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Shiva for Anne Frank, the Play

Catch performances of the insightful new play “Shiva for Anne Frank” by Rachel McKay Steele. Steele shies away from nothing, not even censored passages, now published, from The Diary. Performances held on June 14, 15, Sat. and Sun. as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. 

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“Shores of Normandy”: Singer / Songwriter Age 90 Tops the Charts

Jim Radfort sings a song he wrote about the worst day of his life: the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Over 2,000 Americans died in the first 20 minutes of the invasion. 

Born in Yorkshire, England, he is a  veteran of the D-Day invasion. To mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day, enjoy his soulful composition.

Three veteran paratroopers (2 British and 1 American, ages 94-97) again parachuted over Normandy, this time to wild applause in commemoration of the event today.

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Two Umbrellas & Statesmen

It looks like there’s hope she may share her umbrella. The fellow is Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, 1977 (photo by Jeff Goode/Toronto Star Via Getty Images).

As another chapter closes in British politics, it’s interesting to think about how the current time period will look far into the distant future. Despite the barrage of criticism in the press, Prime Minister Theresa May came in a bureaucrat and leaves looking like a statesman. 

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How to never be addicted

Determine how much alcohol [or whatever you’re addicted to] is problematic for you, and then drink less. Works every time.

-David Koechner

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Best Transgender Films Ever

Click here for a list of the 11 best transgender films ever made, according to Metrosource Magazine. A fantastic read complete with film trailers!

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This photo from the Financial Times tells everything you need to know about Brexit’s “panorama of shambles,” to quote the BBC. Follow the daily developments at Westminster on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ftwestminster

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St. Patrick's Story: Bringing People to Jesus Through Bacon

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY to everyone with a drop of Irish blood and equally to those who are not Irish, like St. Patrick himself! 

Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, was born on the island of Britannia at the end of the 4th century, possibly in Wales or Scotland. His name was actually Maewyn Succat, but later he took the moniker “father figure” or Patrick. He was never officially canonized by the pope, and so is not Irish, not named Patrick, and not a saint. 

But he was the son and grandson of Catholic priests, he was literate, educated, and enjoyed a childhood of relative prosperity. (Priests would not be prohibited from marrying until the 12th century for financial, not religious, reasons.)

At age 16 he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland, a land and a people he would come to love. After six years as he tends sheep, he suddenly intuits that this day he will walk to freedom, so he begins walking. He only stops when he reaches the coast and beholds the unusual sight of an anchored ship. So Patrick asks to be permitted aboard only to be told no, this is no passenger ship. But the young man on the ship immediately changes his mind and Patrick sets sail a free man. 

They arrive in Normandy, France to find it a smoldering ruin. For days the men scour the area in search of food to re-stock for the voyage to England, but are utterly unable to find any--everything had been taken or destroyed by Vikings. 

When they are no longer able to stand the hunger, Patrick suggests they pray to God for food. Heads bowed eyes closed mid sentence, the grunts and squeals of pigs or wild boar running straight toward them intervene. Although the sailors had not been Christians, never again did they doubt Patrick's God. This was no ordinary food but bacon, no less! 

Patrick was reunited with his family and in time returned to to carry the Gospel to Ireland (Christianity was somewhat known to them, but minus the fervor he brought), which they accepted wholeheartedly, making Ireland one of the first places outside the Roman Empire to be Christianized. Patrick also put an end to the Irish slave trade!

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The late Keith Green wrote one of the world’s great songs up there with JS Bach’s Hallelujah! Enjoy.

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Fast from Negativity for Lent!

by Christ John Otto

In January I decided to be totally positive in  thoughts, words, and actions. It has been challenging, but also transforming.

From now to Easter I want to encourage you to join more than a billion people across the earth and fast with me.  But, not from chocolate or cookies.  

Creative people are wired to see what is wrong with a person or a situation.   Creative people can recognize what’s wrong and come up with a creative solution to the problem.

When this is mature, it's a good thing.

But most of the time this ability is not tempered with humility, Christian maturity, and grace.  

So creative people are famous for being sensitive, judgmental, critical, complaining, and negative.

I want to challenge you to be positive to your core from now until Easter.  

It’s harder than it sounds.  

In order to avoid negativity, I have had to completely give up news and most media.   I gave up 90% of my time on social media.  It was hard.   The 10% that remains is just to keep in touch with family and close friends.

Being positive means laying aside the lies coming from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

It means getting in tune with God’s perspective: You are not a mistake. All things will work together for good in your life. You are in process, and you are growing. You are loved, and you can love others. God is good.

And it means talking differently about people and things. It means not  agreeing with the Accuser of the Brethren. No complaining, kvetching, whining, or criticizing, pastors, leaders, institutions, situations, or people.

It means choosing to speak life and transform the world through the way you speak and the way you think.

That’s a lot harder than giving up chocolate.   It will change the world, and change you.  

A resource I can highly recommend is Brilliant Perspectives.  It will revolutionize your thinking and your life.

I will be cheering you on over the next six weeks.  

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In the Beginning...

Israel successfully launched its first lunar mission. Dubbed Beresheet, Hebrew for “In the Beginning…”, recently took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The unmanned space probe will be exploring the moon and will share its data with NASA.

Israel will follow the US, Russia, and China as only the 4th nation to go to the moon. The private company SpaceIL launched on a shoestring budget of $100 million. Seed money was supposed to come from the Google Lunar X-Prize $30 million, but the X-Prize was cancelled due to the inability of all five finalists, including SpaceIL, to launch by the deadline of March of 2018. State and private investors including Indonesia funded the mission.

This month many recall the anniversary of the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle, when Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon was among the crew lost upon re-entry after a successful mission in space.

Thus far, Israel has just a few military and commercial satellites orbiting in space. For this mission, the 350 lb. spacecraft is hitching a ride on a private SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the US. Read here to find out why it will take 8 weeks for Beresheet to reach the moon, but the trip only took the US 4 days and 7 hours in 1968! 

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Composer and musician Kimberly Roberts lost all of her music and everything else in Hurricane Katrina, but as fate would have it, she had given a CD to her cousin in Memphis. One of her songs, “Trouble the Water,” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. Here’s a scene from the Academy Award nominated documentary film by the same name, “Trouble the Water.”

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Steps Toward Preparing for a Green Economy: Micro & Macro

Major innovations like LED lights have many advantages over regular incandescent bulbs, including being far more energy efficient. But heaven help you if you should ever break an LED light. While they don’t have mercury (like many energy efficient bulbs), they have up to 8 times more lead and arsenic, nickel, and copper!   

If you break a bulb, DO NOT VACUUM! Clean up the mess wearing mask and gloves and dispose of the debris as toxic waste, meaning put it in a plastic bag and into the recycling bin, NOT the regular trash. 

Leave the room for 10 minutes to let the debris settle

Open windows & doors

Turn off fans & air conditioning

Collect all glass fragments/powder using cardboard & sticky tape

Put debris & cleaning materials into a plastic bag. Seal it tightly.

Contact Earth911 if you need to find a recycling center near you. 

Air out the room half a day, if possible.

Unfortunately, LEDs are not yet considered toxic by law, however, so they can and do fill landfills! They are highly toxic and need to be disposed of accordingly. Very reckless not to.

On a micro logistics level, these are the types of things Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Congress need to address before we can thoughtfully and intelligently push forward on a  green new deal. 

On the macro level, Congress must be certain that a climate emergency is not being created under the radar with weather machines or strange things like sending nuclear bombs to the sun, the sun and our earth’s atmosphere being  the major factors in determining our planet’s climate. This is much harder to be certain about now with so many private companies and countries in space. One must think of everything to avoid unintended consequences.

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Yoga: The Perfect Workout

If pumping iron or pounding the streets isn't your thing, why not try yoga? Yoga is gaining in popularity for good reason.

"Yoga is a complete system. It offers a cardio-vascular workout, stretching, meditation -- very few forms of exercise have it all," says yoga teacher David Wordsworth who previously taught yoga in London and now teaches New Age Body classes. "I became interested in it when I noticed that after doing yoga I felt the best I'd felt all day." The exercises are designed to tone both the muscles and internal organs. 

But yoga is much more than exercise. Yoga is an ancient practice developed out of a deep understanding of the body, which is believed to be comprised of a complex system of energy canals known as meridians. Ironically, yoga (which means "union") was devised to help religious hermits deal with the challenges of celibacy. An unintended side-effect is that it gives you a great body too. 

For anyone who could benefit from increased powers of concentration, a more relaxed and confident demeanor, good posture, and improved overall health, yoga practice is a powerful secret weapon. 

Look for an instructor that demonstrates that he/she has practiced yoga long enough to reap the benefits of it personally. 

Hints to keep in mind when beginning yoga practice:

1. Breathing is an integral part of yoga and is an entire area of study in itself. Beginners tend to hold their breath while doing new poses, but this actually makes the pose more difficult.

2. Yoga poses are not simple. Individual attention is necessary to correct and improve the technique of each student. 

3. The instructor should point out which muscles (and meridians) each pose is intended to work, and where tensions should be felt in the body.

4. Intensity and focusing on different muscle groups is key to getting a good yoga workout. Certain poses may look easy, but knowing where to concentrate the focus can make them as difficult as you'd like.

5. Modifications of the poses allow less limber students to participate at a level that is comfortable for them. People of all ages can benefit from yoga.

Yoga requires a certain dedication, but the benefits of practicing it, even after just a week or two, are well worth it. And once you feel better physically, there's no way it won't have a positive impact on your work and every aspect of your life. 

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The Best Smart Backpacks You Can Buy Today

Got myself a new backpack for Christmas and much to my dismay by April it was already tearing! The weight distribution is wrong, so gravity insures that the bag slowly tears itself. It’s a good brand, but not good enough it seems.

This time I will research backpacks much better before I buy, especially since smart backpacks are not really much more expensive than regular ones.

Here are Meredith’s Picks:

#1 Sosoon Laptop Backpack

#2 Mancro Business Laptop Pack

#3 Lifepack Solar Powered and Anti-Theft Backpack

#4 TYLT Pro Powerbag Travel Backpack Charging Laptop Bag

Lifepack Solar Powered backpack is shown here.

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Still can’t believe this really happened. 

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Natural Foods, Natural Weight Loss

The single best way to improve your diet in 2019 is to cut refined sugar and sweeteners out of your diet. American foods today contain about 20 times more sugar than in 1950 (when the American diet began to rely on mass produced foods). Sugar leads to weight gain. So a quick short-cut to natural weight loss is to simply forgo sugar.

But because sugar sounds like something natural, even necessary for life, it’s been hard to realize how harmful processed sugar is at such huge quantities.

Cutting corn syrup out of your diet altogether is great advice. Visitors to the US often wonder if there is any American food that doesn’t have corn syrup. Corn syrup is guaranteed to pack on the pounds. Plus corn syrup damages the liver the way alcoholism does!

If cutting out sweets is proves difficult, remember that corn syrup is 8 times more addictive than opiates like heroin! How’s that for hooking the consumer in the checkout aisle?

Stay focused on kicking the habit by recalling that people do not crave more sweets; rather it’s the bad bacteria living in the gut that crave more and more sugar, and in fact need it to thrive and take over and sap the host (you) of energy, stealthily compelling you to overeat. Deprive the gut critters of sugar and they will soon go away.

In a moment of weakness, remember that sugar-free sweeteners do more harm than good. Nevertheless, they are being added to lots of sugary products now, which is why some of your favorite snacks taste slightly different now from when you were a kid.

Although marketed as “diet” products, sugar-free sweeteners actually cause weight gain and lower IQ with long-term use! Incentive enough? 

Next, eliminate processed foods, preservatives, and chemicals to the extent possible. Bread–both brown bread and white bread — are highly processed foods. Real whole wheat was first taken out of the American diet in the 1800s when bran and wheat germ were removed from mass-produced flour to increase shelf life. But you wouldn’t know it from advertisers’ descriptions of so-called whole wheat stone-ground breads that are really not so different from white bread. Bread has been reduced to smooshy, pasty stuff that does little more than raise your blood sugar, gum up the digestive works, and put on the pounds. Recall the Charlie’s Angels episode that featured a militant bearded man in fatigues angrily telling Sabrina Duncan the germ had been taken out of the wheat in our bread? Well that was no joke. And of course all American breads are packed with sugar.

Instead, look to the wisdom of the traditional diets of our ancestors for help in doing so. Menu ideas include the Mediterranean diet (a bed of greens with very little meat or fish, olives, tomatoes, eggs, and veggies on top with a refreshing tomato-based or grape-based gazpacho), Asian cuisine (a bed of rice or noodles with very little meat and many different kinds of veggies, herbs), or Mexican food (a staple of corn, beans and squashes with tomato, onion, garlic and spices).

Instead of giving in to the dessert sugar addiction, draw upon the traditions of the world to end a meal on the right note: slices of watermelon or melon, or a nice piece of cheese, or a relaxing cup of hot tea or coffee to follow the meal allow room to slow down and reflect on all the many blessings of the moment.

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Extraordinary Lives, Extraordinary Lessons

All the Saints of the City of Angels: Seeking the Soul of L.A. on the Streets by J. Michael Walker

Reading about the extraordinary lives of the saints is like discovering hidden treasure for anyone whose education contains this particular knowledge gap.

Beautifully illustrated, the book presents the unique and unforgettable life stories of the 103 saints for which Los Angeles streets are named, along with a brief history of the location of each of the streets.

Tradition has it that places named for saints are good luck, somehow  protected by the saint. In matching the stories of each saint with the street named the saint, some amazing coincidences emerge.

More than a handful of the streets are so perfectly matched with their saint’s name that you might just come away believing in the guiding hand of providence.

San Julian Street, for example, in the heart of skid row in downtown Los Angeles, is home to the largest mission for homeless people in the United States. Formerly known as LAMP, the mission now merged with ThePeopleConcern and serves thousands of the estimated 58,000 homeless people in L.A., including the cello virtuoso played by Jamie Foxx in the film “The Soloist.”

By some major coincidence, St. Julian of Le Mans, France is the patron saint of destitute wanderers. Born into nobility, he ran away to avoid a dark prophecy and spent most of his life penniless. He found redemption by giving comfort to beggars like himself. Just two blocks long, both sides of San Julian Street are lined with modern day wanderers, people who can count on being able to receive a meal and assistance through the mission. 

Considering that homeless people die on the streets within an average of 5 months, they in truth are today’s martyrs. Not having enough money for housing today is regularly given what amounts to the death penalty.

It matters little that St. Julian almost certainly was not a real person in history, but most likely was invented as part of the Roman Catholic Church’s propaganda machine. There must be tremendous longing, praying and tears directed at the saints, particularly the patron saints. Perhaps this psychic energy somehow manifests around places named for the saints, making them  different from other places.

Author J. Michael Walker does an admirable job of pointing out the divinity in us all in this book. The art portrays the saints not as idols, but as people, broken vessels like ourselves who in their imperfection managed to become useful to God on earth. Every page is a reminder that we are alive only to do good works and help one another so that our joy will be full and our radiance will shine as bright as the sun until every tear is wiped away, all the captives are set free, and all darkness is banished from the earth forever (Revelation 21:4), exactly as promised. 

Buy the book here.