Life Matters - December 10, 2025

‘’I think I’ve made every mistake now that there is to make,” said I, faking a somber face. I was speaking to my wife and children seated around the dinner table in our house in a clearing amongst the North Carolina piney woods one dreary fall day in the late ‘90s…”I flung dog poop in my own face.”

We had two high-caliber Labrador Retrievers back then, a male and a female, that, despite their being champion blood-lines, still needed their kennels cleaned out, daily being preferable. On nice days I let them run. On alternate days. 

I had what I considered the ideal setup, dog kennels tucked among towering lodgepole pines that kept an unnoticeable, but steady, drizzle of pine needles coating the double 10ft by 20ft outside area part of the kennels, with a 5ft by 20ft shed style doghouse attached to one end with a divider to separate the two dogs when needed and to run together in both kennels when times were right. A short distance behind the dog-shed was a tangle of underbrush and briars among the pines; an ideal place to fling a day or two’s worth of dog feces out of a five-gallon bucket and let nature take it from there.  

Like I said, the day was dreary. There was a bit of steady rain drizzle in the air when I retrieved said five-gallon bucket from behind the dog-shed, cleaned up two day’s worth of dog poop, and confidently approached said briar patch. A tight left-hand grip on the handle, right hand on the bottom, a quick fling…what could go wrong…Right?  

What could go wrong, happened. The bottom of the bucket was wet and therefore slippery—as is the way with plastic five-gallon buckets—my right-hand fingers lost grip of the bucket bottom as my left hand retained its tight grip on the handle, the centrifugal force and then sudden stop of the bucket, afforded by the slip, and my grip on the handle, had me facing the gaping maw of the bucket which now spewed its contents to hit me in the…that’s right…face. A chorus of eewws that should’ve been aawws, to my mind, went around the table as I concluded with, “so now I’ve flung dog poop in my own face.” And yea, I did clean up before dinner. At the hydrant. Then soap and warm water. 

Conservatives, in the broad sense of the word, are known to disagree, even verbally abuse each other, over little, as well as big, things. Perhaps it is at times an overzealous mistrust of human nature. Perhaps at times a matter of a psycho sort of pride. Perhaps at other times it stems from a necessary hashing out of details. Perhaps many times it is feelings running ahead of facts. Even when events are a result of being targeted by liberals. Perhaps at times disagreements really are a healthy catalyst in searching for Truth. 

I appreciate Candace Owens. And have, from her first book even to the present day. I appreciate how she pulled aside the emotional hub-bub about George Floyd and gave us a fuller view of the facts. In her book, BLACKOUT, which I bought soon after it was published in 2020, I appreciate, still, how she came to understand that her draw to the Democrat party was emotional more than factual. Once apprised of the facts, she exited the party and predicted a mass exit of blacks out of the Democrat party. A black exit which she came to refer to as Blackout. 

I don’t recognize the Candace Owens of today. Or maybe I do. Even though I never met her, yet in her writings, as well as her podcasts, it appeared obvious that she felt strongly about whatever subject she was addressing. “Which is good,” I thought, “as long as she keeps adhering to the facts.'“ Strong emotions about facts she adhered to was Candace. 

And that is where I don’t recognize the Candace Owens of today. Allowing facts into the backseat and feelings to drive her subject, this runaway pod has become a directionless source of evidence-free conspiracies which, I guess, we are supposed to believe simply on the merit of her strong feelings. Some of those feelings, but certainly not all, may be true but where is any evidence? So far, there is none. “Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true…honest…just…think on these things.” (see Philippians 4:8 for the full quote) If we don’t know something to be true there is no sense even thinking about it, much less giving runaway emotions any space on a worldwide media platform. That, where I went to school, is called gossip. I suppose it could also be called flying feces. 

My first year of school wasn’t the greatest. I did learn to read the Dick, Jane, Sally readers, but beyond that I no comprendo, it was as a foreign language behind a locked door without a key. The key unlocking the door for me, about the middle of second grade, was phonics. In a one-room country church school. My first year was in Western Public School. 

Western Public is no longer there—at the very west edge of New Holland PA—having been made obsolete by the second wave of consolidation following the first wave deleting one-room country schools from the registry. As the busing of students to bigger and bigger central schools continued, government controls over curriculum also consolidated, and secular humanism, already permeating the government approved National Education Association, rushed in to fill the void left by a loss of Christian-based literature. The loss has been replaced by a lot of crap. 

Uncle Sam’s fingers lost contact with the bucket bottom and he should’ve released the handle. Cleanup is essential, but expect it to be messy as Uncle Sam cleans the mess off his facespewed there by the NEA. The odious stench has assailed the nostrils of the protectors of students, their parents. 

We need the washing of water by God’s Word, the cleansing of the Holy Spirit.  

Life Matters!