Joy and Austin: Back in Arkansas?

[twinmama]

On 7/1/2017 at 4:28 PM, JesusCampSongs said:

Yikes. I know you're joking, but I hope it wasn't an actual meth house, because those are incredibly unsafe to live in, especially for small children. Any kids they have will have enough problems without adding environmental exposure to methamphetamine to the list. Remediating a meth house is really complicated and likely well beyond the knowledge and skills of your average house-flipper. 

This makes me wonder, do we know if Duggar kids or grandkids go to the pediatrician for the annual well visit? I remember when we lived in a very old apartment when my boys were little at the annual visit they tested for lead exposure and the numbers came back high for one of them. They retested by actually drawing blood and the numbers were normal, but I wonder if Duggar kids would ever know if they had something like high lead levels.

[twinmama]

17 hours ago, Palindrome said:

As for these people going to Israel to try and convert Holocaust survivors...WOW.

This seems the perfect situation for a headline grabbing scandal! "Duggar tried to convert Holocaust survivors on honeymoon!!!" because it is revolting.

[justoneoftwo]

Isn't proselytizing illegal in Israel? If they broke laws what would the consequences be?  I'm assuming problems getting a visa again?

[Four is Enough]

My kids have been to the Holocaust museum in DC because of school trips. They, as fifth graders, were affected by the trip. My husband went on those field trips. He still talks about it, many years later.

[twinmama]

4 hours ago, nickelodeon said:

Re: memorial sites and museums, didn't Ben and Jessa go to the DC Holocaust Memorial and come out with the conclusion that the Holocaust was caused by belief in evolution and was just like abortion?

Please tell me they didn't actually GO to the Holocaust museum in DC and come out with that being their main takeaway? Please. My 8th grade trip to DC (New England ftw!) was like a week or two after the Holocaust Museum opened, first week of May 1993, so we got to go right at the start. It was so moving and terrifying and humbling that I don't even remember any of my stupid 13 year old classmates being disrespectful. I presume all a Duggar actually knows about the Holocaust is the word and maybe "dead Jews," but if they have actually BEEN to the museum and still think in those terms they are beyond help.

3 hours ago, KeshetParparNesicha said:

Is it strange to say "I want to go" about a concentration camp? My great-grandfather was in Dachau and for the rest of his life he refused to speak about what happened to him. I am oddly...jealous? of all of you who have been there.

I don't think it's strange. I think it shows empathy and wanting to know a little bit about something a family member had to experience. 

[pook]

1 hour ago, pook said:

and Paris, Ontario, Canada

@Carm_88 Day trip?

[Carm_88]

20 minutes ago, pook said:

@Carm_88 Day trip?

Hahah oh definitely!  Hilarious, I knew there was one in Canada! 

[SamiKatz]

1 hour ago, pook said:

and Paris, Ontario, Canada

My dad lives in Paris, ON.

I was going to visit him one time and a co-worker asked what airline I was flying, so I told him I was taking the VIA train.  Should have seen his face!  

[Dubiousclaire]

I toured the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.  It was deeply moving and heart wrenching. My high school history teacher was Jewish and showed us documentaries about the concentration camps. People were openly sobbing in class and one person left the room to get sick. The survivors deserve respect and peace. I am sure if they wanted to convert at any time in their life, they could take it upon themselves. It's no one else's business. 

[Jana814]

I have a dog client who's father was in a concentration camp. She recently wrote a book with him about his experience. It had become a hit. (She was very surprised). If anyone is interesting in know the name let me know. I don't want to write it on a public site. 

[danni9242]

There are Holocaust survivor interviews on Youtube that are a couple of hours long and are both heartbreaking and fascinating. They start from life before the war, find out about their families etc. Many are the only survivor from their family.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

 

3 hours ago, MadeItOut said:

Pick away - though I'm intrigued what the carabinieri is? Something akin to a gendarme? Or am I thinking the wrong direction.

I've always been fascinated that Vatican city needs law enforcement at all, but then someone pointed out to me: visitors. 

The Arma dei Carabinieri was a corp of the Italian Army with public security functions, now they are a corp of public security like police but militarily organized. Traditionally they are also the butt of many jokes about their legendary lack of erm... brightness.

ETA Vatican City State always had law enforcement because it's a state with a sovereignty and crimes can be committed on its soil, not necessarily by tourists, but mostly by employees and clerics. There was a recent caseof espionage dubbed "Vatileaks" where the pope's butler leaked some private documents to the press. There was a trial and some convictions. There's also a jail in Vatican.

Spoiler

2 hours ago, Beermeet said:

@laPapessaGiovanna. The Swiss Guard is the Vatican's sworn protectors, yes?  So, there are more types of guards?

Yes the Swiss Guard is a Vatican police corp with ceremonial functions in addition to security functions, there's also the Vatican Gendarmerie that has only security and policing functions.

The Swiss Guards tradition started in 1505 iirc when pope Giulio II hired mercenaries from the Helvetica Confederation. It was pretty common at the time, Giulio II also known as the pope with the sword, had a whole army of "soldati di ventura". Generally the problem with mercenaries was their ustable loyalty. During the "sacco di Roma" in 1527 when the German Emperor, the Spanish King and some Italian principalities allied against pope Clemente VII the Swiss Guard protected the pope and saved his life showing great courage and unwavering loyalty. Their legend started that there. Nevertheless, the pope was captured and was held as PoW until he agreed to pay an enormous ransom. The Swiss Guard was disbanded and substituted as the pope's guard by corps selected among the winning Armies. Clemente VII obtained that the surviving Swiss soldiers could serve along the new guards but only 12 of them accepted because the hated the Landsknechts too much. The following pope Paul III defied the Emperor Charles V reinstating the Swiss Guard as his personal guard, following popes increased its numbers and made it part of the Army of the State of the Church. The Swiss Guard was privileged as the pope personal guard ever since the Sack of Rome because during those months “Malifuere Germani, pejores Itali, Hispani vero pessimi" (Germans were terrible, Italians worse, Spaniards really the worst).

[TeamDefraudinSquad]

The Jewish reform synagogue in my town holds a candlelight vigil every year to remember the relatives of synagogue members who died in the Holocaust. I was invited to attend it about 10 years ago, and it was one of the most powerful and humbling nights of my entire life. Every single synagogue member had a candle on the stage honoring a relative that died, and many had more than four candles to represent family members they had lost. How the Duggars, or their ilk,think they have anything to offer Holocaust survivors in terms of wisdom or lifestyle advice is beyond me. In fact, Joy and Austin could learn a lot from Holocaust survivors to strengthen their evangelism if they weren't so arrogant and closed-minded. Holocaust survivors kept their faith in God even under threat of being murdered by the Nazis, but the dumb Duggar kids believe they have more wisdom to offer because Prosperity Gospel Jesus gave them a tee-vee show and a big house, and didn't take it away from them even after the Joshley bomb was dropped. Give me a fricken' break. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

2 hours ago, Beermeet said:

 It's nice to be able to ask someone from the motherland!  Most of my family came from Scilla.  All are Calabrese, I'm forgetting the other town names at the moment.

Ask away. I am not very familiar with that part of the country though, I'm in Veneto in the north east, I've been in Calabria only once.

[HarryPotterFan]

3 hours ago, Beermeet said:

Same here.  If I happen upon a documentary, I feel compelled to watch but I can never make it through the whole thing.  I cry, get nightmares, takes me days to mentally feel better.

How these fundy assholes walk away from a Holocaust museum thinking of anything but the pure evil they were just exposed to and the mass suffering of Jews is beyond me. Snarking on them is fun, this sort of thing is why I actually hate them.

I have a hard time bringing myself to watch documentaries. After learning so much in Hebrew school (and having nightmares), and being aware that there are certainly details I don't know, it's hard

And I agree re snarking/hating

@CreationMuseumSeasonPass Wow, your grandfather sounds like an amazing man.

[Beermeet]

11 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Ask away. I am not very familiar with that part of the country though, I'm in Veneto in the north east, I've been in Calabria only once.

I sure hope I get to visit Italy someday!  I have a bit of nothern or maybe central Italy, last name of Papini.  Many had blue eyes and light hair, unlike my Calabrese family.

ETA:  Not that you care particularly,  it's just us Americans can get all excited about our roots .  : )

[MadeItOut]

34 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

 

The Arma dei Carabinieri was a corp of the Italian Army with public security functions, now they are a corp of public security like police but militarily organized.  ...etc - all interesting, but I'm trying to do better at minimal quotes.

Cool! Thanks for that.

It's probably just my ignorance sticking out like a sore thumb I now realise - I was marvelling that a state that exists only because of a religion (in my brain, I was thinking kinda oversized commune) could possibly have crime - and then I caught myself and realised about how many countries are there because of religion ...& how many serious crimes derive from religious communities...

 

Hey, TLC, here's a pitch: send a disabled, Pagan chick to Vatican city to learn/appropriate a totally different religion and culture from the horses mouth. 35 minutes of excruciating faux pas, intersperse some THs of totally overexcited nothingness... What's that? You already have some similar material? Well fab! Good luck with it.

[Iamtheway]

2 hours ago, twinmama said:

This seems the perfect situation for a headline grabbing scandal! "Duggar tried to convert Holocaust survivors on honeymoon!!!" because it is revolting.

From your keyboard to Inquisitors front page. 

[melon]

When I was almost 16,I went to Europe with my aunt,uncle,grandmother and cousins.Our first stop was Amsterdam.We went on a canal tour,and we saw the Anne Frank House,but my aunt claimed it would be "too sad".My cousin and I really wanted to go.Also my boys'pediatrician,his father was a concentration camp survivor,he was 14 when he went to Aushwitz(spelling) his mother was shot,in front of him,and I think he was the only survivor from his family.He used to come to local schools and talk to the students about it,and show them his tattoo.When he was released,he met another guy on the train,in a similar situation,they became life long friends,and he also spoke at local school with our pediatrician's father.

[lumpentheologie]

2 hours ago, MadeItOut said:

Wasn't Darwinism on it's own not even a blip on the radar for the church initially (as in, when the man himself wrote the book) since it didn't argue anything especially against the faith...?

The Church of England was definitely against it when the Origin of Species came out in 1859. There had already been other proponents of evolution since the 1830s, and they were loudly condemned by most everyone important. The thing was that previous theories didn't propose a credible mechanism for evolution -- that's what Darwin achieved with natural selection.  He came up with the theory more than a dozen years before that, but was scared to publish since the majority view at the time was that the idea of evolution was basically blasphemy. 

The Origin of Species does still allow for a God to create life in the first place, and then to guide the course of evolution, but it does strongly imply that humans (in addition to all other life) evolved from some very crude primordial life form. That makes it clear that a literal reading of the creation in Genesis is no longer possible, that man was not created in God's image in the way people were used to thinking of it.  It also was often understood as ushering in a crueler world than many people thought a benevolent Providence would arrange, since the competition to survive was the driving force behind the whole history of life, along with the subsequent continual mass extinction of species.

The Church of England came around relatively quickly, before Darwin's death in 1889. Other churches of course had different reactions. 

(I taught this last semester, so it's still fresh in my head.) 

[MadeItOut]

35 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Ask away. I am not very familiar with that part of the country though, I'm in Veneto in the north east, I've been in Calabria only once.

How weird - Mr MIO's family were from Calabria, then moved north - in and around borgosesia. Small world!

[louisa05]

3 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

As I've mentioned before, I've not been to the Holocaust Museum in DC. Do the exhibits/stories there only reflect the Jews who were murdered? Do they point out that it wasn't only Jews who were systematically killed? I didn't know, until I visited Dachau, the breadth of the Nazi hate for certain groups (homosexuals, gypsies, disabled people, Catholic priests, communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.).

Yes, the museum does an excellent job in showing the totality of the Holocaust and acknowledging all the groups affected, not just in the exhibits but in the educational resources they produce. 

I attended a seminar for teachers that was partially held at the museum all the way back in 2001. Our group had a private tour followed by free access to the exhibits prior to the day's opening followed by a workshop for the rest of the day. It was an overwhelming and life changing experience. 

I worked in Holocaust education formally for one school year as well. I have also met many survivors in several different settings. Attempting to convert these people is heinous and disgusting. Those that have given time in their lives to bear witness to what they survived should get nothing but our respect, especially at the advanced age those who remain with us are. 

[Jaeniduggar]

I have been to several concentration camps, as it is part of our curriculum in school. Makes you skin crawl to see the fingernail marks on the shower walls. I had a hard time breathing to whole time on the grounds at Dachau.

[MadeItOut]

5 minutes ago, lumpentheologie said:

 

(I taught this last semester, so it's still fresh in my head.) 

You know what, they should just go ahead and put rai!ings around FJ and acknowledge what a colossally brilliant and varied repository of knowledge we are.

 

...not to give anyone any ideas, but supposing FJ suddenly managed the world, I'd feel safe with that.

[Jinder Roles]

2 hours ago, justoneoftwo said:

Isn't proselytizing illegal in Israel? If they broke laws what would the consequences be?  I'm assuming problems getting a visa again?

It's not illegal but generally not taken well. It is illegal for anyone under age 18 to convert unless one of their parents is a part of another religion. 

There are Orthodox groups that have programs to counteract evangelistic efforts. However, the Israeli government itself has in the past has allowed some American missionary trips, conferences etc. In the 80s, the rise of the Moral Majority (led by Jerry Falwell) influenced foreign policy into becoming actively pro-Israel. Most evangelicals today are staunchly pro-Israel. Evangelical political groups have a working relationship with Likud government (that is the conservative right party currently led by Netanyahu) who benefit from their support. 

However, in the 80s and 90s the message was more about support Israel rather than converting. I'm not sure how this organization fares, especially since it seems to be led by Israeli citizens. 

p.s: I'm sorry I'm such a history nerd.