no one who is good enough to decide what I can read? I had no idea.. But there’s a law – or some piddling sub-section of a law – that says there must be such a person. Well, to hell with that law. It is inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already.

About this censorial instinct: we basically know already what we need to know, and we’ve known it for a long time, it comes from an old story from again a great Englishman (..) Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the first great dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, (..) also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London (…). "Dr Johnson," they said: “we are delighted to find that you’ve not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary.”

“Ladies," said Dr Johnson, “I can congratulate you on being able to look them up.”

Anyone who can understand that joke gets the point about censorship, especially prior restraint as it is known in the US for it is banned by the first amendment of the Constitution. It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call and – more to the point – one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English language (..) in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves, and some instinct about which I dare not speculate…

Now, I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion. Absolutely convinced. I am glad that you applaud, because that is a very great problem for those who oppose this motion (the motion to cut the law on hate speech). How are they going to ban religion? How are they going to stop the expression of religious loathing, hatred and bigotry?

I speak as someone who is a very regular target of this, and not just in rhetorical form. I have been the target of many death threats and I know several people (…), who can’t go anywhere without a security detail because of the criticism they’ve made on one monotheism in particular. This is in the capital city of the United States. So I know what I’m talking about, and I also have to notice, that the sort of people who ring me up and say they know where my children go to school, what my home number is and where I live, and what they are going to do to them and to my wife, and to me, whom I have to take seriously because they already have done it to people I know, are just the people who are going to seek the protection of the hate speech law, if I say what I think about their religion, which I am now going to do.

Because I don’t have any ethnic bias, I have no grudge of that sort, I can rub along with pretty much anyone of any origin – as it were -, or sexual orientation, or language group – except people from Yorkshire of course, who are completely untakable – and I’m beginning to resent the confusion that is being imposed on us now between religious belief, blasphemy, ethnicity, profanity and what we might call “multicultural etiquette”.

It is quite common these days for people now to use the expression – for example – “anti-islamic racism”, as if an attack on a religion is an attack on an ethnic group. The word islamophobia in fact is beginning to acquire the opprobrium that was once reserved for racial prejudice. This is a subtle and very nasty insinuation that needs to be met, head on.

Who said “what if Falwell hates fags? What if people act upon that?" The Bible says you have to hate fags. If Falwell says he is saying it because the Bible says so, he is right. Yes, it might make people go out and use violence. What are you going to do about that? You’re up against a group of people who will say ‘you put your hands on our Bible and we’ll call the hate speech police’.  Now what are you going to do when you’ve dug that trap for yourselves?

Eh, somebody said that the antisemitism and Kristallnacht in Germany was the result of ten years of Jew-bating. Ten years?! You must be joking, it is the result of 2000 years of Christianity, based on one verse of one chapter of St. John’s gospel, which led to a pogrom after every Easter sermon every year for hundreds of years. Because it claimed that the Jews demanded the blood of Christ be on the heads of themselves and all their children to the remotest generation. That is the warrant and license for – and incitement to anti-Jewish pogroms. What are you going to do about that?

Where is your piddling subsection now?!? Does it say St. John’s gospel must be censored?

Do I – who have read Freud and know what the future of an illusion really is and know that religious belief is ineradicable as long as we remain this stupid, poorly-evolved mammalian species – think that some (Canadian) law is going to solve this problem?

Please…

No our problem is this: our prefrontal lobes are too small. And our adrenaline glands are too big. And our thumb/finger opposition isn’t all what it might be. And we’re afraid of the dark, and we’re afraid to die and we believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can – and all children do, as you can tell by their questions – actually see through them. And I think it should be – religion – treated with ridicule, and hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.

Now, let’s not dance around, not all monotheisms are exactly the same – at the moment. They’re all based on the same illusion, they’re all plagiarisms of each other, but there is one in particular that at the moment is proposing a serious menace not just to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but to quite a lot of other freedoms too. And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam.

Globally it is a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several countries and states with an enormous fortune it’s pumping the ideology of Wahhabism and Salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrasas, training people in violence, making its culture death, suicide and murder. That’s what it does globally, it’s quite strong.

In our society it poses as a cringing minority, who’s faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need.

Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn’t it? It says it’s the final revelation. It says that god spoke to one illiterate businessman – in the Arabian peninsula – three times through an archangel, and the resulting material – as you can see as you read it – is largely plagiarized from the old and the new testament. (...) It has to be accepted as the final revelation and as the final and unalterable one and those who do not accept this revelation are fit to be treated as cattle infidels, potential chattel, slaves and victims.

Well I tell you what, I don’t think Mohammad ever heard those voices. I don’t believe it. And the likelihood that I am right – as opposed to the likelihood that a businessman who couldn’t read, had bits of the old and the new testament re-dictated to him by an archangel, I think puts me much more near the position of being objectively correct.

But who is the one under threat? The person who promulgates this and says I’d better listen because if I don’t I’m in danger, or me who says “no, I think this is so silly you can even publish a cartoon about it”?

And up go the placards and the yells and the howls and the screams – this is in London, this is in Toronto and this is in New York, it is right in our midst now – “Behead those who cartoon Islam”.

Do they get arrested for hate speech? No.

Might I get in trouble for what I just said about the prophet Mohammad? Yes, I might.

Where are your priorities ladies and gentlemen?

You’re giving away what is most precious in your own society, and you’re giving it away without a fight and you’re even praising the people who want to deny you the right to resist it. Shame on you while you do this. Make the best use of the time you’ve got left. This is really serious.

Now, if you look anywhere you like, because we had implications of a rather driveling and sickly kind tonight about or sympathy, what about the poor fags, the poor Jews, the wretched women who can’t take the abuse and the slaves and their descendants and the tribes who didn’t make it, and their land of which all was forfeit… look anywhere you like in the world for slavery, for the subjection of women as chattel, for the burning and flogging of homosexuals, for ethnic cleansing, for anti-Semitism... 

...for all of this, look no further than a famous book that’s on every pulpit in this city, and in every synagogue and in every mosque.

And then just see whether you can square the fact that the force of the main source of hatred, is also the main caller for censorship. And when you’ve realized that you’re therefore this evening faced with a gigantic false antithesis, I hope that still won’t stop you from giving the motion before you the resounding endorsement it deserves. Thank you. Night night, stay cool.

Thorsday Tonic - Escaping Our Island Earth

Starry Night Over the Rhone, Vincent Van Gogh

There is way too much winter out there still!

For your Thorsday Tonic, let's escape this winter-weary planet and journey to the stars!

First, from the poetry corner:

Stars 

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like somw snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

-Robert Frost


And now for some Morgan Freeman/science/autotune awesomeness!

Quote for the Thorsday win:

"Because what man can imagine, man can do."




(from the talented MelodySheep, Morgan Freeman, Escaping Earth.)

*I hope Morgan Freeman meant "humankind" here but went with "man" for the staccato rhetorical impact  - but just to be clear, it's "humankind" in the NiftyUniverse!

Wednesday Wonders - Good Morning Starshine!

A dollop of pure joy for your Wednesday morning. Turn it up, close your eyes and enjoy.

Good Morning Starshine

La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la ................

Good mornin' starshine, the earth says hello
You twinkle above us
We twinkle below

Good mornin' starshine, You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
our early mornin' singin' song

Glibby gloop gloopy Nibby Nabby Noopy La La La Lo Lo
Sabba Sibby Sabba Nooby abba Nabba Le Le Lo Lo
Tooby ooby walla nooby abba nabba
Early mornin' singin' song

Good mornin' starshine            
There's love in your skies
reflecting the sunlight
in my lovers eyes

Good mornin' starshine, so happy to be
my love and me as we sing
our early mornin' singin' song

Glibby gloop gloopy Nibby Nabby Noopy La La La Lo Lo
Sabba sibby sabba nooby abba nabba Le Le Lo Lo
Tooby ooby walla Nooby abba nabba
Early mornin' singin' song

***musical interlude***

Can you hear me?
Singin' a song, hummin' a song, singin' a song
Lovin' a song, laughin' a song, singin' the song
Sing the song, song the sing
song song song sing, sing sing sing song

Song song song sing, sing sing sing song

Sing sing a song sing a song
yah, you can sing sing song sing a song
Sing sing a song, sing a song

Sing..........

(from the musical Hair)

Performed by Oliver 
Music - Galt MacDermot
Lyrics - James Rado and Gerome Ragni

Monday Music - Time After Time

Your Monday Music this morning is a classic Cyndi Lauper:

Time After Time

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,
And think of you
Caught up in circles confusion -
Is nothing new
Flashback - warm nights -
Almost left behind
Suitcases of memories,
Time after -

Sometimes you picture me -
I'm walking too far ahead
You're calling to me, I can't hear
What you've said -
Then you say - go slow -
I fall behind -
The second hand unwinds

[Chorus:]
If you're lost you can look - and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you - I'll be waiting
Time after time

After my picture fades and darkness has
Turned to gray
Watching through windows - you're wondering
If I'm OK
Secrets stolen from deep inside
The drum beats out of time -

[Chorus:]
If you're lost...

You said go slow -
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds -

[Chorus:]
If you're lost...
...Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time

- Cyndi Lauper

Thank Gods It's FreyaDay!

Good Day, Humans.

As you can see, I have been able to venture away from my nook by the fire at last.

Most of the snow has melted.

The sun is shining.

It is still not fit for human nor cat out there, but things are gradually improving.

The sun is shining and it is not below freezing.

At last.

I anticipate a glorious weekend of watching the world go by through this window.

No, of course I have no plans to go outside. Are you mad? It is still cold out there!

But here in the window, in the sunshine, I am content.

Thank gods it's FreyaDay!


For a little fun today, let's do a TGIF activity! Gather the kiddies around!

Copy this picture to make a poetry or story-starter page. Imagine a beautiful, elegant, totally regal cat (you can refer to the photo of moi above for some stellar inspiration!). You can create an amazing piece of artwork and a poem! Feel free to describe how beautiful and elegant I am using plenty of superlatives. Really, it is impossible to overdo the praise. Be creative! Amaze all of your friends!

No need to thank me. As always, you're welcome!

via Brian Morse at The Poetry Society

Barmy Bible Study - A Lesson On Obedience and Respect

God sends two bears to tear apart 42 little children for laughing at Elisha.  That's understandable, right?

Yesterday, I posted about the creeping danger of extremist religion delivered directly to our schoolchildren in public schools. Today, I'd like to repost a Barmy Bible Study that relates to this issue. Reasonable people ought to challenge the accepted view that religion - and religious indoctrination - is benign or even "good" for children. Instead of simply skimming over the stories and "lessons" in the Bible and ignoring the very real horrors contained within the Good Book™, I'd like to challenge NiftyReaders to read - really read - what the lessons actually mean.

This week's Barmy Bible Study features Elisha and the She-Bears (bit parts played by forty-two little children).  Our text for this evening's study can be found in the book of Kings. I will post three different versions of the passage, since it is brief. It might be interesting to compare them (you go ahead; one version is more than enough for me): 
(Note: Atheists and other haters of GOD'S HOLY WORD, scroll past the blue text)

2 Kings 2:23-24
King James Version (KJV)
23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

2 Kings 2:23-24
Darby Translation (DARBY)
23 And he went up from thence to Bethel, and as he went up by the way, there came forth little boys out of the city, and mocked him, and said to him, Go up, bald head; go up, bald head!
24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of Jehovah. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tore forty-two children of them.

(During the renaissance of fundamentalist Christianity in the early 1980's, a newer, more politically-correct and friendly Bible was developed. People needed a Bible they could understand; one that rounded off the rough edges a little, one that suggested that the "little children" might in fact have been the very kind of "youths" that so many modern Christians  fear and despise. A little gentle manipulation of the text here and there and voilà! An Old Testament version massaged just enough to soften the jagged Truth™within):

2 Kings 2:23-24
New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)
Elisha Is Jeered
23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!”
24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Don't worry kids, you will soon believe:
injustice is justice*, viciousness is righteousness
and fear is love.
The Good News™ is not for the meek!
Oh wait...

For some reason, this part of the Elisha story does not make it into the Sunday school curriculum or Sunday readings in church often enough - and, strangely, it is not mentioned at all in the wikipedia entry for Elisha, (although I am pleased to report that this Bible character is presented on wikipedia as an historical figure and the (positive) stories about him are presented as objective historical facts rather than unverifiable Biblical mythology, which is awesome) - but it really ought to feature prominently in children's Bible study. Sure, it might be frightening to a few little children, but who ever said that the Truth™ would be easy to hear? The terrifying and depressing stories in the Bible are inexplicably called the Good News™, after all. All true Bible-Believers know that terror brings comfort just as cruelty means love and death is life in Christian theology. It only takes a little early Biblical training to semi-permanently mold the human mind to this spiritual knowledge.

The story of Elisha and the She-Bears is the perfect introduction to Biblical morality for young Christians. It beautifully illustrates the character of the Biblical god, not to mention the character of Biblical leaders revered by Bible-believers. This story helps settle, once and for all, any confusion about the source from which modern conservatives derive their moral values. Most of all, it underlines in easy-to-understand terms just how important it is to respect the religious and their religious beliefs. The first four Commandments handed down by Moses are not about how human beings ought to treat one another, but about respecting the god of Israel and recognizing that all social and political power belongs in the hands of His followers. Belief is everything; moral behavior toward one's fellow human beings is secondary. Let there be no doubt what the Biblical priorities are: We don't call it Bible-based morality for nothing!

Study Questions for Elisha and the She-Bears:

1. What happened to Elisha as he approached the city of Bethel?

2. How did he react to this?

3. How does the Bible tell us that Jehovah responded to Elisha's reaction and what does his response teach us?

You know the type; always mocking the godly.
Just look at them - the arrogant bullies!

The Bible tells us that Elisha was a prophet and a servant of Elijah, the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. After Elijah was taken up to heaven, Elisha was understandably elated because not only would he no longer be playing second fiddle to Elijah, but he had asked for and received a double portion of Elijah's spirit as a deathbed blessing (interestingly, Elisha later punished his own servant without mercy for the sin of greed, but I digress*). He proceeded to travel the Holy Lands letting everyone know that he was the top prophet at last. As he journeyed from town to town, Elisha was occasionally disappointed in the people he found there. When he was disappointed, he wasted no time before calling down the wrath of his god upon them.  As a "Man of God", Elisha was able to flex that power that comes with being a favored son of Jehovah, and like the god himself, Elisha never hesitated to use it mercilessly to crush those who displeased him.

Take the day he traveled to Bethel, for example. Perhaps he was feeling a little testy that day (and, come on, isn't a Man of God entitled to a grumpy day now and then?), so his reaction to the teasing of a group of little children will be entirely understandable. Here is what happened:

Elisha was approaching the gates of the city of Bethel. No doubt he was tired from his journey and feeling irritable. Perhaps his bald head was noticably shining with perspiration due to his exertions. Whatever the case may be, a group of little children from the town ran out to watch his approach and for some unknown reason began to tease and taunt him, using the timeless, sing-songing repetition that has characterized children's games for generations.

"Go on up, you baldhead! Go on up, you baldhead" they called out to him. Twice.

Now, that was clearly disrespectful. These little children, in their arrogance, were obviously mocking the Man of God. They were making fun of Elisha's bald, sweatily glistening head! They may even have been ignorantly parroting things they may have overheard their elders saying about Elisha - perhaps that he was trying too hard to emulate Elijah and might just as well ascend into heaven like his deceased mentor - we cannot know for sure why the children did what they did, and they may not, in fact, have had any motive except silly childish games, but still. Their youthful innocence and ignorance of Elisha's exalted role as God's emissary was no excuse for this rude behaviour. Nothing is ever a valid excuse for mockery of a religious figure or a religion. That is blasphemy! Blasphemers are the worst of the worst. And justice* must be seen to be done.

This will teach those smart-alecs to fear God!
Remember children: fear is love.
And vicious, capricious cruelty is God's love.
Remember that now, little ones...oh wait...too late!

So Elisha did what any Man of God would do: he called on Jehovah to right this appalling injustice - this unforgivable mockery of a godly man - the playful nyah-nyahing of laughing children who must surely have been little minions of Satan! You might think that the all-loving god of the Christian imagination would have gently chastised the little children, understanding that their behaviour was nothing more than a stage in the developmental path that the god himself, after all, had ordained for humanity. You might think that He would have counselled Elisha to smile patiently and go about his business as not only a Man of God, but also as a mature adult. You might think these things, but you would be wrong. Jehovah answered Elisha's call the Biblical way, and how! -->

Jehovah (aka "God") sent two ferocious bears - she-bears, naturally - which then proceeded to rip forty-two of the little children to pieces. The story goes that as the bears tore the limbs off little boys and girls and sank their massive teeth into tiny necks and torsos, Elisha continued on into the city of Bethel to spread the Good News™ of Jehovah's boundless love to the men within. Then, of course, he simply carried on his way to his next stop, Samaria. The Bible never does say how the townspeople of Bethel reacted later when they found the bloody, dismembered bodies of forty-two of their children. It moves smartly on to more important topics, obviously.

It may seem as though Elisha was indifferent to the suffering of little children whom he had condemned to terrible deaths for the "crime" of laughing at him, but we learn from this story that he did it for a good reason: disrespect for a "Man of God" - especially disbelief in the invisible and silent, unknowable and undetectable, yet omniscient and omnipotent creator god - is never to be tolerated. The One True Faith must be respected at all costs - revered by everyone, including the innocent, the ignorant and the unbelievers - and when it is not, the insult is so intolerable that anything is permitted.

Elisha stood strong against 
the little children.
Let Biblical justice be done!

In Bible studies all over Christendom, people nod in agreement and barely flicker an eyelid upon reading about the massacre of little children, because they believe in Biblical values, which are far superior to any mere humanist morality. They know that allowing little children to be torn apart by wild bears is nothing compared to the horror of allowing a Man of God to be ridiculed without dire consequences. Bible-belief lifts true Christians above the filth of mere human emotion and tender feelings for other human beings. These are the values that modern Christians strive to apply to their own lives, for the good of humanity. Those who will not bow down respectfully before the Christian religion clearly choose not to, and therefore they choose whatever they have coming to them. That's not bigotry, that's the Biblical way.

Every right-minded Christian understands that to be laughed at or mocked for one's beliefs, while it is expected, is an intolerable offense that the godly should never have to endure. As followers of the One True Faith™, righteous Christians must never be prevented from defending against insults using every weapon at their disposal.  Throughout history, of course, Christians waged wars, persecuted unbelievers and punished blasphemers mercilessly, just like Elisha and his god. But those were the good old days (whatever happened to just being able to burn heretics at the stake? That's another of our freedoms stolen by those damned liberals!). Today, right-wing Christians in the western world are prevented by secular liberal society from responding to criticism or mockery in the time-honored Biblical way, sadly, but some groups have devised ingenious ways of getting around the protection obstruction of the secular Constitution.

Whether their fellow citizens want it or not, Bible-believing Christians know that it is imperative that the United States be brought to its knees before them the one true god. Great strides have been made since the Reagan era made it clear that there were ways around the First Amendment, and Christian power in government and society has since grown enormous. Every level of government, every profession, every cultural sphere and every educational institution has been infused with the holy spirit in the form of planted emissaries of the favored Christian faith. It is time for the Christian Right to stand up even taller in defense of their faith: the criticism coming from liberals and moderates is intolerable and outrageous. It must be silenced. It is not simply free speech in a free country - it is persecution of Christians!

Turns out God and Guns is a
winning combination, after all!
Might makes right; that's the
Biblical way!

The story of Elisha and the She-Bears teaches us without ambiguity that the Biblical God is a mercilessly punishing god. To disrespect him - even unknowingly - is to bring his wrath down upon even the most vulnerable and innocent among us. Righteous, Bible-believing Christians know this Truth™and they fear it. The anger of the all-loving, all-powerful god is terrifying and there is no room for mutual understanding, acceptance of different beliefs or of ignorance. The Good News™ must be embraced by everyone - force-fed to them, if necessary - for the good of humanity.

Righteous, Bible-believing, born-again Christians will not be fooled by liberals who disguise themselves as Christians, either. So-called moderate Christians - who are too tolerant of others, who accept other people for who they are and who believe there may be many pathways to God - will never be accepted as real Christians by the true Bible-believer. Moderate, liberal Christians are like the little children who mocked the great Man of God, Elisha. They look innocent but they are false Christians, perhaps even the devil's minions and they, likewise, must be shown no mercy. It is hard Truth™, but true Christians know that they must be strong enough to do whatever is necessary to defend their beliefs. In the words of bible.org, "We need more Elishas, those who will stand fast and act in biblical ways leaving the results to the Lord." Wow. Indeed! How awesome is Biblical love!

Here is what every loving Christian parent knows: The lesson about God's righteous justice that they learn from the story of Elisha and the Bears is good for Christian children. Fear is good. We know this is true because the Bible tells us so. The Bible says it. We believe it. That settles it. However, there is always the danger that some Christians may recognise the raw, power-hungry psychological manipulation for what it is fail to accept and understand this wondrous mystery unless their beliefs are seared into their psyches through childhood indoctrination inculcated early and thoroughly. Might as well get them started in pre-school! Below you will find an example of a fun way to introduce the important message of the story of Elisha and the She-Bears to young children - use a colouring page! It's just the thing. Find your copies at any Christian supply store and start training up your children the right way today!

*Justice is injustice. Injustice is justice. The Bible is always right. This is Biblical logic. Get used to it. 'We need more Elishas' and, if the Christian right gets its wish this election, we will have them at long last. We could soon be enjoying a far more Biblically correct America. Praise God!

Class dismissed.

The child who coloured this page added a nice touch when he drew in the spurting blood.
This boy shows righteous promise! A future Elisha, perhaps?

Teach Your Children Right!

A little girl at "Jesus Camp" expresses her "joy" in the Christian gospel while other children look on uncertainly.

(Reposting this after reading recently on Butterflies and Wheels that this situation is accelerating. Previously posted in June, 2012):

Two recent FreeThoughtBlogs posts have brought attention to the improper use of public schools by fundamentalist religious groups to indoctrinate children into their terrifying "faiths". One would think that the public discussions of Jesus Camp, and the disturbing videos which came out about it, would have alerted concerned parents to the danger of letting religion have a free pass to indoctrinate their youngsters, but apparently not.  Religion is given a pass once more.  Actually, religion is not just given a pass but is still presumed to be, on the whole, a positive and good thing for children, even by parents who would be horrified if they knew the true intentions of religious proselytizers who have targeted their children for training as warriors for Jesus.

Both Ophelia Benson and PZ Myers posted this morning about the Good News Club, an explicitly Christian evangelical initiative of a group which calls itself the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), whose number and influence in schools and communities has been growing at an alarming rate.  A recent article in the Guardian by Katherine Stewart (author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children) has broken the story that the clubs, emboldened by the protection of a bad 2001 Supreme Court decision, are no longer bothering to even pretend that their real agenda is not proselytizing and grooming Christian warriors:

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) – people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."

"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

The Slaughter of the Amalekites

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"

"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads: 

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment." Katherine Stewart, The Guardian.

These fundamentalist Christian proselytizing vehicles won the right to insert themselves into public schools under the deceptive and insidious ruling (one of the few majority opinions authored by the conservative Clarence Thomas) in 2001. In that decision (Good News Club vs Milford Central School), the Supreme Court Justice disingenuously agreed with the CEF defense that the clubs were not religious in nature at all, but were merely clubs performing the laudable function of “teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint”. Nothing to worry about there, right? But, wait. Here is the CEF viewpoint, straight from their "About Us" webpage:

Jesus Camps and Good News Clubs:
nothing but good, harmless fun!

"Child Evangelism Fellowship® (CEF®) is a Bible-centered, worldwide organization that is dedicated to seeing every child reached with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, discipled and established in a local church."

Many parents uncritically accept these clubs as being what their deliberately kid-friendly name implies: a club for harmless fun and a sense of belonging, in the spirit of the Good News Bears. These parents either do not realise or do not want to realise that the raison d'être of Good News Clubs is to convert children and turn them into Christian evangelicals.  These clubs are designed to pull in children under false pretenses (in many cases offering after-school care which is almost irresistible to parents who are struggling with poorly paid jobs and a lack of affordable child-care which is becoming a national crisis) and then convert them to fundamentalist Christianity. The benign-sounding name, the lure of a fun-sounding "club" and the fact that the children are often strongly encouraged to join by respected authorities (the schools) are all part of an insidious strategy to gain access to children without the truly informed consent of their parents and, obviously, of the children themselves. School acceptance of these clubs, mandated by the Supreme Court, means that both children and their parents are deceived into thinking that the secular, public schools endorse these religious clubs - and that there is no deeper agenda - which is one of the main reasons why the CEF fought so hard and so dishonestly to get them into public schools in the first place.

The Christian church has long used childhood indoctrination to ensure that obedient and thoroughly cowed legions of believers continue to swell their ranks, providing them with the power of numbers, financial wealth and, of course, warriors willing to die for their god/church/divinely appointed rulers. It has always been in the interest of those who hold power to have a large faith following, and religion has provided both the means and the ends.

"Knock down all doors, all the barriers,
to all 65,000 public elementary schools in America
 and take the Gospel to this open mission field now!
Not later, now!"
(CEF  national convention keynote speech, 2010)

There was empirical evidence behind the oft-quoted assertion of St. Francis Xavier (one of the first Jesuits, a Catholic order of priests famed as educators): "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man (alternatively: "and I care not who has him thereafter"). The well-educated, observant and intelligent Jesuits had noticed that people who are thoroughly indoctrinated in religious dogma in early childhood retain those beliefs throughout life, while people in whom religious belief has not been inculcated early are more difficult to convert - and to control. They realized, though they did not have the language to describe it yet, that the psychological impact of early indoctrination - particularly indoctrination based upon fear and confusion - usually lasts a lifetime.

Young children have no defenses against deliberate indoctrination. When they are taught to fear a god through stories which illustrate the god's relentlessly violent and implacably unforgiving reaction - not to lying, stealing and murdering which the Biblical god often condones and even orders, but to disbelief and disobedience - they learn the lesson through fear and they learn it well.  The Biblical god is a terrifyingly powerful "awesome" god and the one "sin" He will never forgive is lack of belief. The children are primed first with the "fun" and then the stories are told, gradually leading to the point when the children are tearfully, fearfully professing "belief".

Research has shown that one of the most powerful human motivators is fear, and one of the most difficult psychological challenges to overcome is irrational fear, especially fear that has taken root in the mind at an early age. Religious proselytizers know this, and this is why they are so insistent upon childhood indoctrination. Children are vulnerable to lifelong damage from the powerful emotional appeal of fear and guilt-based religious proselytizing.  They cannot "unthink" terrible thoughts which have been planted in their minds early. They cannot "unfeel" the horror and the fear that is elicited in their psyches through early Bible instruction.

Religious eschatology - and the terrifying images it evokes - is nothing less than psychological abuse of children. Yet, not only are parents permitted to subject their own children to these horrors, but religious groups are being permitted to sneak their fundamentalist religious indoctrination into public and private schools where they can prey on other peoples' children as well. In fact, gaining access to the children of parents who would not voluntarily subject their children to this violent, misanthropic and destructive theology is precisely the purpose of the Good News Club.

What we don't want to know
may seriously harm the USA.

The CEF is an explicitly evangelical, explicitly fundamentalist, explicitly and unapologetically dominionist Christian group and by continuing to be willfully blind to their purpose, parents are participating in the indoctrination of their children into extremist religion, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not. It is vital that more people speak out about this strategy of the religious right. They have already insinuated themselves into thousands of public schools in the USA and around the world, and they do not intend to stop until they have converted every child.

Telling ourselves that one powerful religious group really cannot take over like that or kidding ourselves that the first amendment will protect people from religious tyranny is being willfully blind, deaf and dumb. As we have seen with the concurrent (and not merely coincidental) strategy of powerful groups to get issues affecting minorities' Constitutional rights onto ballots so that they can be put to a majority vote, the longterm objectives of the conservative right wing have been carefully and patiently planned. There is a real danger that the majority can use its power and clout to force their view on the minority until the power is so nearly total that complete annihilation of opposing viewpoints is achieved. The 2001 case heard by the SCOTUS is where the freedom from religion part should have been upheld – but the court has also been swayed by the power of the Christian majority. The issue is now urgent.

PZ's post    Ophelia's post, Kill Them All, Children.

Monday Music - Bandages

For your first Monday Music in April: Hey Rosetta!

Bandages

It will come around
But everything is now
I know everything is right now
The loneliness is a lot
But the nothing weighs a ton
I mean the nothing weighs a fucking ton

That half of the bed
Empty like a page
Of the curses claims you've yet to make
Oh, the promising light
Bending like a spine
Or the whiteness that your pen could write

Get these bandages off
You cant stand, you can walk
Leave these towels apart
You get up, you get out
Into the sun

That's where we belong
Been a bit too long
All our weaknesses are growing strong
And winter always ends
With water on your limbs, the April rain comes swinging in

Take these bandages off
Let me stand, let me walk
Leave these towels apart
Let me up, let me out,
Into the sun

Oh, come she will
Come she will
Come, she will
Come she will
She will

She comes, oh,
She comes, son,
She cooooomes

She comes, oh,
She comes, son,
She cooooomes

She comes, oh,
She comes, son,
She cooooomes

She comes, oh,
She comes, son,
She cooooomes

She comes, oh,
She comes, son,
She cooooomes

She comes, oh,
She comes, son,
She cooooomes

She comes, oh,
She comes, son
She cooooomes