Bitter Criticism Is Like Cyanide To Relationships

Most people muddle through life without ever thinking about what they do, why they respond the way they do, how they can become better people, improve their emotional stability, change they way they respond, or increase their understanding of others or their relationships with them.

Why?

It’s not as if people are born as experts on themselves or human relationships. And merely “being oneself” is no guarantee of anything remotely resembling self understanding.

It’s important to talk about how we feel, and what we think without negative criticism from each other. Open lines of communication are imperative to maintaining and nourishing relationships. Communication must be ongoing, open, honest, and without strident tones and condemnation.

It would seem reasonable then, to seek understanding not only about oneself, but about others, and relationships, and to endeavor to improve oneself and one’s relationships with others… especially and particularly familial and spousal relationships. Could it be that bilateral lack of such effort – aka LAZINESS – is responsible for the increase in divorce rates in America? For lack of genuine emotional intimacy? Lack of sexual intimacy? Lack of proper parenting?

People are not born smart. We’re born stupid. It’s a choice to remain that way.

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“People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.”
– Gary Chapman

It’s Not Me, It’s You: Why Criticism Poisons Happy Marriages By Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott 

Criticism is an insidious behavior that comes into marriage and eats at the core of our identity. Few things will shut down intimacy quite like being criticized or controlled, and it is capable of immobilizing your emotional health and personal growth, especially within your relationship.

Nobody enjoys being criticized or picked apart, but it’s especially painful when your spouse – your soul mate – is the one being critical and hurtful to you. It’s demoralizing to be treated this way when you’re doing your best to make a contribution and add value to your relationship… but you get criticized instead of appreciated. Criticism can easily break a heart, and that’s a terrible place to be in your marriage.

What makes a person critical?

We often refer to critical people as “control freaks” or “high-maintenance people.” Control freaks are compelled to

Where’s the evidence of Ted Cruz’s United States Citizenship?

Ted Cruz, of Texas, United States Senate Official Portrait, 113th Congress

UPDATED Monday, 25 January 2016
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From the United States Department of State website:
“A child born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent or parents may acquire U.S. citizenship at birth if certain statutory requirements are met.  The child’s parents should contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate to apply for a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA) to document that the child is a U.S. citizen. If the U.S. embassy or consulate determines that the child acquired U.S. citizenship at birth, a consular officer will approve the CRBA application and the Department of State will issue a CRBA, also called a Form FS-240, in the child’s name.

“According to U.S. law, a CRBA is proof of U.S. citizenship and may be used to obtain a U.S. passport and register for school, among other purposes.”
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I’ve been asking that question for quite some time.

Naysayers, however, will claim he’s American by virtue of his American-born mother… just like Ted does.

But read on, to read what the law says about who is, and who is not a United States Citizen.

Ted’s a Harvard Law School-educated guy, of whom Alan Dershowitz said “Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant,” so he should know better – much better.

I also hasten to point out that Cruz had

A Father’s Day Essay

This year, 2014, my Pop will begin his 82d year of life in good health.

I am blessed, fortunate, happy and to be envied to have him with me now. Some of my peers’ fathers have been long departed.

A friend once said to me that “we never truly become men until our father dies.” In that sense, I suppose I’m still a youth… even though my teen years have been long departed.

My Dad – When he looked at this photo, he said with a smile, “Who’s that? I’m going to have to get a new mirror!” I love my Pop. He’s a swell fellow – a real gentleman – with quite a life’s story! Raised in poverty in rural West Alabama, he knows how to pick cotton by hand, remembers when electricity came to his family’s house, the electrician’s name who wired their house, and so many other hard-scrabble stories of a life unknown to many of us in this day & age.

My dad is a Southern man. Having grown up in abject poverty in rural West Alabama, he was not merely acquainted with “everything but the squeal,” but was intimately familiar with a very real daily struggle for existence, where food was precious, and life even more so.

On occasion, I still hear him recall with utter amazement how much food he saw wasted – literally thrown into the garbage at San Diego Naval Station – where he attended Basic Training before shipping off to serve in the Korean War aboard the U.S.S. Juneau – CLAA-119, also known as “The Galloping Ghost of the Korean coast.” To his then-18-year-old eyes it was a culture shock which he remembers to this day. In his first day there, he saw more food thrown away than he had ever seen in his still-tender life. The adage “waste not, want not” is practically embedded into his DNA.

For those unfamiliar with the term “everything but the squeal,” it refers to the use of every part of the hog for food, and material. Nothing would be wasted. The fat would be rendered into lard, some of the meat would be preserved by smoking, while some parts were made into sausage. It was also time in which neighbors would help one another in the preparation of the animal. (If you’re interested in seeing & reading about some of the various aspects of hog butchering, see here.) It was only many years later that electricity came to my dad’s house – and he remembers the electrician’s name, and date the house was wired.

I recall tales he shared with me of his youth of “hog killing time,” which refers to the first enduring snap of cold weather, which was the proper time to slaughter a hog because the preservation of it’s parts would be more readily facilitated. That is, spoilage would be significantly reduced, because it could be stored in cooler conditions. Their “refrigerator” was an ice box – literally. ‘What’s an ice box?,’ you may ask. An ice box is literally a box into which a 100 pound block of ice was placed to cool food items. Not many items, mind you, because the creek was still a location where food items which readily spoiled were placed. Milk, dairy, meat and select other foods were regularly stored in a special box made to keep critters out, and keep food cool by the running water.

Naturally, not having electricity also meant that the meals were prepared in a “wood cook stove,” literally an implement which had to be tended night and day by his mother to prepare the family meals. Temperature regulation was achieved by moderating the amount of wood, the type of wood (seasoned dry or unseasoned green), and the variety of wood (species, such as oak, hickory, pecan, birch, pine, etc.).

Suffice it to say, his was a hard scrabble life. And it’s certainly neither joke nor exaggeration to say that they were so poor, someone had to come from Washington to tell them there was a Great Depression going on!

Dad honored his father and mother. He was

Be nice to me… or else!

It certainly seems that there’s no shortage of opinion on FaceBook.

Recently, I had seen this posted on a friend’s page, and remarked upon it. Whether or not Eminem said it, I am uncertain. However, the sentiment expressed was what caught my attention.

Since we’re now in

Retired Marine’s Life Told Story of Dignity of Man

The few, the proud, the father who stamps his family with a purpose

By DAVID LAUDERDALE
DLauderdale@IslandPacket.com
843-706-8115
Published Saturday, September 22, 2012

Retired Gunnery Sergeant LaSalle R. Vaughn in his U.S. Marine Corps uniform at the funeral of his best friend and next-door-neighbor, retired Marine Master Sergeant Frederick Drake, in November 2010. Both were Montford Point Marines.

LaSalle R. Vaughn was a Marine gunnery sergeant whose eyes could bore into you like a nail, and whose body was still taut as new rope when he died last Sunday at 88.

But everyone talks about his cinnamon rolls. Their sweet aroma would pull children into his kitchen from all over Sergeants Drive in Port Royal.

In 1943 he joined a U.S. Marine Corps that didn’t really want the feisty half African-American, half Native American from Baton Rouge, La. But he’d seen the sharp uniform with a red stripe down blue pants, and he insisted on joining the Marines.

His vision of what it would be like changed quickly when he was sent to the segregated boot camp for African-Americans at Montford Point, outside Camp Lejeune, N.C.

He was immensely proud to have served more than two decades. He was a steward and chef to seven generals, even preparing a meal for a U.S. president. But he said paving the road to integration was hell.

The Rev. James E. Moore, pastor of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Dale and national chaplain of the Montford Point Marine Association, said: “I am convinced that had they failed — and there were many people who felt they would fail and wanted them to fail — I would not have been the first black sergeant major of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island and Eastern Recruiting Region. I attribute that to what they went through and what they endured.”

Montford Point Marines were honored in June with the Congressional Gold Medal.

But it’s the corps within Vaughn’s own home — his fatherhood — that should be talked about most during his final salute.

STRONG MEN

“Lord knows we need in our society today positive examples of strong men who accept the responsibility to be the people we were created to be,” said Moore. “And when I say that, I mean first being fathers. I think fatherhood has been diminished in our society.”

LaSalle and Catherine Vaughn — who would have been married 66 years in December — had five boys and two girls.

The oldest, LaSalle II, is a retired Air Force officer who

A Not-so Surprising Prescription for Economic Recovery: Get Married, Stay Married

It’s difficult to argue with the facts.

But perhaps we should be asking ourselves this question: “Why are we doing this?”

Is this not a type of suicide?

Would it not be insane for us to NOT promote “best practice” activities?

Would it not be ludicrous for us to NOT tell someone that danger lies ahead if they embarked upon a particular path, course of action or behavior?

No one in their right mind would ever say that we loved or cared for that person precisely because we simply failed to warn them. For indeed, though we may say that we do love them, we do not behave as if we do, because love is not in words only.

In fact, love cannot exist in words only.

Love exists in evidence, and in abundance of action.

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The single-mom catastrophe

The demise of two-parent families in the U.S. has been an economic catastrophe for society.

Op-Ed
By Kay S. Hymowitz
June 3, 2012

The single-mother revolution shouldn’t need much introduction. It started in the 1960s when the nation began to sever the historical connection between marriage and childbearing and to turn single motherhood and the fatherless family into a viable, even welcome, arrangement for children and for society. The reasons for the shift were many, including the sexual revolution, a powerful strain of

Hammad Memon, Huntsville Alabama Murder Suspect Caught in Dallas Fleeing with Mother

The murderers parents are now criminals.

Hindering prosecution is a Class C felony in Alabama.

Code of Alabama, 1975 – Section 13A-10-43

Hindering prosecution in the first degree.

(a) A person commits the crime of hindering prosecution in the first degree if with the intent to hinder the apprehension, prosecution, conviction or punishment of another for conduct constituting a murder or a Class A or B felony, he renders criminal assistance to such person.

(b) Hindering prosecution in the first degree is a Class C felony.

(Acts 1977, No. 607, p. 812, §4636; Acts 1979, No. 79- 471, p. 862, §1.)

http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/acas/codeofalabama/1975/13A-10-43.htm

Bend over, and kiss your career and life ‘bye-bye.’

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UPDATE: Local doctor charged with aiding teen murder suspect flee

Dr. Iqbal Memon, MD, booking photo, Madison County Sheriff Department, Huntsville, Alabama

April 16, 2012

By Kelly Kazek kelly@athensnews-courier.com

MADISON — A doctor who practiced in Athens was arrested Friday night by Madison police, accused of hindering prosecution for allegedly aiding his teen son, a murder suspect, in an attempt to flee Alabama.

Dr. Iqbal Memon, who occasionally wrote medical columns for The News Courier several years ago, was arrested after his son, Hammad Memon, 17, was captured in Dallas with his mother and 6-year-old sister. Authorities said Hammad had a Pakistani passport in his possession.

The family members apparently left Alabama Wednesday or Thursday after an express mail delivery person reported Hammad had signed for an envelope believed to contain a passport, which was a violation of the terms of Hammad’s bail on a charge of shooting to death classmate Todd Brown, 14, at Discovery Middle School in 2010. Brown lived in Madison with his mother at the time; his father Michael Brown is from Tanner.

The Memon family lives in Madison, where Memon had a second physician’s office.

Hammad was 14 at the time of the shooting but was to be tried as an adult on June 18.

Dr. Memon was charged with hindering prosecution after Madison Police investigators suspected he was not being forthcoming about his family’s location.

All You Need Is Love

I recollect, a few years ago, having gone with a dear friend to the apartment where her former husband lived.

He had died alone.

D’Angelo (not his real name) was a retired Army NCO, whom had volunteered for service. He was genuinely a “squared away” soldier, and rose to the rank of First Sergeant (E-8), which rank is politely nicknamed “Top,” because, aside from Sergeant Major which is also an E-8 position, it is the highest rank and position a NCO can obtain.

His generosity was well-known, and his humility, honesty and genuine love for his fellow man was evident throughout his life. And though he was a good man with many admirable character qualities, a congenial fellow, well liked – even loved – by many, it seemed he never could win the battle over the bottle.

What little I know of him from others’ reports and my own limited interaction with him, he was an honorable family man. And yet, his family didn’t know it, and apparently had low regard for him because of his human frailty, particularly for the bottle.

When he had retired from the Army, never one to merely sit still and wait for things to happen, he became