Freaky Frugalite

There is a stunning post at EastCoast Life about the abhorrent practice of foot-binding in the Orient. The photos are both sickeningly fascinating, and inexplicably horrendous.

The kids and I have studied the missionary work of Gladys Aylward, a hero of ours. She was an Englishwoman in the early 1900s who desperately desired to evangelize China, but was considered too old and too inexperienced to join the missions group. Aylward decided to be a missionary, anyway, without their help. She got a job and saved up her own money to take a train through dangerous Russia and on to China– Manchuria, specifically. Her story is INCREDIBLE and I highly recommend the book Gladys Aylward: The Adventure of a Lifetime (it’s a young-adult book and very readable).

At first, the Manchurians treated Gladys like a hostile intruder, but after seeing her compassion, love, and incredible generosity, named her “Ah-wei-dah,” which means “virtuous one.” The Manchurian leader became a Christian by observing her love and compassion. Gladys also adopted dozens of orphaned children; she quelled a violent prison outbreak and then negotiated for the starving prisoners; and she rescued hundreds of Chinese children (she led them on a dangerous– but life-saving– journey over mountains when the Japanese invaded during World War II). What a wonderful woman she was! (By the way, you just know that the modern Christian Chinese church is a direct descendant of the work of Gladys, Hudson Taylor, and Eric Liddell among those children, because all foreigners were expelled from China during WWII. These little Christian children were all that remained of the Christian faith in that country). Gladys is buried in Taiwan, facing her beloved China. Eric Liddell died in a concentration camp in China by the hand of the Japanese occupiers; he is buried in China.

During her missionary ministry, Gladys helped enforce the new law in China against foot-binding. Foot-binding, practiced for centuries in China, had been outlawed by the Nationalist government. They were finding it hard to enforce, because Chinese men still wanted it. Like EastCoastLife says, the perverted disfigurement and torture of little girls’ feet was for the sole purpose of their selfish, perverted pleasure.

It made me think that nothing new has really changed, has it? In our Western culture, it has been the same way, too. There were corsets, which restricted a woman’s waist so badly that mothers died during pregnancy or during childbirth. The female mortality rate was horrific. In Gone With the Wind, it is made notable that Scarlett O’Hara had an 18-inch waist. Talk about disfigurement!

What is it today? Being super-skinny, having watermelon-sized implants, Botox, etc. I shake my head and really wonder why men like their women so disfigured and unnatural and why women tolerate it and allow the perversion to continue on to afflict their children.

It’s something to think about. Are we really any different now? Are we still ruled by pressures to contort our bodies so as to appear more enticing for men? Is it really worth it?!

If you grew up in the 80s or have had a good history teacher, you have heard about the terrible tragedy that happened on April 26, 1986– the nuclear disaster at the power plant in Chernobyl, in Russia. I remember that news reports were very slow to leak out. At first, the Soviets downplayed the disaster. After a few weeks (if I remember correctly), the Soviets finally admitted a tragic nuclear power plant accident that killed hundreds of people and poisoned a large area of the Ukraine. This was disastrous for the Ukranians, already struggling with food shortages and economic recession. Wikipedia says:

On April 26, 1986, the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, exploded at 01:23 AM local time. The workers were performing an experiment with the reactor’s safety systems during which the computer-controlled safety systems were disabled.

Problems occurred during the tests: The reactor did not receive enough coolant, had built up too much heat in the core and had fully withdrawn control rods, all of which contributed to unstable and unpredictable reactor operation. A reboot of the computer systems failed to regain control of the reaction. When the control rods were manually reinserted in an attempt to regain control of the unstable reactor, there was a sudden increase in reactivity, caused by the design of the RBMK reactor and its control rods, and an uncontrollable runaway reaction occurred.

The reactor produced tremendous amounts of steam, eventually causing a steam break/explosion, which destroyed part of the reactor. After the explosion, graphite fires broke out, due to the high temperatures of the reactor and the graphite’s exposure to oxygen. Radioactive debris were flung several miles, and smoke containing radioactive contaminants from the burning graphite traveled as far as Belarus.

photo credit: skippy13

photo credit: coolz0rcoolz0r

Look at the photo below. The road is all eaten up! How did that happen?

Want to know something freaky? The name “Chernobyl” is said to mean “Wormwood” in Russian. Many have pointed to Revelation in the Bible where it says:

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

Rev. 8:10, 11

Two very good websites I’ve seen that have good narrative and photos are Kidd of Speed (an excellent website) and Pripyat. The Chernobyl accident reminds us not to become too complacent and arrogant with our own technology. It just isn’t worth it.