Samantha Pierce

I might just be throwing out any ole stuff up to get closer to my 300th post (this is number 297) but this IM conversation with my youngest sister (aka sis 3) was a bit amusing. Sis 3: Hello:-D Me: ah, yo Sis 3 : hi Me: you said that already Sis 3: watcha doing Me: blogging Sis 3: ok whats new on your blog Me: go look for yourself, I just had my 10,000th visitor. Sis 3: wow how can i start one Me: um, why would you want to start one? Sis 3: I do not know Sis 3: bye Sis 3 signed off at 9:44:46 PM. Who can fathom the depths of the mind of an almost 13 year old? Wow that makes me feel old. I still remember the day I came home from school to find sis 1 excitedly holding up sis 3 to me at the front door. "Who's he," I asked (I thought she was a little boy from church that we were supposed to be babysitting sometime that week). "Not he, she," sis 1 replied. And that was the start of a beautiful, complex, and often frustrating relationship...

Tax cuts for the rich indeed! Mr. Forby does the simple math necessary to dispel that myth in his post titled simply, Income Taxes .

Allow me to indulge in a bit of somewhat literal navel gazing. Things I Really Look Forward to Once I Give Birth Running, I actually miss being able to chase my kids down the block when they escape the house or take off down the driveway instead of getting into the car like I told them to. The return of full bladder capacity. Things aren't as bad as they were with my first two pregnancies. I can get away with only having to wake 2 or 3 times a night to go to the bathroom (as opposed to 4, 5, or 6 times). But I hate coming out of a nice deep sleep to struggle out of bed and hobble off to the bathroom. (Way back when I was a novice I used to keep an accurate count of how many times I had to trudge to the bathroom at night when pregnant but I soon realised that it was much better to try not to be fully awake for the late night potty trips because I was more likely to get more sleep in that way.) The return of full lung capacity. I hate huffing and puffing after just walki...

Off to the boonies for the annual church retreat. Behave yourselves while I'm gone okay. Be back Sunday afternoon.

I’ve had this idea rolling around in my head for months now that I wanted to write about but couldn’t quite figure out how I wanted to parse it. The comments of one “Poet” over at Joanne Jacobs’ blog helped me break through my writer’s block. So thank ye kindly dear sir/madam. This post is dedicated to you. Intelligent Educated Determined Not afraid to take responsibility for their own failings Able to think for themselves Unwilling to take no for an answer Hardworking How long do you think the last vestiges of racism in our society would last if they were faced with a generation of black people who were ready to walk the talk? Imagine an army of young black men and women well versed in the intricacies of American (their) culture, fluent in the languages of economics, science, domestic and international politics, and so many of the other things that too many now consider “white.” How long do you think the real racists that still cling to life in our society would last if they were dail...

Thomas Sowell wrote an article last year about the trend of calling autism a spectrum disorder (thanks to commenter Dan for bringing it to my attention). Sowell's argument that placing children with developmental delays on a spectrum rather than clearly defining who's in and who's out dramatically increases the number of children diagnosed with autism. Children who really only have developmental delays or were missed diagnosed end up with the label of autism for good or bad. Sowell likens it to diagnosing people on a blindness spectrum rather than just diagnosing blind or not blind. People who wear corrective lenses would fall on one end of the blindness spectrum while people who are just plain blind would fall at another end. I've always been unsatisfied with the amount of time it took for Ethan to receive a diagnosis of autism. We went into the appointment having read all of the DSM IV criteria for diagnosis of autism and it's variants. Given the complexity of th...

A couple of new blogs to bring to your attention. Black Pundit a newer comer to the blogosphere out in Cali. Reflexion by a veteran mom buddy of mine. And some blogs that have been on my favourites list for a while. Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog Bunker Mulligan Dappled Things Enjoy!

I've started up my reading on autism again (my emotionally batteries were recharged by my time off from reading). The following is an account from the beginning of chapter 7 of A Mind Apart: Understanding children with autism and Asperger syndrome by Peter Szatmari, MD with my comments. "The office was more of a mess than usual after the last appointment of the day. I looked around at the scene - my papers were on the floor, books had been pulled from the shelves, crayons had been broken, a new toy truck thrown against the wall, and my coffee cup smashed. All in a day's work, I thought, but this was a bit much." Sounds like everyday at my house. Neither of the kids have broken anything of mine in a while because I tend to put the things I really value out of their reach. Hubby hasn't completely caught on to this particular tactic yet. I've gotten him to keep most of his important stuff in a room the kids aren't allowed in but with Ethan knowing how to ope...

I've been slacking off concerning the Christian Carnival for the last few weeks but I'm trying to get back on the wagon. The 31st carnival has come to rest at Parablemania this week. Hubby has a very elaborate theme of relating posts to Kansas songs. Go check it out.

This was too funny not to post. Someone did a google search for "angry black people" and my blog came up as number 2 in the top 10 of 433 possiblities (see here ). Now why on earth would some one do a search for "angry black people"?

Hubby and I are reading through the Bible again to the accompaniment of the devotional, For the Love of God, Volume Two: A daily companion for discovery the treasures of God’s Word by D. A. Carson. We started out in volume one shortly before our first son Ethan was born. He's 3 now. One recent devotion that really got the wheels turning in my head reflected on Psalm 25 (posted below for your convenience). Psalm 25 25:1To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. 2 O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. 3 Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. 4 Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. 5 Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. 6 Remember your mercy, O LORD, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. 7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to y...

I confess, I'm a glutton for punishment. Last week just for kicks I decided to start proselytizing my family on behalf of the Republican party and President Bush in particular. My sisters are both registered Republicans but neither of them are very into politics. I'm not sure what my dad is registered as. Any conversations we have about politics usually descend rather rapidly into his disapproval of my choice to be a Republican and my choice to support President Bush. He never ribs my sisters about their politics because they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut around him. Me, I'm the irreverent first born making up for being such a good and obedient child when I was younger. Mom doesn't take sides in politics, she'll take a verbal stick to anybody (and I do mean anybody) that comes within range. She's the kind of person that every politician must dread having to talk to when they're campaigning. Mom can scare regular folk too when she's in the...

"So and so does it too!" "So and so did it first!" These are the kinds of responses I often hear when discussing race and politics. I also hear them when my little sister tries to avoid the consequences of behaviour that she knows is unacceptable. Implying that if I'm not going to get on the other party's case then I shouldn't get on her case either. Can you imagine the total brat she would be if I ever fell for that kind of reasoning? I always tell my sister (to the point where I don't actually have to say it anymore, I just give her The Look) that other people acting the fool don't give her a free pass to act the fool as well. She is responsible for how she behaves and for how she responds to other people's bad behaviour. So when someone starts carrying on about how so and so does such and such as well I am really quite unmoved. I just can't see how somebody else doing something unacceptable has any bearing on the person I'm a...

I should go to bed but I want to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics to the end. Here are my observations of the night so far. I actually got warm fuzzies when the Afghan delegation entered the stadium. My eyes started to get misty, I was expecting that at all. And they had a woman carrying their flag. My how times have changed! The other women in the delegation weren't wearing the oppressive burkas that so many had to wear for so long. They were wearing beautiful garments traditionally worn by the women of the tribes in the region. Well what do you know, the US delegation wasn't booed out of the stadium. The way some folks talk you would think we were utterly despised by all foreigners. Almost as loud as the cheer for the US was the cheer for Iraq. I got all teary eyed but I didn't blubber like a baby as I expected I would. Who was the lovely young lady dressed up like Babylonian royalty? By contrast the reception of the Iranian delegation that followe...

This was the hardest part of the series to write (see part 1 and part 2 ). I don't often articulate these things because they seem so obvious to me. It's stuff that I just know almost instinctively. It was a good exercise for me to write it all down. Next time it will be a little easier and perhaps with your input I'll be a bit more clear. Fast forward to June 2000. After a few years of wrangling with Immigration and Naturalization Services I finally got to take the oath of citizenship and become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Politics took on a whole new meaning for me because now I could vote. Now I really had to pay attention, I had the duties of a citizen to fulfill. The day after I was sworn in as a citizen I sat at my desk with my voter registration form trying to decide which party I should register under. Which one of these groups of flawed human beings would I choose to ally myself with? I turned to the one thing that has always served to direct all ...

The Blogdom of God interviews are back at Army of One . The latest interview features my very own Parableman . Go check it out.

Dan LeRoy has written an article for NRO about black conservatives. He interviewed a couple of my fellow members of the Conservative Brotherhood . Avery Tooley describes himself simply as "a regular brother with some right-leaning political tendencies." In other words, he's the kind of black American that — if you listen to the Left and our self-proclaimed "black leaders" — doesn't really exist. Tooley isn't alone in propagating this heresy in the blogosphere, either. He's one of several black bloggers who make up The Conservative Brotherhood — a group of writers which also includes some women, like La Shawn Barber, a 37-year-old legal assistant and reformed liberal from Washington, D.C., whose own "Corner" features a Christian conservative's perspective on the issues of the day. From the veteran's perspective of Baldilocks to the playful philosophizing of Ambra Nykol, the Internet is suddenly full of great black write...

It's been a very tiring week for me. I'm still working on getting the floor in the master bedroom finished. I've finally gotten to the point where I'm ready to throw down some coats of polyurethane on the floor and call it a day. Don't know when I'll be able to do that since hubby is taking off with the car tomorrow for his grandfather's funeral in Rhode Island. In the midst of all this hubby has brought home some more books on autism for me to read. (I gave him a list and he is apparently endeavoring to get me every book on that list.) I've finished the book I Need Help with School!: A guide for parents of children with autism & Asperger's Syndrome by Rebecca Moyes. Moyes details all of the hoops parents have to jump through in order to insure that their child gets appropriate therapy in a public school setting. All in all it was not a very uplifting read for me. It's good to finally get and idea of what I can expect to have to deal w...

Lawns have been sprouting political signs left and right in our neighbourhood. All but three that I've seen mention George Bush. By far the most common signs are "Bush Must Go: Human need not corporate greed" from our local Peace Council. There are too many of them to safely count while driving and it would take far too much time to walk around and count them all. There've been two or three other anti-Bush signs that I've seen but the riveting message they trumpet escapes me at the moment. I've seen two John Kerry signs and today I saw a Kerry-Edwards sign for the first time. Friday night I saw two "Bush Must Stay" signs but I wasn't able to read the small print from the road. One sign was in our neighbourhood and the other was out in the sticks south of the city. Funny thing is, I know both of the families who put the "Bush Must Stay" signs on their lawns. We go to the same church. Anyway, I find it most interesting that most of the...

Alright, I've got a couple of hours to kill before I can put down another coat of paint on the bedroom floor so I'm going to pontificate on a thing or two. Namely Jesse Jackson's claims that Jesus was a liberal (see links below). Puhleeze! Stop trying to recruit Jesus to your end of the political spectrum. I haven't got a whole lot to say about this foolishness except this. When the Commander of the army of the Lord appeared to Joshua before he took on Jericho Joshua wanted to know, "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" (Joshua 5:13) Do you know what the Commander of the army of the Lord said to Joshua the leader of God's chosen people? Do you? He said, "No, but as Commander of the army of the Lord I have now come." (v 14) What does that mean you ask? God owes no allegiance to us, he doesn't take sides in our (sometimes petty) political squabbles. We owe God our allegiance. We shouldn't be trying to manipulate history or the Bible t...

I've been bitten by the home improvement bug. When you're pregnant they call it nesting but the truth is I'm always like this. I've always got some home improvement project on my mind. Actually, I usually have several. I try to write them down in a notebook so I remember them all. Anyway, the past couple days I've been working on the master bedroom. Wednesday I finally put the top coat of paint on the walls (I've got a blister and a very sore right hand to show for all of my hard work). Yesterday I started prepping the plywood floor to be painted. I'm about 2/3 of the way done filling in nail holes and things in the floor. Then I have to sand and prime it. Hopefully I'd be ready for the decorative part of the paint job by tomorrow morning. Once I'm done with all of that then I have to clean up and put the room back together. You probably won't hear from me again until Sunday.

Hubby's gotten some books for me from the library on autism and sensory integration. Here are the titles in case you're interested: A Mind Apart: Understanding children with autism and Asperger syndrome , by Peter Szatmari (I'm half way through this one already.) Autism: Explaining the enigma , by Uta Frith (2nd edition) Sensory integration: Theory and practice , by Anita C. Bundy (This one's actually a text book.) They are all due at the end of the month so I've really got to get cracking on working my way through them. So far what I've gleaned from what I've been reading is which autistic characteristics Ethan has and which characteristics he doesn't have. Very useful stuff for making sure that he gets the kind of intervention he needs. No sense in trying to modify a behaviour that Ethan doesn't have. I can see this easily happening if we aren't constantly pestering his therapists, teachers, and evaluators about his progress. I...

Part two of my story of how I became a Republican. Off to college I went and like most other 18 year olds I was convinced that The Man was pure evil. Unlike many of my peers however, I didn't limit the definition of The Man to just Republicans. I didn't trust any politician any farther than I could throw him or her. It seemed to me that any good intentions that any man or woman had were quickly eaten away by the thirst for power. On one of my visits home my first semester of college my father lamented that he had sent me off to college to get an education and he had gotten back some radical activist. I fell in with the usual multicultural crowd that Black students are often expected to run with in college. But it wasn't a very snug fit. I never understood the value of being in college/university with people from all over the country and all over the world but only associating with "your own people". You could do that at home for a heck of a lot less money. Wasn...

Hey, I'm a large mammal in the blog ecosystem ! When did that happen? Hubby says that I've been a large mammal for a few days now. Thanks for the links people!

You know how sometimes when things are going really well you pause to think, you know, it would really suck if such and such happened right about know? Well that's what happened on Sunday morning as I got the family ready for church. Hubby's in charge of getting himself cleaned up and dressed and I'm in charge of myself and the kids. I had him bring the boys up from breakfast one at a time to get them cleaned up and dressed. All hubby had to do was take them back downstairs and put their shoes on them. Things were going well. I got Isaiah dressed with no fuss (there were the usual protests at having his hair combed) and sent him down to get his shoes. Then I got Ethan all dressed and sent him down to get his shoes. Shortly after I sent Ethan down stairs I heard a dismayed wail from Isaiah. Shortly after that I heard a very dismayed wail of, "ISAIAH," from hubby. Oh great, I thought, what disaster will I had to take care of now. Hubby came stomping up the sta...

Here we go, part one of my story about how I became a Republican. Ambra's posts about why she's not a Republican prompted me to think about my journey to my current political affiliation. It was a long and interesting road that started back when Clinton ran against GHW Bush. As Election Day 1992 approached I noticed that people seemed to be assuming that I was affiliated with the Democratic Party because I was Black. I didn't take too kindly to that assumption but I wasn't a citizen yet so I didn't feel that I really had a right to speak to that issue yet. I didn't really appreciate the nastiness directed at Bush and Quayle at the time either. Silly child that I was I thought it was far more noble to offer the public information about what you could do for them rather than how stupid the other side was. That immediately made me suspicious of the Democrats' abilities. But that’s not to say that I was immediately a convert to the Republican side. I wasn't...