A review of a new book about the US artist, Alexander Calder, described how he employed physics in the service of art. Reading this, I was reminded that my sister, who has an art major degree. looked at a drawing of the coronavirus and saw a similarity with the look of the Times Square ball that drops on New Year's.
Science, it seems, also could be employed in the service of art. Picture how the motion of constantly copying genes could be expressed the way Calder incorporated motion in his art.
Every field can be expressed in art. If employees were encouraged to design and decorate their cubicles, the idea of dressing to express on casual Fridays might lead to occasional happy hour tours of minimal and exuberant art in employee spaces. Consider the variety of ways food can be arranged on a plate; how politicians around the world express their policies in the green, pink, yellow and red-white-and-blue graphics on their campaign posters; and how the pattern of interstate roads moves the eye across a country like the lines on a Mondrian painting.
"(I)t is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self," said British psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott. Viewed this way, laughing at and ignoring an individual's creative spirit stifles growth and development. Hitler may not have been a great artist, but wouldn't humanity have been better off if he expressed himself in art rather than in creating the "final solution"?
Family life could be much fuller and much more satisfying, if each member were encouraged to create. It is easy to laugh at a relative's out-of-the-box ideas and creations, but during the coronavirus lockdown, we have seen the joy of family members taking videos, dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, taking photos out of windows, painting, cooking, reciting original poems, sewing colorful protective masks, and tailoring outfits for pets. Some people have the confidence to never doubt themselves, but being laughed at is enough to discourage the creativity of most.
Finally, observation helps nurture creative expression the way my sister connected seeing a drawing of COVID-19 with the Times Square ball. When Calder awoke on the deck of a ship one day, he saw a red sunrise on one side and a silvery moon on the other. In the solar system, he realized two very different phenomena are related, just as the moving parts and shapes on his mobiles would be connected later.
Encouraging observation and nurturing creative expression beyond one already established right way of doing something can benefit self, family and maybe even humanity.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Saturday, April 18, 2020
China-Mongolia and the Deaths of Race Horses in California
Many aspects of global life illustrate how connected the world is. As preposterous as a connection between China, Mongolia, and last year's deaths of 23 horses at California's Santa Anita racetrack seems, it is a connection worthy of investigation.
On the books, China's Communist regime outlawed gambling when it took over in 1949. Efforts continue to purge online betting apps, and prison awaits those who challenge Chairman Xi's abhorrence of corruption. Nonetheless, local administrators of state-run lotteries manage to take their cuts, gamblers access online casino apps designed in Southeast Asia, illegal mah jong games hide from overhead drones in China's woods and mountains, and police even had to break up gambling at a cricket fighting tournament near Shanghai in August, 2019.
Off shore, casinos dominate Macao, a former Portuguese island and now a Chinese Special Administrative Region. In 2017, New Zealand created a Jockey Club to attract Chinese thoroughbred buyers and to cater to Chinese owners who want to train and race their horses in Australia and New Zealand. When Justify won the Kentucky Derby and the other two legs of the U.S. Triple Crown in 2018, owners from the China Horse Club just laughed after a reporter questioned how racing squared with China's ban on gambling.
If there is a connection between China and the 23 race horses that died at Santa Anita, it runs through China's landlocked northern neighbor, Mongolia. The historic domain of Genghis Khan's horses and riders also is the current home of dusty courses where hundreds of children as young as five ride bareback in races to win a Russian-made car. When racing was legal in China, owners used to send their horses north to strengthen their bones by grazing in the nutrient-rich pastures of Mongolia. Reporting on the fatal leg injury that caused the horse, Mongolian Groom, to be euthanized after the Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita in November, 2019, Billy Reed mentioned the need to reassess the calcium-building limestone content of the soil and water where many race horses graze in Kentucky.
As a cause of last year's race horse deaths, in recent months the coronavirus is receiving more attention that the dietary value of Kentucky's pastures, Scientists suspected COVID-19 could pass between animals and humans after researchers discovered pig farmers died of coronavirus in Malaysia. Observers watched bats land on a tree and poop into a vat of pig slop. Tests found the bats carried COVID-19 and transmitted the disease to farmers who had contact with the pig slop.
The coronavirus that affects humans and the equine enteric (gastrointestinal) coronavirus horses pass between each other are both among the large group of RNA messenger viruses. Since both forms of the virus in horses and humans lock onto cells using the same kind of spikes, transmission between these species is highly probable. Lack of evidence showing horses and humans exchange COVID-19 at this time may be a function of a lack of testing fecal samples of thoroughbred race horses and the failure to test personnel at Mongolian Stable, who may have shown little or no initial symptoms of the virus.
In August, 2019, the San Diego Tribune ran a photo showing Enebish Ganbat, a Mongolian who trains horses at Mongolian Stable, kissing Mongolian Groom's face. Such gestures, not unusual among those who love and care for horses, provide ample opportunity for humans and horses to transmit coronavirus to each other. Horses contract equine enteric coronavirus by contact with surfaces exposed to the manure of infected horses or by consuming some of their manure. Therefore, to prevent contracting coronavirus from a horse, people need to wash their hands whenever they touch anything, such as a shovel or pitchfork, that may have been in contact with an infected horse's manure. Unless humans who have or may not yet show symptoms of COVID-19 wear masks, they may spread coronavirus to horses.
Before racing resumes at Santa Anita this summer, last year's fate of Mongolian Groom is reason to test the nutrient value of Kentucky's pastures and to test for the presence of coronavirus in the horses that race there.
On the books, China's Communist regime outlawed gambling when it took over in 1949. Efforts continue to purge online betting apps, and prison awaits those who challenge Chairman Xi's abhorrence of corruption. Nonetheless, local administrators of state-run lotteries manage to take their cuts, gamblers access online casino apps designed in Southeast Asia, illegal mah jong games hide from overhead drones in China's woods and mountains, and police even had to break up gambling at a cricket fighting tournament near Shanghai in August, 2019.
Off shore, casinos dominate Macao, a former Portuguese island and now a Chinese Special Administrative Region. In 2017, New Zealand created a Jockey Club to attract Chinese thoroughbred buyers and to cater to Chinese owners who want to train and race their horses in Australia and New Zealand. When Justify won the Kentucky Derby and the other two legs of the U.S. Triple Crown in 2018, owners from the China Horse Club just laughed after a reporter questioned how racing squared with China's ban on gambling.
If there is a connection between China and the 23 race horses that died at Santa Anita, it runs through China's landlocked northern neighbor, Mongolia. The historic domain of Genghis Khan's horses and riders also is the current home of dusty courses where hundreds of children as young as five ride bareback in races to win a Russian-made car. When racing was legal in China, owners used to send their horses north to strengthen their bones by grazing in the nutrient-rich pastures of Mongolia. Reporting on the fatal leg injury that caused the horse, Mongolian Groom, to be euthanized after the Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita in November, 2019, Billy Reed mentioned the need to reassess the calcium-building limestone content of the soil and water where many race horses graze in Kentucky.
As a cause of last year's race horse deaths, in recent months the coronavirus is receiving more attention that the dietary value of Kentucky's pastures, Scientists suspected COVID-19 could pass between animals and humans after researchers discovered pig farmers died of coronavirus in Malaysia. Observers watched bats land on a tree and poop into a vat of pig slop. Tests found the bats carried COVID-19 and transmitted the disease to farmers who had contact with the pig slop.
The coronavirus that affects humans and the equine enteric (gastrointestinal) coronavirus horses pass between each other are both among the large group of RNA messenger viruses. Since both forms of the virus in horses and humans lock onto cells using the same kind of spikes, transmission between these species is highly probable. Lack of evidence showing horses and humans exchange COVID-19 at this time may be a function of a lack of testing fecal samples of thoroughbred race horses and the failure to test personnel at Mongolian Stable, who may have shown little or no initial symptoms of the virus.
In August, 2019, the San Diego Tribune ran a photo showing Enebish Ganbat, a Mongolian who trains horses at Mongolian Stable, kissing Mongolian Groom's face. Such gestures, not unusual among those who love and care for horses, provide ample opportunity for humans and horses to transmit coronavirus to each other. Horses contract equine enteric coronavirus by contact with surfaces exposed to the manure of infected horses or by consuming some of their manure. Therefore, to prevent contracting coronavirus from a horse, people need to wash their hands whenever they touch anything, such as a shovel or pitchfork, that may have been in contact with an infected horse's manure. Unless humans who have or may not yet show symptoms of COVID-19 wear masks, they may spread coronavirus to horses.
Before racing resumes at Santa Anita this summer, last year's fate of Mongolian Groom is reason to test the nutrient value of Kentucky's pastures and to test for the presence of coronavirus in the horses that race there.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Hands-On Educational Magic
If metal balls are tipped down a big board filled with vertically-divided rows, they fall into a bell curve. At least that is what my granddaughter and I caused to happen when we participated in a discovery day at the University of Wisconsin. The effect reminded me of the statistics professor who brought our graduate class a large bowl of colored marbles and a scoop that had indentations we each filled with five marbles and then averaged the number of green marbles to demonstrate how sampling works.
At a middle school, a remedial math teacher brought in a Makey Makey circuit board, sewing kit, and 3Doodler pen. Students grouped themselves by interest to use each device. When students in a regular math class saw what the remedial math students were doing they voluntarily signed up to attend the math support class twice a week.
What were the remedial math students doing? They played a song on six bananas wired together and to the circuit board. Some students began seeing how they could make a circle in a football team's logo by embroidering an arrangement of the squares made by cross-stitch Xs, the same way pixels do on a computer screen. By using the 3Doodler pen to draw the same 2-dimensional design over and over again on top of each other, students learned how 3D printing is making a wide variety of products, including homes.
Finally, students in the regular math class saw how the remedial students purchased additional circuit boards and supplies for the sewing basket and 3Doodler pens by perfectly pricing and selling pencils.
Students everywhere in the world have creative juices. Invite them to illustrate the books they read, figure out how to move heavy rocks, use as little cushioning as possible to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from different heights, dissect an old watch, not only a frog.
At a middle school, a remedial math teacher brought in a Makey Makey circuit board, sewing kit, and 3Doodler pen. Students grouped themselves by interest to use each device. When students in a regular math class saw what the remedial math students were doing they voluntarily signed up to attend the math support class twice a week.
What were the remedial math students doing? They played a song on six bananas wired together and to the circuit board. Some students began seeing how they could make a circle in a football team's logo by embroidering an arrangement of the squares made by cross-stitch Xs, the same way pixels do on a computer screen. By using the 3Doodler pen to draw the same 2-dimensional design over and over again on top of each other, students learned how 3D printing is making a wide variety of products, including homes.
Finally, students in the regular math class saw how the remedial students purchased additional circuit boards and supplies for the sewing basket and 3Doodler pens by perfectly pricing and selling pencils.
Students everywhere in the world have creative juices. Invite them to illustrate the books they read, figure out how to move heavy rocks, use as little cushioning as possible to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from different heights, dissect an old watch, not only a frog.
Friday, April 10, 2020
A Book for Global Peacemakers
Richard Brookhiser looked at competing factions and went back to the development and struggles associated with writing 13 key documents to find a structure for satisfying the human desire for liberty. Rather that produce a ponderous tome for scholars, in 262 readable pages, his Give Me Liberty identifies a peaceful foundation for countries.
Liberty is closely related to other ideas: consent of the governed, freedom, democracy, and the God-given human rights of equal individuals.
Beginning with the first English settlement in 17th century Jamestown, Virginia, on the North American continent, colonists objected to sole rule by the London-based Virginia Company's royal governor. They elected members to a general assembly empowered to decide local matters by a majority vote. Although the governor could veto these decisions, it took four months of ocean voyages before the assembly learned his wishes. By 1699, the assembly decided to move to Williamsburg, Virginia, and its elected members became an independent body. The governor retained a veto, but a principle, consent of the governed rather than fiat, was established. There would be "no taxation without representation."
Back in Jamestown, the first general assembly acknowledged "men's affaires doe little prosper where God's service is neglected." In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson would write: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." In short, human rights are Creator-given to all mankind as part of their human nature. When human rights, which are derived from God, are trampled, as the colonists claimed they were by George III, the Declaration of Independence noted rebellion is justified.
Around the world, liberty continues to roll out much too slowly for slaves, women, and immigrants. James Madison justified excluding the word, slave, from the U.S. Constitution, because it would be wrong to admit men could be property. In his 1863 Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln finally affirmed the United States." was conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Two years later the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but 100 years after the Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told a March on Washington the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were promissory notes still unpaid.
At the first women's convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, the former slave, Frederick Douglass, and the only black person who attended, concluded, "(I)f that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to women the exercise of the elective franchise." Not until 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution eventually grant suffragists the right to vote. Unlike other countries in the world, as yet no woman has headed the U.S. government.
In opposition to Jewish, Irish, German, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants, a U.S. voting bloc formed the Know-Nothing Party. In contrast, Emma Lazarus, who was proud of a country willing to take in the poor and oppressed, wrote a poem honoring the waves of immigrants "yearning to be free." With the help of the French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, and funding from Joseph Pulitzer, a Statue of Liberty rose in New York harbor in 1886. Ms. Lazarus preferred calling the statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World." and her poem became the message on the statue's base.
The Monroe Doctrine began an effort to guarantee liberty throughout the world. On December 2, 1823, U.S. President Monroe sent an open letter to Congress announcing the Americas were closed to conquest. Outside interference, he claimed, would be viewed as "an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." Some 107 years later, in a "Fireside Chat," President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared the United States to enter World War II by noting the Western Hemisphere was no longer protected by the Atlantic Ocean. A year later Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and proved the Pacific Ocean no longer shielded the country either. Liberty needed a defense everywhere in the world.
By 1980, when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, the Berlin Wall symbolized 40 years of unchecked Communist expansion. At the Brandenburg Gate in the wall separating West and East Berlin, President Reagan, in 1987, chastised the godless, totalitarian Soviet regime for restricting "freedom for all mankind." He told General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "(T)ear down this wall," and on November 9, 1989, free men tore down the Berlin Wall.
It seems, as long as people lack liberty, peace is not possible.
Liberty is closely related to other ideas: consent of the governed, freedom, democracy, and the God-given human rights of equal individuals.
Beginning with the first English settlement in 17th century Jamestown, Virginia, on the North American continent, colonists objected to sole rule by the London-based Virginia Company's royal governor. They elected members to a general assembly empowered to decide local matters by a majority vote. Although the governor could veto these decisions, it took four months of ocean voyages before the assembly learned his wishes. By 1699, the assembly decided to move to Williamsburg, Virginia, and its elected members became an independent body. The governor retained a veto, but a principle, consent of the governed rather than fiat, was established. There would be "no taxation without representation."
Back in Jamestown, the first general assembly acknowledged "men's affaires doe little prosper where God's service is neglected." In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson would write: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." In short, human rights are Creator-given to all mankind as part of their human nature. When human rights, which are derived from God, are trampled, as the colonists claimed they were by George III, the Declaration of Independence noted rebellion is justified.
Around the world, liberty continues to roll out much too slowly for slaves, women, and immigrants. James Madison justified excluding the word, slave, from the U.S. Constitution, because it would be wrong to admit men could be property. In his 1863 Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln finally affirmed the United States." was conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Two years later the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but 100 years after the Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told a March on Washington the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were promissory notes still unpaid.
At the first women's convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, the former slave, Frederick Douglass, and the only black person who attended, concluded, "(I)f that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to women the exercise of the elective franchise." Not until 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution eventually grant suffragists the right to vote. Unlike other countries in the world, as yet no woman has headed the U.S. government.
In opposition to Jewish, Irish, German, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants, a U.S. voting bloc formed the Know-Nothing Party. In contrast, Emma Lazarus, who was proud of a country willing to take in the poor and oppressed, wrote a poem honoring the waves of immigrants "yearning to be free." With the help of the French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, and funding from Joseph Pulitzer, a Statue of Liberty rose in New York harbor in 1886. Ms. Lazarus preferred calling the statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World." and her poem became the message on the statue's base.
The Monroe Doctrine began an effort to guarantee liberty throughout the world. On December 2, 1823, U.S. President Monroe sent an open letter to Congress announcing the Americas were closed to conquest. Outside interference, he claimed, would be viewed as "an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." Some 107 years later, in a "Fireside Chat," President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared the United States to enter World War II by noting the Western Hemisphere was no longer protected by the Atlantic Ocean. A year later Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and proved the Pacific Ocean no longer shielded the country either. Liberty needed a defense everywhere in the world.
By 1980, when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, the Berlin Wall symbolized 40 years of unchecked Communist expansion. At the Brandenburg Gate in the wall separating West and East Berlin, President Reagan, in 1987, chastised the godless, totalitarian Soviet regime for restricting "freedom for all mankind." He told General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "(T)ear down this wall," and on November 9, 1989, free men tore down the Berlin Wall.
It seems, as long as people lack liberty, peace is not possible.
Monday, April 6, 2020
Revisit the Search for Malaysia Flight 370
Not all airplane crashes in water have the happy ending of Captain Sullenberger's successful landing in the Hudson River. Downed off the west coast of Australia in water 20,000 or more feet deep,
Malaysia Flight 370 has never been found.
What we know and don't know about the ocean's hadal zone 20,000 to 36,000 feet under water may explain why Flight 370 is still missing. Heavy ships, like the Titanic, constructed to sail the high seas have been found in large identifiable chunks after they sank. An airplane, made to sail through the air, is not a vehicle for: 1) crashing into a wall of water at the accelerating rate of gravity (The one piece of Flight 370 found on Reunion Island off the eastern coast of Africa may have broken off at this level when the plane hit the water.) and 2) withstanding the two million pounds of pressure per square foot exerted in the Indian Ocean troughs at the greatest depth of the hadal zone.
On Earth, a person is under a certain amount of atmospheric pressure. Under 33 feet of water, the same person is under twice as much pressure as on Earth. Every 33 feet more under water exerts another amount of pressure equal to the amount of atmospheric pressure a person feels on land. At 300 feet down, someone would be subjected to 10 times the atmospheric pressure exerted on him or her on Earth.
Vehicles attempting to explore deeper and deeper under water trenches have shuddered and bucked; their windows cracked, they have needed headlanps to see in the dark; and they have landed in blinding plumes of sediment. In 2014, an unmanned dive by Nereux, the best deepwater robotic vehicle designed thus far, broke apart under the hadal zone's crushing pressure at about 33,000 feet below the Earth's surface.
Nothing would seem to prevent the water pressure on airplanes that crash into deep dark water from breaking them into pieces of debris at depths where they would be nearly impossible to locate.
Malaysia Flight 370 has never been found.
What we know and don't know about the ocean's hadal zone 20,000 to 36,000 feet under water may explain why Flight 370 is still missing. Heavy ships, like the Titanic, constructed to sail the high seas have been found in large identifiable chunks after they sank. An airplane, made to sail through the air, is not a vehicle for: 1) crashing into a wall of water at the accelerating rate of gravity (The one piece of Flight 370 found on Reunion Island off the eastern coast of Africa may have broken off at this level when the plane hit the water.) and 2) withstanding the two million pounds of pressure per square foot exerted in the Indian Ocean troughs at the greatest depth of the hadal zone.
On Earth, a person is under a certain amount of atmospheric pressure. Under 33 feet of water, the same person is under twice as much pressure as on Earth. Every 33 feet more under water exerts another amount of pressure equal to the amount of atmospheric pressure a person feels on land. At 300 feet down, someone would be subjected to 10 times the atmospheric pressure exerted on him or her on Earth.
Vehicles attempting to explore deeper and deeper under water trenches have shuddered and bucked; their windows cracked, they have needed headlanps to see in the dark; and they have landed in blinding plumes of sediment. In 2014, an unmanned dive by Nereux, the best deepwater robotic vehicle designed thus far, broke apart under the hadal zone's crushing pressure at about 33,000 feet below the Earth's surface.
Nothing would seem to prevent the water pressure on airplanes that crash into deep dark water from breaking them into pieces of debris at depths where they would be nearly impossible to locate.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
What Did the Ancients Do in Times of Crisis?
Children of Israel complained to Moses that they were dying from "wretched food" and lack of water during their escape from Egypt. A doctor, asked on the "Today" show March 31, 2020, how she was able to come into the hospital to face a long strenuous shift every day said, "I pray."
Besides praying to a god in general, Saints Jude and Rita, known as patrons of the impossible, are a special option. Of course, God may respond, you got your answer, the answer is "No" or "Not now." Those also are familiar responses from a "Magic 8 Ball" and the conch shell SpongeBob and Squidward consult.
Prayer is a request. Sometimes we don't like the answer. There's always a chance we might be asking for the wrong thing, for something that will be provided later, or for some need we can satisfy ourselves or by asking someone on Earth.
Prayer can require persistence. Those who recognize St. Augustine as a 4th century Catholic bishop and renowned scholar, known as a doctor of the church, may not know his mother, St. Monica, spent at least 17 years praying for his conversion.
A few times, the Virgin Mary, known as the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has appeared on Earth pleading for prayer and penance to prevent suffering. At Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, she came to three children and told them World War I would end but another world war would follow if atheistic Communism and the persecution of Christians continued. She asked that Russia be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, just as the United States is. As evidence of her appearance and message, a sign occurred. The sun dropped and nearly touched the Earth where about 70,000 people assembled in and near a small Portuguese grotto on October 13, 1917. "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima," a 1952 feature film dramatizing the entire 1917 experience, is still available.
Russia has not been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Russia and the United States have been enemies ever since the end of World War II. President Ronald Reagan branded the godless totalitarian Soviet regime a threat to "freedom for all mankind." To illustrate Communism's misguided notions, President Reagan, according to Dr. Richard Brookhiser's new book, GIVE ME LIBERTY, used to quote WITNESS, the memoir by Whitaker Chambers, a U.S. journalist and Soviet spy who looked at his baby daughter's intricately formed ear and began to doubt chance caused atoms to come together to create everything in nature.
For those who recognize God, prayer need not be long or complex. Just ask, "Please help us."
Besides praying to a god in general, Saints Jude and Rita, known as patrons of the impossible, are a special option. Of course, God may respond, you got your answer, the answer is "No" or "Not now." Those also are familiar responses from a "Magic 8 Ball" and the conch shell SpongeBob and Squidward consult.
Prayer is a request. Sometimes we don't like the answer. There's always a chance we might be asking for the wrong thing, for something that will be provided later, or for some need we can satisfy ourselves or by asking someone on Earth.
Prayer can require persistence. Those who recognize St. Augustine as a 4th century Catholic bishop and renowned scholar, known as a doctor of the church, may not know his mother, St. Monica, spent at least 17 years praying for his conversion.
A few times, the Virgin Mary, known as the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has appeared on Earth pleading for prayer and penance to prevent suffering. At Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, she came to three children and told them World War I would end but another world war would follow if atheistic Communism and the persecution of Christians continued. She asked that Russia be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, just as the United States is. As evidence of her appearance and message, a sign occurred. The sun dropped and nearly touched the Earth where about 70,000 people assembled in and near a small Portuguese grotto on October 13, 1917. "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima," a 1952 feature film dramatizing the entire 1917 experience, is still available.
Russia has not been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Russia and the United States have been enemies ever since the end of World War II. President Ronald Reagan branded the godless totalitarian Soviet regime a threat to "freedom for all mankind." To illustrate Communism's misguided notions, President Reagan, according to Dr. Richard Brookhiser's new book, GIVE ME LIBERTY, used to quote WITNESS, the memoir by Whitaker Chambers, a U.S. journalist and Soviet spy who looked at his baby daughter's intricately formed ear and began to doubt chance caused atoms to come together to create everything in nature.
For those who recognize God, prayer need not be long or complex. Just ask, "Please help us."
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