It Reads Like A Bad Novel

I mentioned a couple of years ago how a woman's unbelieveable accusations, many years ago, of Satanic child sexual abuse by a Catholic priest--were now suddenly more credible, as they arrested the priest for murder. Now, he has been convicted of that crime:

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - A priest accused of stabbing a Roman Catholic nun to death as she prepared for Easter services 26 years ago was found guilty Thursday of murder that prosecutors say was steeped in religious ritual.

Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was stabbed 31 times through an altar cloth, with the punctures forming an upside down cross. Her killer then anointed her with a smudge of her blood on the forehead to humiliate her in death, prosecutors said.

The Rev. Gerald Robinson, now 68, had been early suspect in the killing but wasn't charged until two years ago.

The significance of an upside cross should be obvious. On top of this lurid murder/suicide/molestation case involving another Catholic priest, it just makes my brain spin.

Interesting Citations About Sexual Abuse & Sexual Orientation

I pointed out in a comment over here that sexual abuse of children and adult homosexuality are positively correlated, and this really shouldn't be any surprise, especially for lesbians. Not surprisingly, the homosexual law professor and law student brigade started calling me names. Another commenter put up a rather extensive list of abstracts from recent journal articles on the subject.

Sexual assault and alcohol abuse: a comparison of lesbians and heterosexual women. Hughes TL, Johnson T, Wilsnack SC. J Subst Abuse. 2001;13(4):515-32.

RESULTS: Lesbians reported more childhood sexual experiences, were more likely to meet the study definition for childhood sexual abuse (CSA), and were more likely to perceive themselves as having been sexually abused as children. CSA was associated with lifetime alcohol abuse in both lesbian and heterosexual women.


Sexual Orientation, Sexual Abuse, and HIV-Risk Behaviors Among Adolescents in the Pacific Northwest. Saewyc E, Skay C, Richens K, Reis E, Poon C, Murphy A. Am J Public Health. 2006 May 2

Conclusion. Sexual minority adolescents who attended school reported higher HIV risk behaviors, and higher prevalence of sexual victimization may partially explain these risks.


Victimization over the life span: a comparison of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual siblings. Balsam KF, Rothblum ED, Beauchaine TP. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2005 Jun;73(3):477-87.

Compared with heterosexual participants, LGB participants reported more childhood psychological and physical abuse by parents or caretakers, more childhood sexual abuse, more partner psychological and physical victimization in adulthood, and more sexual assault experiences in adulthood. Sexual orientation differences in sexual victimization were greater among men than among women.

Lesbian survivors of childhood sexual abuse: community, identity, and resilience. Baker S. Can J Commun Ment Health. 2003 Fall;22(2):31-45.

Adult lesbian survivers of childood sexual abuse were interviewed using grounded and structured methods to explore the interaction between being, or coming out as, a lesbian and healing from childhood sexual abuse (CSA). A history of CSA was found to render coming out as a lesbian more complicated and often more difficult. Having or developing a lesbian identity caused significant changes in respondents' social support networks and spiritual beliefs and communities, afforded many opportunities for greater healing, and in the balance seemed to facilitate the healing process.

Comparative data of childhood and adolescence molestation in heterosexual and homosexual persons. Tomeo ME, Templer DI, Anderson S, Kotler D. Arch Sex Behav. 2001 Oct;30(5):535-41.

In research with 942 nonclinical adult participants, gay men and lesbian women reported a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than did heterosexual men and women. Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation. Twenty-two percent of lesbian women in contrast to 1% of heterosexual women reported homosexual molestation. This research is apparently the first survey that has reported substantial homosexual molestation of girls.

House Project: The Concrete Problems; The Aching Beauty

I've mentioned the concrete problems that we have been having, and I am going to give you some pictures, but first, let me tell you some good news.

The problem with the pressurization tank squirting water on the garage floor (typically a bit less than a gallon a day) seems to have gone away. It has remained continent for a week now. Richard the Water Boy indicated that the heat from the water heater (which I had set up to scalding) was causing water in the pressurization pump to overheat, and force its way out the relief valve. This is actually plausible to me; the water heater isn't that far away, and with limited use of the hot water, i can see how heat from it would conduct through the pipes to the pressurization pump.

Now, for the concrete. Instead of having boring gray concrete sidewalks and driveway aprons, we decided to have the Brickform stamping system used with what the brochure calls "ColorTech Quality Concrete Color Technologies." (Brand names included to make sure that you are aware of what didn't work for me, and may not work for you.)

I mentioned both the problem of the repour coming out gray, not "amber rose," and that the coating that they concrete guy applied came out inconsistent and very dark--closer to nut brown. Unlike the other pictures on this sight, I've cut these down to pretty small size, and I skipped the thumbnails. These pictures aren't that big because, to be honest, they don't need to be big to see the problems, and they aren't beautiful pictures. (There are some beautiful pictures later in this post; be patient.)

You can see the inconsistency of the finish, and that in some spots it is dull, but the right color, and shiny but dark in others. In other pictures, you can see paint and gray concrete droppings that they didn't bother to remove before applying the finish.





















Here you can see where they patched cracks in the concrete with a gray material--which looks horrible.





You can also see the problems with the stamping process. The theory is that the concrete guys stamp a pattern into the concrete when it is still wet. It adds visual interest to it, and makes it a bit less slippery when wet. Unfortunately, concrete has a limited lifetime after they mix it, and apparently the concrete guy failed to appreciate that in the time it took to drive to the building site, that much of it would no longer be stampable. In some places, it came out as it was supposed to, with both lines in the concrete, and real relief. In other places, the pattern is there, but barely, and there is no significant relief.





There are also just inexplicable patches of gray.



Here's a place where you can see a piece of the repour, and the concrete that they replaced. The gray stuff supposedly had the coloring agent added to it, but I sure don't see any sign of it. The concrete guy has decided that he is not going to do anything more to solve this problem.



Next time, I'll just have gray concrete poured instead. We spent $3000+ extra for this stamped color concrete, and it was just money poured down a rathole.

Okay, enough whining. On to pictures that show the aching beauty of the place.

The wild flowers are starting to bloom; here's one why wife picked on the back part of the property.


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Here's the view from the back porch, looking down into Horseshoe Bend. Spring has arrived!


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Here's a zoom into where the Payette River enters town.


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Here are a few of our neighbors. We call this house, "Abraham Lincoln wins the lottery." It is 14,000 square feet. The owner works for the post office. (There better be a big inheritance somewhere in that story, or I will be worried.)


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Right down the hill from us is a property where the owner abandoned plans to build a house because of a divorce. There is a motor home parked there on a permanent basis, and quite a bit of...let's be polite...stuff. Supposedly he sold it late last year, but it still has enough stuff present that we call it Hooterville, after the town in the series Green Acres. We're cutting him some slack on the state of things; a divorce must be a profoundly wrenching experience.


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I don't know much about this family down the hill, just that they have two little boys and more recreational vehicles than I can count. We briefly considered buying the white house when it was going into foreclosure last year. We could have bought it for $189,000, but it was just too small, and I think we ended up with a superior view and much superior home.


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This house was one of the first built in this subdivision, back when it was called Solar City, because it had no electric power. The south face of the house has enormous windows which used to have photovoltatic cells in them. When the original builder left the area, he took the panels with him.


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This is a very interesting house--something of a catalog of things not to do. It is clearly inspired by a New Mexico house called "Sun Cave," which was one of the early attempts to build an entirely solar house. Unfortunately, lots of details suggest to me that someone didn't adjust design features for our latitude. It does have a lot of big windows on the southern exposure, and it makes extensive use of ground piled around the north side of the house to reduce temperature loss--but it also means that the best view possible from the lot is a solid wall.

It has a four car garage, with RV sized doors. But the interior is built of tires, dirt, and chickenwire. It is amazingly ugly. Even more silly in this climate is that there is no direct access to the house from the garage.

The house is about 2000 square feet, but it is only a one-bedroom. It is a huge one-bedroom, but the net effect suggests an indulgent bachelor with gobs of money. When we looked at it last year, it was ten years old--and the roof was already leaking. It was offered at $210,000, but went into foreclosure.

I'm very glad we didn't buy it. It had three wells go dry over a period of about seven years, and except for my stepping in and pointing out that drilling a fourth well within a hundred feet of the other three didn't make sense, they were about to drill a fourth well that was likely to go dry. (I had them drill at the boundary between the basalt and the sandstone--nice well at 180 feet.)


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We call this log cabin house. It is about 2400 square feet, but it had been unoccupied for at least a year until a family moved in last month. Leaving a house empty up here is a mistake; rats get in, and pretty soon, it was a pigsty. (A ratsty?) It wasn't a bad house, but it was built on a small lot with no particular view. On the other hand, it has a 400 gallon per minute well, which feeds a couple of other houses.


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Almost lost in the trees is this rather unusual house currently owned by Chuck, who is the chief of police of a nearby town. It was apparently built by amateurs, and he tells me that there were some interesting struggles getting it to a useful state.


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This is a Guerdon manufactured home. We briefly considered having a very similar model installed on our property. I think, in retrospect, we made the right choice to have something site-built, but it would have been substantially cheaper.


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Last house project entry.

Transgendered Bathrooms Again

I mentioned yesterday the "transgendered" crowd at Colorado University demanding more public restrooms for the horribly confused. I am impressed with the response from readers on this. Whole Wheat Blogger pointed me to an article by him in 2003 about this insanity at the University of Chicago:

Members of Feminist Majority, Queers & Associates, and the Center for Gender Studies organized the panel as part of the Coalition for a Queer Safe Campus. "Going to the bathroom is a moment where definition is very important in choosing a door," said Mary Anne Case, one of the panelists.

Whole Wheat Blogger went on to quote one of the participants in this conference about the lengths to which the "transgendered" will go--to go:

Red Vaughan Tremmel, another panelist, said that she knew someone who was making a cross-country road-trip and bought an RV to avoid using public bathrooms. "At first, my reaction was, 'Oh wow, what a great idea,' but then I thought, 'Wow that's sad that someone would have to go to such lengths to feel comfortable,'" she said.

There was a time when that sort of overreaction would be properly recognized as a serious emotional problem. Now, it is part of the homosexual movement--a group whose concerns and sensibilities are far more important to judges than those of the majority of Americans. What used to be mental illness is now a political movement--and a powerful one, at that.

Oh yes, and then there's this piece of craziness from Britain:

he Lord Chancellor is facing accusations of political correctness after banning the word “homosexual” from official documents in his department.

Lord Falconer has ordered for the word to be removed on the grounds that it “may be considered offensive.”

The ban comes after a report commissioned by the Department for Constitutional Affairs to analyse how well diversity rules are obeyed when selecting judges.

Academics from the Queen Mary college compiled the report and concluded, “It is important to recognise that the term homosexuality is considered inappropriate by many gays and lesbians today.”

They claimed that gay charity Stonewall regards the word as derogatory, “It originates from a medical definition when same-sex attraction was construed as mental illness.' The report said “it should no longer be used in official documentation. Stonewall recommends that ‘lesbian, gay and bisexual’ is a more appropriate term.”

House Project: This Is Where The Recriminations And Lawsuits May Start To Appear

We went up to the house last night, and we were very disappointed. The problem of the repoured concrete being gray I've already mentioned. Now there is an additional problem. The concrete guy power washed it, and then applied a finish to it that was supposed to make it a particular color: amber rose.

I don't have any pictures (yet) but that has to be done next for the inevitable lawsuit.

1. The power wash didn't remove paint spots and at least one gray concrete dab.

2. The finish in some places came out shiny (as it should) but very dark--almost a nut brown, instead of amber rose. In other places, it is like the finish isn't even there. The surface remains the roughly rose color of the concrete, but it is dull, not shiny.

My builder has been avoiding me for several days, so I called the concrete guy, who is clearly quite upset about the whole matter (and has already talked to the builder). The concrete guy says that the original cracking was because of insufficient drainage on that side of the house--a matter that I raised with the builder at the start of winter, but he never quite got around to it.

The concrete guy says that he mixed color into the concrete that he poured as a replacement--but it still came out gray. Variability in natural materials, and all that.

He also says that the finish varied substantially depending on whether it was in sunlight or not, and there's nothing that he can do about it except remove it. He suggested that the builder should be responsible for using an epoxy paint for concrete to get the color right.

I know that this isn't going to be cheap, and as far as I am concerned, this isn't my problem. The builder suggested the stamped color concrete, and I stupidly assumed that the builder knew something about housebuilding. I guess he knew a lot less than I assumed!

Had I realized how badly this was going to turn out, I would have gone with gray concrete. It would have been about $3000 cheaper, and with far less grief.

Last house project entry.

Transgendered Bathrooms Again

Everytime I hear a homosexual activist insist that they are just like straight people, except for who they love, I see a news story like this one:

BOULDER, Colo. -- A transgender task force wants to bring more "all-gendered" bathrooms to the University of Colorado-Boulder campus, the Boulder Daily Camera reported in its Monday editions.

"It's about creating more welcoming spaces," Bryce Abelson told the newspaper.

Abelson identified himself as "gender queer," a person who is neither male or female. He said he doesn't feel comfortable in the men's bathroom and gets strange looks when he walks in the women's bathroom.

Task force members believe the costs of changing current male and female bathrooms will be minimal because only the signs need to be changed on existing bathrooms. One bathroom already exists outside the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center.

Can you imagine the uproar if straight people started to complain that they didn't "feel comfortable" using the same bathrooms or locker rooms as homosexuals?

Is there anyone that thinks this "transgendered" garbage is anything but an indication of a pretty serious psychological problem?

House Project: Woodpecker Discouragement Methods

I mentioned yesterday that the pictures of the wind chimes and wind spinners we put out to stop the woodpeckers didn't come, so I shot some more pictures yesterday. My wife thinks the wind spinners look a little white trash, but a reader tells me of a technique that apparently also works, and makes this look downright San Francisco New Agey by comparison: shoot one woodpecker, and nail it to the wall. The rest won't come back. I call this the George Bush Approach To Third World Dictators With WMD Ambitions. At least, it worked with Libya.


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You will notice quite a bit of dirt on the front porch in that last picture. It is our own little Dust Bowl of soil blowing onto the south face of the house in the intense thunderstorms Friday night. We really do need to get that hydroseeded.

The warmer weather and rains have started to turn the hillsides green again.


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I don't have a picture of it, but I just noticed that when they repoured the concrete at the back side of the garage--they poured gray concrete, not the rose color that the rest of the driveway apron and porches were poured. I am pretty upset about this, because it looks stupid--and even if the builder didn't remind of the color, they should have looked before they poured gray concrete to replace rose colored concrete. I hope that they can put a thin coat of the right color on top.

Last house project entry.