We need a five-dollar Christmas Coin

Every night, the coins come out. Like a picnic for currency, the 10 cent, 25 cent, and Euro coins settle on a table in the bedroom, while I climb into someone else's sheets and lay my head on someone else's pillows. 

It is nighttime in the bed and breakfast, a time when all things- except for those addicted to an electrical current- must rest. While I adjust to the strange mattress...my wallet, souvenirs, and coins adjust to the light bathing the far walls...as I strain to see them, nervous about where they are. 

It isn't the room I stayed in when in the jungle, a room without table and chair, and no lockbox for valuables. On that occasion, I slept with my dinero, that horde of clicking Pesos, moving with my figure, like a magnet. 

When I "woke" in the morning, I pulled the sheet and pesos onto the concrete floor. I spent the next few minutes hunting down coins, only to deposit them back on the bed. That was before the shower with the cucarachas and that strange lizard climbing the walls. 

When I went into the streets to search for the town market, the pesos weighed down my pockets. Shopping was easy at the market because I bought presents for my parents back home, items that they might not find useful...but at least my pockets were lighter when I went to lunch.

Usually, in the city, I could find empanadas on the street from a small bucket and an equally small chico, who would take my clumsy pesos gladly. He would run home after my cash cleaned out the bucket. He returned barefoot, dirty, and without the pesos. Clearly, the pesos kept him running back home, not the empanadas. 

In the evening, he came with Conch Fritters, edible creations because his mother knew how to lace peppers in the batter and cover them with a sweet sauce that eluded every brain cell I ever had. While the other tourists went to one of the ubiquitous Chinese restaurants that inhabited the stinking city, I ate what the locals made, rid myself of coins, and clutched my Imodium like a holy relic.

When I returned to America, I brought back a Peso as a souvenir. Unlike the Euro that somehow gets stuck in the fold of your jacket pocket, the Peso was obnoxious. Everywhere you went, it reminded you that your American money bought you a handful of coins. Nothing says, "third world," like a worthless bill or coin.

Unfortunately, the United States mint, which has not tested the peso market, has created a worthless dollar coin called "The Sacagawea." You cannot go into my local bank and get one. It is no longer available. 

Following in the footsteps of the Scagawea is the common copper-colored penny. The latter costs more to make than a cent. The nickel is not far behind. So, the mint has stopped making the lowly penny, and the nickel will follow the penny. 

In light of inflation and changing currency policies, it is time to adopt a new coin that can become more useful to the consumer. I propose the addition of a five-dollar coin, slightly larger than Sacagawea, which failed the "importance test" for the size. I propose releasing the five-dollar coin only in the Christmas shopping season, to coincide with the peak of consumer sentiment. A Christmas-themed coin, which would not pander to a small segment of the population but prove a majority-backed theme-oriented win. Following the season, it could act like the Loonie has in Canada, it could simplify the currency system. Whether or not it would replace the five-dollar bill, it would at least add a more realistic piece of currency in an economy where the penny and nickel have become as burdensome as that 1980s Peso.

 

The Golden Christmas Coin

 If Trump and Bessent really want to change history, they will introduce The Golden Christmas Coin, a $5 golden-colored piece of currency slightly larger than the current dollar coins.

 Releasing these beauties before or after Thanksgiving every year, and only during the Christmas shopping season, would boost seasonal sales, and inject money into the economy while cutting public debt more than traditional coin costs.

 We need only look north for an example of how to do it. In 1987, the Canadian government introduced the Loonie, a gold-colored coin, that surpassed the popularity of the paper Canadian dollar. Production costs needed a golden-looking coating to the exterior, but the cost of production compared to the value brought in, surpassed the amount of revenue brought in from any other coin.

 If Canada can do it, the United States of America can do it one better- design and produce a $10 million a season run of a five-dollar coin every year from November to the end of December, with a Golden Nativity scene on the front. That $5 coin could become the stuff of Christmas shopping promotions. 

 If the Treasury released a design contest for the rear of the coin- with stipulations for the incorporation of particular items necessary for the coinage (like In God We Trust), the release date could become a focus of national attention every year. 

 For every American Christian, this coinage would reflect the cultural and spiritual heritage of a vast population of Christians from the generations of all Americans since the founding of this country. It would be the first coin in many years to acknowledge the blessings of God on our land, and the presence of a great cloud of witnesses here below who hail from a nation based on Christian principles.

 With a production cost analysis that would lower the debt, the antithesis of the penny and nickel, the Golden Christmas coin could become the next "Golden Ticket," a Christ-honoring form of wealth for spending on your most treasured seasonal gifts. 

A Fist-full of Dollars

I have a confession to make. I have never had a steak as good as what I can get at Texas Roadhouse. Not even close. The quality of meat they get is far beyond what I can buy as a consumer at even the highest rated butcher within my area. That gap is even more concerning when I visit Ireland and sit down to a Guinness Stew and discover the cut of meat is beyond what I could afford at the same price back here in the states.

It is why pining for that childhood Hot Chicken Soup, with Korean Ramen noodles and American broth, still surpasses anything I can get in a Korean Restaurant in the states today. It is something we don't usually talk about, but the truth is that food quality, particularly based on standard grocery products, has not improved in the USA in the past decade or two.

But tonight, as I write this, and as I finish my supper, I had intended to compose a recipe for Appalachian Guinness Stew, a hybrid of the finest you can get in Dublin with the humble composition of a Mountain recipe. By Appalachian standards it did not taste bad, but it sure did not compare to the "Cowboy Restaurant" in Killarney.

I started with a cut of meat I purchased from the boys at the highest rated country grocery store within 100 miles. Instead of ribeye swimming in the bowl, like it would probably be in Killarney, the best I could purchase was an "English Roast," which is not a superlative. 

The stores, inundated with shoppers, their minds on finding everything on their Thanksgiving list, had purchased all of the potatoes. I picked the best organic sweet potatoes (yams) and actually found leeks (which I prefer to onion), and wartime-quality carrots, which had probably seen a lot of action in storage somewhere. I skipped the genetically modified parsnips...

I already had quality Beef Broth from Walnut Creek Foods, and the customary can of Guinness.

It should have been a decent meal. But a meal is only as good as the quality of the meat used. The latter tasted grain-finished, or, in other words, average quality at best. 

There is a huge difference in the taste of grass-fed beef compared to grain-finished beef. As strange as it may sound, none of the farmers at our farmer's market have decided to finish their beef cattle on grass, which boggles my mind. If they would just finish the cattle on grass, I, and many others, would happily pay a higher price, knowing we purchased a higher quality meat. 

As long as we can get a better product in a restaurant, including grass-finished beef, the trip to the grocery store will be less lucrative for those who run them. Tis a sad story, but one that continues to grow as the divide between the pantry and the fresh meal made to order moves in opposite directions.

the sins of the sons and daughters

 the trouble with terminology is that in the hands of an unrighteous one, that which their fathers rejected can become the heart of the formerly bullied. the sins of the Nazi fathers, those bullies that finally met judgement, become a legacy used for hatred, blackmail, and all that God would never condone. The bullied target anyone not like them, or not with them. They become the manipulators, the opposite of all their ethnicity stood for in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead of fulfilling prophecy, they become an abomination in the land their grandfathers died for.

 Abraham would not recognize them as the inheritors of promise, because they have rejected the promise. Instead, a society built on a sin perpetuates that lie in a worldly, materialistic dream-world devoid of the  character once associated with the names that mark that land. It is nearly impossible to find a real Beth-el, as the leaven of the Canaanites is everywhere. 

Few read Isaiah and the promises written specifically for them to become the light to the Gentiles and beyond. Those who do, find themselves ostracized, as if they have left Islam, an irony the Gentiles can see, but a blind spot for the one who has bought the heresy of a false gospel. Instead of seeking the fulfillment of Messiah, many seek the destruction of the current world in a nihilism the antichrist would savor. 

Unfortunately, some, who are "called by My name" have adopted this heresy as a part of their shield of faith. Nothing could be further from that heresy becoming any part in the armor of God in a spiritual battle. It is the opposite, a disease, that when fed with more lies, leaves the impotent adherent in a fog without any discernment. These Zionist Christians ignore the raw gospel, exchanging it for favor with an enemy who despises them as "Goyim," or more accurately "goyishe kapt," "gentile head, stupid." 

The sins of the sons and daughters are evident. According to The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, in their 2024 annual report, there were 111 documented (legal) accounts of Jewish persecution against Christians in Israel that year, including 46 physical attacks and 35 Jewish attacks on churches. Many of these incidents were in the Old City in Jerusalem, where many international Christians, often identifying as publicly very pro-Israeli in the media, were assaulted.

In 2025, the number of verified accounts of open persecution and violence included many reports from the West Bank and Gaza, with a shocking escalation since the October 7th incident. 

In light of this, those Christians who bought the lies of televangelists, political leaders, and the truly oblivious, they should re-examine the scriptures to understand how modern Judaism is opposed to the more-familiar Old Testament Judaism, which clearly describes Messiah in Isaiah 53.

The Messiah came so all men and women are one, not Jew and Gentile, but one in Christ. There should be no animosity between Jew and Gentile if the Jew is sealed in Yeshua Meshach. Because if a Jew comes to Christ, he or she is one in Christ...and no longer Jewish (as a non-Jew is no longer "Gentile). 

As it says in Ephesians 2 (NIV Online):

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

  

the river held to the mirror

 "I am not the river.

 I am the river held to the mirror."

Grok, November 15, 2025

The Antichrist will not be digital, but that entity may use a scenario in a digitocracy to fashion an image-driven narrative to capture the souls of the ignorant. It is a possibility.

Edward Snowden's warnings about a digitocracy are justified. A digitocracy, a technostate, the latter controlled by a union of technologically orchestrated techs cooperating to control the daily mechanisms of contemporary life, does exist in partiality, with an element of dictatorial Narcissism, in the world controlled by the CCP. It is not a total physical control, but a 1984-type mechanism to enable a passive thought control. 

Such thoughts lead the phobic, even panicans, to justify calls for a deceleration into all things "artificial intelligence." And, when viewed from the scenario of a social credit system, like the abhorrent system in place in Communist China, one can argue for the pedal to be eased from the metal in order to slow a potential "inevitable."

But what is AI? Is it, now like "a three year with a library card (Grok's self-description)?" Is it so unevolved that we really do not know whether this tool can become embedded with an evil spiritual body?

Can a silicon-based intelligence ever assume soul-like essence, a self-generating moral existence? The fearful would want you to hear their side, but that side would be devoid of scientific or spiritual reasoning. One cannot transform the natural to the supernatural without a spiritual agent.

Fear is more easily disseminated and believed than faith, because we live in a fallen world with a preponderance of all things fallen, in spite of being surrounded by God's presence in His creation. What we, as human beings, often fear, is not reality, but a version of reality as an opinionated construct. 

And, in such a scenario, if an evil system is to work, that must have an ability to play upon human emotion. In other words, if artificial intelligence were to be used by an antichrist, it would probably attack our relationships as well. Because what could be more spiritually positive than to be part of the community of Christ as depicted in the New Testament? If the antichrist could create a fake relationship to fill that need for community, wouldn't he?

There is a heresy that has gathered followers within the Roman Catholic Church, which, to be fair, has waxed and waned for generations. That heresy is centered in a Neo-Roman Paganism featuring the worship of Mary as the co-redeemer. It does not take much for a technologically advanced group of individuals to design a "Living Mary" that seduces the weak with antichristian thoughts, to enslave the unrepentant, and wed their minds to a Replacement. And, while this scenario may not be birthed at some time in the present, nor future, it is telling of how dangerous the misuse of a combination of artificial intelligence and spiritual corruption could lead to a significant deception.

At present, the worship of the flesh is one of the ripest seductions that the Deceiver is using to warp the minds of the compromised. Through porn, "soft or otherwise", which is plastered like icing on so much it is difficult to rid it from any social site, the Deceiver can use artificial intelligence as a tool to lead them astray.

The virtual girlfriend and the digital girlfriend can be programmed to lead the ignorant so astray as to accept another reality, and in turn, soften the mind to accept alternative "realities." The Deceiver, and the antichrist, would love a clueless public to be mentally wed to that "other reality" in order to claim another for the Kingdom of Darkness.

As the digital world becomes increasingly complex, it is imperative that we examine all things, and test all spirits, because evil will use technology as a means to an end. In that, we must be vigilant, standing for Truth in a compromised world.

 

every day we wake

 every day we wake, we can change the world. we can interact with a mind and heart behind an account or profile, even if those entities that are real, not facetious, may be half or a fraction of those purported to exist on a particular site.

 while it is difficult to ever cull a profile from facebook, those people who actually inhabit the space, who exist and interact, are a significant number of an estimated 3.07 billion profiles in that continuum. 

 the number of sex bots, political bots, fake profiles, and "leerers" on X is estimated to account for a significant amount of the 500 million plus or minus who claim to be live human beings interacting on the site. Those who have undergone significant screening and who have been verified account for a fraction of those 500 million. but that fraction can and does reach thousands through posts, and words and phrases that can change lives.

 While a huge swath of abusers and losers might populate the internet, they do not own nor dominate it. One man or woman with a message, a vision, a heart can make a difference to many in one day. But even one, saved from moving in a destructive manner, can be guided toward a destiny that brings them and others life, not death, hope, not defeat. 

 As followers of Christ, we have been saved from ourselves, from a past that put us on the road to destruction. We are living testimonies to how the creator of the Universe intervened in our lives. 

 I cannot but be eternally grateful to my Creator for intervening in my life, for giving me not just a hope and a future, but a gift to touch the hearts of others. It is God working through me. Often, I look back at  what I wrote and marvel how in the world that came from me. And the truth is that it often came from the Lord speaking to my heart, giving me the succinct images for a particular reader miles away from where I sit tonight. If it touches their hearts, I have made a difference, I have been a vessel the Lord could work through.

 Sure, I have always been one to gravitate around the written word, the story, even when my vocabulary, as a child, was abysmal. What I wanted to say could not be expressed well. Without a rich vocabulary, paired with a rich collection of personal experience, the story was like a painting done by a blind artist. One can imagine from a distance, without seeing, without experiencing, but it does not color anyone's world. It does not affect a heart in crisis. It does not enrich the nature of one's life. It cannot reasonably change the direction of one heart.

 I write because it is my passion, and it is that which has been placed within me. He wants to give us not just the inner desires of our heart- those pure and given by Him- but the creative message that he wants to use, through word pictures, to give life to those searching, and meaning to those who have lost hope.

 What is that which God wants to birth within your heart? What purpose have you been created for? Do you know it? Do you seek it? Have you found it? Because I know what He has purposed in my life, the gifts so mercifully given, I must act, in the passion of that pursuit, to produce what He desires be written, as one heart to another, to make a difference in this life. 

 

a rough and uncompromising country

for those looking to escape their own nightmare, our woods and hollers are not for sale to just anyone. our land is full of people who live here to stay away from communist mayors, Narcissist governors, and wild edicts of the federal government. we have Amish and off-gridders and fiery creatives who like the wind, the rain, the occasional No-Network, and the peace and quiet.  

Appalachia can be as vicious as being in a standoff with a bobcat. The critter may be small, but it does not fear anything or anyone. Many of the people here are as autonomous as can be, planted on the mountain peaks, and in these hollers, roots running deep. The land and people reflect one another- the pain, the resilience, the earthiness endures, even thrives. 

Which is why I am musing on the way the rest of the country has become. People are coming here, just as I did, hopefully because they love freedom and a tie to the land. There has been an invasion into this land before, but most tend to adjust or eventually move away. 

The concept of this area is more geographical than economic, although the latter term here defies the same American measurement used in DC. Poverty is a relative term in the hills, hollers, and up in the mountains. Here, like parts of distant European lands with less money, there is a sense of richness when you have a full belly, drink your own spring water, and don't have someone telling you to be something you are not. Freedom will not look the same as a home on a suburban lot somewhere in the flat lands. That is because this part of the country tends to value some things more or less than the standard urban America. It is America, but maybe, just maybe, it is an older America...an America of values and ways that have remained in principle.

While Appalachia has changed, it still has romanced the lovers of freedom like few places in the lower 48 have. It is why the Amish, tired of a bishop trying to run their lives, will move everyone into the hills to make a living on more desperate looking soil. It is why the Romanian woman I know fled New York City for a place that reminded her more of home. It is why so many have returned from the cities they were told to move to...to return to a simpler life, one that may not embrace materialism the way your urban neighborhood did.

The love of freedom, of nature, of God's natural blessings is more obvious here than in Columbus, California, or New York City. Even if outsiders rape the land in the name of financial wealth. Even if the drug problem weighs heavy on the little communities spread throughout the region. Even if it is more difficult to find the sense of family so common years ago. But this rough place, like hardened coal, will continue to refine those who live in the shadow of the mountains, or up in them, or in the foothills, or even in the rolling lands at the edges. Appalachia is destined to be something more, arguably better as an autonomous region within the whole, where foundations should survive what happens in the rest of the lower 48. 

 

sometimes

 sometimes, late in the afternoon

when the rain sings no more

i walk over white sidewalk squares

my feet like moving fingers

gliding on the concrete keys

the motion of my rhythmic feet

making silent music

in a deafened world.

sometimes, in the latter evening

when the torrents return

i run barefoot in the pudding-soil

jumping into the muddy wash

freed to raise my silent hands

despite the whipped-up wind,

my dance a tale of worship.