Straight From The Hart

  My column in today's newspaper. Huma Abedin has been the most prominent name on cable news since last Friday when she became embroiled in a major news story involving Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the FBI, but do you know who she really is? You probably know her as Clinton’s “traveling chief of staff”, and senior adviser. She was a deputy chief of staff when Clinton was secretary of state. She is now the vice-chair of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She is a practicing Muslim. Let’s just get that out of the way first. As recently as last December she proclaimed herself to be a “proud Muslim” when she spoke out against Donald Trump’s statements about banning Muslims. My curiosity led me to research why she doesn’t wear the hijab. Apparently she feels it would be “off- putting” to voters in a highly contested presidential campaign. I also discovered that Sharia law has a term which basically means “flexibility” to us and means that Muslims can change their manner of ...

  4 years ago Active Joan Hart    ·  Shared with Public This is my column today. Warning: It is political satire and if that offends you please scroll on past. I'm not in the mood for arguments today. My facebook pages are for my opinions. If you have a differing opinion, use your own page!! Just sayin'. *************************************** We are a nation obsessed with watching or reading the news. That’s not surprising because the word ”news” implies that we are learning something we didn’t know before. But nowadays when we listen to the news most of us just end up shaking our heads in bewilderment or rolling our eyes in astonishment. Let me share with you some questions I have been wondering about AFTER listening to the news. Does it seem to you that people like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff have reached a level of arrogance that we have never seen before? How else can you explain that Schiff had the pomposity to do a parody of the President with re...

  Joan Hart    ·  Shared with Your friends and Ruby's friends You all know how upset I have been with FB for not showing comments. The only way around it is to repost a comment as a status. This is one I wrote to Ruby Greene and I wanted to be sure she saw it plus there are others on this group who like to read my Bible-related posts. I didn't mean to ignore your question, I was just trying to think how to answer it without typing a book. And I don't want to start a Biblical argument because there is so much controversy about the book of Revelation. I can only say that many people get hung up on taking much of the language literally when it is meant to be a visual representation of something we can’t grasp in our mind (until we get there) by putting it in the language of something we CAN understand. It is the “typology” part that I wrote about earlier. A “type” of something in Biblical language means it is an example or an illustration. Gold is the most costly sub...

  Do you like gemstones? They are my favorite form of “bling”, and I have several because my husband loves to give me gifts for every occasion, and gemstones, especially the colorful ones, are his gift of choice, and my gift of “receiving”. God loves them, too because He decorated heaven with them. John the Revelator was so mesmerized by them when he was given a vision of heaven that he wrote about them extensively. John describes the foundations of the walls of heaven as if they appear in layers, one stacked on top of the other. If so, the beauty would be too awesome for words. I have a few rings where different gemstones are mounted in a cluster and they are mind-boggling in their extravagance. John says the first foundation is made of jasper, a beautiful reddish brown stone usually set as a cabachon. The next layer is sapphire. Sapphire comes from the mines in a variation of colors. Chalcedony is a form of quartz, a translucent stone in colors of white and gray and bl...

  THE TANGLED WEB OF BENGHAZI It was poet Walter Scott who said “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” I thought about this so many times Thursday as I watched the Benghazi hearings featuring Hillary Clinton. I also thought about William Safire’s description of Hillary in a column for the New York Times on January 8, 1996. Safire, a long time syndicated political columnist for the Times, and a talented wordsmith, said she was a “congenital liar” and then wrote “Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.” As I watched the lengthy hearings on media news Thursday, I was amazed to think that she could have saved herself so much trouble and time and attorney fees had she just told the truth to begin with. . But she could not. The web had become too tangled. I have studied and researched and thought a lot about the incident since it first happ...

  October Fills Up My Senses Written by Joan Rowden Hart on  a cool October morning, 2017 Listen!  Can you hear it?  There’s autumn in the air. And though the door’s still  open, you can  sense  a chill out there. Although the winds are still warm, You can hear a special sound As the leaves begin to rustle, and fall softly to the ground. Eyes open!  Can you see it?  New season coming on The summer palette fades away, Hazy days are almost gone The trees become transparent as their glory disappears Missouri embraces October- it happens every year. Breathe deeply! Can you smell it?  That smoke that’s in the air? Arising from the piles of leaves now that the trees are bare. That musty smell of dying soil now covered by summer’s waste Our memory of the harvest foods, the fragrance and the taste. Enjoy these days!  Another month and they will all be gone The sun sets much too early now, cold nights are hast’ning on Missouri has its fresh ...

  IT'S AUTUMN TIME AGAIN The dying leaves come tumbling down; Their colors mingling with the brown; Transforming lawns throughout the town; It's autumn time again. The mornings come so crisp and cool; A foretaste of the winter's cruel; And all the children are in school; It's autumn time again. The hickory nuts from the trees so tall Roll across my roof like a bowling ball; I sit in my study and hear them fall; It's autumn time again. The harvest food’s piled on tables high; The apples await the cinnamon pie; And old Jack Frost is standing by; It's autumn time again. So you and I have our seasons, too. Those summer days, we were young and new; But now our days are numbering few; We're in our autumn time. So harvest comes, and come it must; Our fruitful lives will return to dust; But new life will come, that is our trust In Christ, as our autumn comes. Written by Joan Rowden Hart, 9-14-02