My Wife Is a Lazy Lair

t’s the last day of school for my lazy, lying wife. She says teachers still have to go to work, but that can’t be right. Teachers only work when the kids are at school. I wish she would come clean and admit she is not really a teacher.  School starts around 9:00 and dismisses at 3:45.  She leaves the house before seven each morning, and it’s only a fifteen or twenty minute drive to the “school” where she “teaches.” She comes home around six or six-thirty in the evening. Sometimes later. What is she doing with all the extra time?

6:57 a.m. and the bag lady leaves the house. Looking for an OTB parlor that opens early.
When she gets home, I make sure dinner awaits the slacker. It’s a wonder she doesn’t demand I spoon-feed her. After dinner, she works on “lesson plans” and “grades papers.”  The way she describes it, the school district’s grade report system is so convoluted and labyrinthine that it must have been designed by Ernő Rubik. I am not fooled. I believe these “papers” she is working on are actually Racing Forms. I also believe she is a terrible gambler, which explains why we are not rich.
About ten or eleven at night, she comes to bed and pretends to be exhausted. She acts as though teaching 24 kids, some with significant emotional problems, is more challenging than having a real job. Who does she think she’s kidding? If she really is a teacher, how hard can it be to mark second grade homework? Does she have to look up the correct answer to 4 x 5 each time she grades a math assignment?

Hmm. This looks suspiciously like the lazy liar at the race track.
Because she’s so lazy, my wife rarely does “school work” on Saturdays, but she always spends part of Sundays pretending to do it. I see through her little act. She doesn’t want to do any real work on Sundays, like taking walks and going on bike rides with her fantastic husband. What a loser. If she likes to play the ponies, she should admit it. I would still love her, more or less.
I work at a real job, and I don’t go to nearly as many “meetings” as my wife does. Many of her meetings, she says, are focused on discussing test results, new testing procedures, testing tests, test testing, tester testing, and test testing testers. Occasionally, she says, these meeting diverge into other topics such as testing evaluations. Some meetings allegedly occur during school hours when my wife should be “teaching.” These meetings are dreamed up by highly-paid, redundant administrators who have clandestine responsibilities no one can figure out. At the end of these meetings, it is determined that “teachers” at my wife’s school are not spending enough time teaching.
This is too illogical to be true. That’s why I know my wife is lying.
My lazy, lying wife can’t get enough of meetings. This is why she is lucky to be a “person of color.”  She is often called on to represent the “school staff” on “committees” that need some “diversity.” As a consequence, she stays late at “school” to discuss issues other than “school work” or tasks directly related to “teaching.” If a person has such an easy job, she should not complain about attending lengthy meetings to discuss the latest tester testing results.
Last night, my wife came home from school after 10:30 p.m. What? Is she teaching night school now?
She should be thankful she does not have a real job. In my job, which is real and has been known to require multiple hours of work on some days, I go into the supply room and load up any time I’m running short of pens and paper. If my company told me to buy my own supplies, I would laugh and tell them to piss off. This is the way it works at a real job. But my wife spends hundreds of dollars each school year buying “supplies.” How many backpacks and calculators does one woman need? She says they are for students who can’t afford them, but really? These students are like her customers. I don’t buy supplies for my customers. That would be silly.
What a liar my wife is.
This summer, the school district that allegedly employs my lying wife is renovating the school building where she claims to teach. The district has required all the “teachers” to pack up everything in their classrooms and store it for the summer. The school district is providing some storage, as long as the contents can survive a couple of months in a container as hot as a vinyl car seat  in Hell’s parking lot. But anything that could become damaged by the heat is the responsibility of the “teachers.” Seriously, what employer would ask its employees to provide their own storage when they renovate work space? I saw a transaction in our bank account for “Storage Facility.” I believe this is the name of a four-year-old gelding that finished out of the money in the seventh race last Thursday at Churchill Downs.
Here’s the final proof that that my lazy wife is a big liar: Despite all the so-called hassles she puts up with at her “school,” my wife talks about her students like they are her own children. A week from now, she will lament how much she misses “her kids” during the summer. Even the ones who “take things without permission,” and the ones who “stretch the truth” despite overwhelming evidence otherwise.
Okay, perhaps my wife is not a lazy liar. Perhaps she is just crazy.

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History about Christmas

1.The Christmas celebrations were originated by the Roman Catholics but the non-Catholics also observe this festival.
2.In U.S, the celebrations started in the first half of the 19th century when the Sunday schools observed the festival.
3.Among all U.S. states, Alabama was the firstto declare this festive occasion as a legal holiday. By 1893, all states and territories had acknowledged the observance of this festival.
4.The history of Christmas celebrations goes back to the New Year festival celebrated by the Mesopotamians around 4000 years back. This festival was known as Zagmuth.
5.Through Zagmuth, the Mesopotamians honored their deity, Marduk. It is believed that celebrations of Christmas originated from this 12-day festival.
6.The people of Europe too participated in festivities during the end of winter. Fermented wine, beer, and fresh meat were included in the feasts they had during this time period.
7.Even the Germans worshipped Oden, the Pagan God during the mid-winter holiday with the belief that he would protect them from nocturnal sky flights.
8.During winter, a week-long celebration was held in places like Saturnalia in early Rome, where people observed a festival in honor of Saturn, the God of agriculture. People enjoyed the festival with bountiful food, drinks, fun, and frolic.
9.Another festival observed in winter was Juvenalia, a Roman feast through which children were honored.
10.The people of the upper class in Rome observed December 25 as the birthday of their infant God, Mithra. They considered itas the holiest time of the year.
11.The Romans initially celebrated Easter but Christmas was not observed during that time. However, the exchange of gifts during Christmas originated from the Roman tradition of gifting presents in Easter.

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Christmas

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Reference: Charles dickens

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BEING POOR

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.
Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.
Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.
Being poor is living next to the freeway.
Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.
Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn’t mind when you ask for help.
Being poor is off-brand toys.
Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.
Being poor is knowing you can’t leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.
Being poor is hoping your kids don’t have a growth spurt.
Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn’t have make dinner tonight because you’re not hungry anyway.
Being poor is Goodwill underwear.
Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.
Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.
Being poor is your kid’s school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.
Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.
Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.
Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.
Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.
Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.
Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash.
Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.
Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.
Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.
Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.
Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.
Being poor is not talking to that girl because she’ll probably just laugh at your clothes.
Being poor is hoping you’ll be invited for dinner.
Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.
Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.
Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.
Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.
Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.
Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.
Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.
Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar.
Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.
Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.
Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.
Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.
Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.
Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.
Being poor is knowing you really shouldn’t spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.
Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.
Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won’t listen to you beg them against doing so.
Being poor is a cough that doesn’t go away.
Being poor is making sure you don’t spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.
Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.
Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.
Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.
Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.
Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.
Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.
Being poor is seeing how few options you have.
Being poor is running in place.
Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.

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GHANAIANS DEMAND PROMPT ACTON AGAINST CORRUPT JUDGES

Accra – An activist group, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), has reportedly called on authorities to act promptly against the 20 judges and magistrates who were dismissed for corruption this week.According toDW.comthe activists wanted the judgesto be prosecuted for their crimes.GII is the local arm of Transparency International.“We need to set some critical examples, so the masses know that Ghana is ready to tackle the bull… Corruption has dire consequences. We must tackle it and tackle it wholly,” activist Mary Adah was quoted as saying.BBCreported early this week that the 20 judges andmagistrates were dismissed by Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood.This was after Journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas collected more than 500 hours tapes implicating corrupt activities within the judicial system.MeanwhileVibe Ghanareported on Thursday that former Commissioner of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Emile Short condemned the decision by the Chief Justice to give some of the judges implication in the corruption scandal End of Service Benefits (ESB)Reports indicated that four of the sacked judges received their ESB because they showed “abundant remorse”The judicial council on Wednesday defended its move, saying: “Those removed with benefits were remorseful when they appeared before the committee and apologised profusely to the people of Ghana and the judiciary for bringing the name of the institution into disrepute by their conduct.”But justice Short said giving the sacked judges money only allowed for corruption to continue.

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EAGLE SPRINGS JOURNEY

Hearing God’s Voice through His Word

“I’m not hearing God’s voice. I’m reading my Bible but getting nothing out of it. What does it look like for God to speak to me?”This was the question presented by a young lady recently attending a Journey to the Heart. From November 7 – 16, ten young ladies gathered to spend personal time with the Lord. The Journey was held at the Eagle Springs Training Center in northeastern Oklahoma. This event could be summarized as learning what it means to live with the constant awareness thatwe can do nothing apart from Jesus Christ.(See John 15:5.) It has to be Christ in us doing the work and changing our hearts. The girls were very open, excited to be there, and eager to learn and grow as they spent time in His Word.And the disheartened young lady who posed the question? Her leaders explained that Goddoesn’t tap a person on the shoulder or waveHis hand in front of one’s face and say, “Listen! I’m getting ready to speak to you.” God spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice. Sometimes God uses other people to bless andencourage us in our walk with Christ. Other times when reading the Word of God, a verse may “jump off the page” at us or be applicable to where we are currently in our walk with Christ.God also speaks to us through meditation on His Wordas we think on things of the Lord; however, we must first choose to take God at His Word, knowingthat His Word is Truth and that He cannot lie.The next morning that same young lady excitedly greeted one of her leaders. “Can I share with you what God spoke to me this morning while I was reading my Bible?” This was the beginning of her learning to hear God’s voice as she spent time with Jesus. Truly, she was discovering the truth of James 1:17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Another significant question asked by one of the young ladies was,“What does it mean to be dead to sin and alive in Christ?”This question led her leader to share the gospel with her. God used that conversation to openher eyes to see her need for salvation. Praise the Lord that in those ten days she, along with two others, came to saving faith in Christ!During the testimony time on the last eveningtogether, each young lady told the group about God’s power in changing her heart, a reconciled relationship, or about simply cominginto deeper fellowship with her Heavenly Father. Everyone rejoiced in hearing about sins rooted out that had been hindering fellowship with Jesus. Through this time on the Journey, God’s truth had been planted deeper into their lives. Thank You, Jesus, fornew and renewed hearts!

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The fear of juju did not force me to change management

Few weeks ago, there were rumours of a massive shake-up in Kwabena Kwabena’s management team with ‘juju’ being the reason for the reported sudden shake-up.According to the reports, one of the musician’s spiritual fathers had a revelation that some suspicious items had been buried at Kwabena Kwabena’s private residence.Kwabena followed directions from the man of God and found a black pot containing several scary items buried in his compound.The silky voice highlife singer addressing the issue for the first time, denied knowledge of the speculations.He told Hitz News, “as far as I am concerned, I have not said that anywhere and I have not pointed any accusing finger [at] anybody. What happened is, at KBKB music we expect a certain level of loyalty and competence, if you don’t meet it, we move on without you.”Kwabena Kwabena continued that, it is common for an organization to relieve its members of their duty and employ new ones, and same applies to KBKB music.“I have always had people assigned to tasks and there has always been a shakeup ever since I started from 2005 with my very first album.”When asked why he never came out to rubbish the speculations, the ‘Adult Music’ singer said “rumours travel and people talk and for what I do, inthe last ten years I have sacrificed my freedom, I put myself out there for people to talk about me so I cannot control what anybody says out there, I can only control what I say.”Kwabena Kwabena, who has been off the music scene for a while after he released his first gospel tune titled ‘Bue Kwan’ from his album ‘Daakye’, is set to celebrate his tenth anniversary in music. He started doing music in 2005 when he released ‘Aso’.Prior to the celebration, Kwabena Kwabena has released two singles, ‘Esen Sisa’, released on September 23, and ‘Tuemuda’ all from his ten-track album ‘Ahyease’ which he will release in April 2016.He describes the album, as “the album of his life” since it coincides with his tenth anniversary.“It’s the album of my life because it’s been ten years since I released ‘Aso’, it’s wonderful, Ghanaians are still supporting and enjoying Kwabena Kwabena music. I was wondering what I can give my fans to be a signature for this ten-year anniversary and it is ‘Ahyease’,” he said.

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LIVE UPDATE( REAL LIFE SITUATIONS)

I think of those who died today.
They held views on the matter,
one way or the other,
of our awful Ghanaian problem.
They watched the last event unfold and thought:
More laws. More guns. Less violence. Less coverage.
This, no, that, no, this,
with more or less certainty or stridency.
“This is the last straw.” “How can we be this way?”
“It is our culture.” “Our right.”
“Isn’t this the price of freedom?” “Isn’t this absurd, grotesque?”
They are dead now.
They and their various views on the matter,
swallowed up suddenly by darkness,
their loved ones maddened with grief,
breaking things they’ve bought, pulling at their hair,
all that undeliverable protest at the void.
I think of others, alive today, soon to die,
(who knows when or whom, maybe you, or me,
or the him or her who’s more to you than you)
who with more or less certainty hold views too
that will vanish into the dark with them
tomorrow, the week to come, by this time next year.

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CELLA THE SLAVE

Around 1820, Robert Newsom and his family left Virginia and headed west, finally settling land along the Middle River in southern Callaway County, Missouri.  By 1850, according to census Newsom owned eight-hundred acres of land and livestock that included horses, milk cows, beef cattle, hogs, sheep, and two oxen.  Like the majority of Callaway County farmers, Newsom also owned slaves–five male slaves as of 1850. During the summer of 1850, Newsom purchased from a slave owner in neighbouring Audrain County a sixth slave, a fourteen-year-old girl named Celia.  Shortly after returning with Celia to his farm, Newsom raped her.  For female slaves, rape was an “ever present threat” and, far too often, a reality.  Over the next five years, Newsom would make countless treks to Celia’s slave cabin, located in a grove of fruit trees some distance from his main house, and demand sex from the teenager he considered his concubine. Celia gave birth to two children between 1851 and 1855, the second being the son of Robert Newsom. Before 1855, a real lover, another one of Newsom’s slaves named George, entered Celia’s life.  On several occasions, George “stayed” at Celia’s cabin, although whether for a few hours or an entire night is unknown.  In late winter, either February or early March, of 1855, Celia again became pregnant.  The pregnancy affected George, and caused him to insist that Celia put an end to the pattern of sexual exploitation by Newsom that continued to that time.  George informed Celia that he would have nothing more to do with her if she did not end it with the old man. Celia approached Newsom’s daughters, Virginia and Mary, asking their help in getting Newsom “to quit forcing her while she was sick.”  It is not clear whether either of the Newsom daughters made any attempt to intervene on Celia’s behalf, but the sexual assaults continued.  In desperation, Celia begged Newsom to leave her alone, at least through her pregnancy, but the slave owner was unreceptive to her pleas. On June 23, 1855, Newsom told Celia “he was coming to her cabin that night.” Around 10 P.M., Newsom left his bedroom and walked the fifty yards to Celia’s brick cabin.  When Newsom told Celia it was time for sex, she retreated to a corner of the cabin.  He advanced toward her.  Celia then grabbed a stick placed there earlier in the day.  Celia raised the stick, “about as large as the upper part of a Windsor chair, but not so long,” and struck her master hard over the head.  Newsom groaned and sunk down on a stool or towards the floor. Celia clubbed Newsom over the head a second time, killing him. After making sure he was dead, Celia spent an hour or so pondering her next step.  Finally she decided to burn Newsom’s body in her fireplace.  She went outside to gather staves and used them to build a raging fire.  Then she dragged the corpse over to the fireplace and pushed it into the flames.  She kept the fire going through the night.  In the early morning, she gathered up bone fragments from the ashes and smashed them against the hearth stones, then threw the particles back into the fireplace.  A few larger pieces of bone she put “under the hearth, and under the floor between a sleeper and the fireplace.”  Shortly before daybreak, Celia carried some of the ashes out into the yard and then went to bed. In the morning, as Newsom’s family was growing concerned about Robert’s disappearance, Celia enlisted the help of Newsom’s grandson, Coffee Waynescot, in shovelling ashes out of her fireplace and into a bucket.  Coffee testified later he decided to help when the slave said she would give him two dozen walnuts if he would carry the ashes out. Following Celia’s instruction, Coffee distributed the remains of his grandfather along a path leading to the stables.        On the morning of the 24th, Virginia Newsom searched for her father in along nearby creek banks and coves, fearing he might have drowned.  By mid-morning, the search party grew to include several neighbours and Newsom’s son, Harry. After fruitless hours of searching, suspicion began to turn to George, who–it was thought–might have been motivated to kill Newsom out of jealousy.  William Powell, owner both of slaves and an adjoining 160-acre farm, questioned George.  George denied any knowledge of what might have happened to Newsom, but then added suspiciously, “it was not worthwhile to hunt for him anywhere except close to the house.”  Faced with, most likely, severe threats, George eventually provided an additional damning bit of information.  He told Powell that he believed the last walking had done was along the path, pointing to the path leading from the house to the Negro cabin. George’s comment immediately led investigators to the conclusion that Newsom had been killed in Celia’s cabin. When a search of Celia’s cabin failed to turn up Newsom’s body, Powell and the others located Celia doing her regular duties in the kitchen of the Newsom home.  Powell falsely claimed that George had told the search party that “she knew where her master was,” hoping this approach might prompt a quick confession from Celia.  Instead, Celia denied any knowledge of her master’s fate.  Faced with escalating threats, including the threat of having her children taken away from her, Celia continued to insist on her innocence. She undoubtedly understood that confessing to the murder of her master would be an even more serious threat to her relationship with her children. Eventually, however, Celia admitted that Newsom had indeed visited her cabin seeking sex the previous night.  She insisted that Newsom never entered her cabin, but rather that she struck him as he leaned inside the window and “he fell back outside and she saw nothing more of him.” Finally, after refusing “for some time to tell anything more,” Celia promised to tell more if Powell would “send two men out of the room.”  When Harry and David left, Celia confessed to the murder of Robert Newsom.  Following Celia’s confession, the search party located Newsom’s ashes along the path to the stables.  They also gathered bits of bones from Celia’s fireplace, larger bone fragments from under the hearth stone, and Newsom’s burnt buckle, buttons, and blackened pocketknife.  The collected items were placed in a box for display during the inquest that was to come. Acting on an affidavit filed by David Newsom, the case of State of Missouri v Celia, a Slave commenced.  Two justices of the peace, six local residents comprising an inquest jury, and three summoned witnesses all assembled at the Newsom residence on the morning of June 25.  William Powell testified first, providing the jurors with an account of his interrogation of Celia the day before. Twelve-year-old Coffee Waynescot told jurors of Celia’s request that he distribute what turned out to be his grandfather’s ashes along the path.  The third and last witness was Celia, who reaffirmed that she killed Newsom, but insisted that she did not intend to kill him when she struck him, but only wanted to hurt him.  The inquest jury quickly determined that probable cause existed that Celia wilfully murdered Robert Newsom, and the slave girl was ordered taken to the Callaway County jail in Fulton, nine miles to the north of the Newsom farm. Doubts as to whether Celia could have pulled off her crime without help lingered, and Callaway County Sheriff William Snell allowed two men, Jefferson Jones and Thomas Shoatman, to conduct further questioning of Celia in her jail cell. Celia added some additional detail to her original story, describing the history of rape and sexual exploitation that began soon after her arrival on the Newsom farm, but she continued to deny that George played any role in Newsom’s death or the disposal of his body. Celia’s trial came at a time of heightened tensions over the issue of slavery since in 1854, Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed settlers in those territories to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery within their boundaries.  Northern opposition to the new law led to the establishment of the Republican Party and to campaigns by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups to influence the outcomes of elections in Kansas. Celia’s jurors, of course, were all male who ranged in age from thirty-four to seventy-five and, with one exception, were married with children. All were farmers. Several were slave owners. On November 11, five days before her scheduled date with the gallows, Celia and another inmate were removed from the Callaway County jail, either with the assistance or the knowledge of her defence lawyers. The defence team, in a letter to Supreme Court Justice Abiel Leonard written less than a month after her escape, noted that Celia was taken out [of jail by someone and that they felt “more than ordinary interest in behalf of the girl Celia” owing to the circumstances of her act.  Celia was returned to jail by which it is not known in late November, only after her scheduled execution date had passed.  Following her return, Judge Hall set a new execution date of December 21,2 a date the defence hoped that would give the Supreme Court time to issue its decision on their appeal. The Supreme Court ruled against Celia in her appeal.  In their December 14 order, the state justices said they “thought it proper to refuse the prayer of the petitioner,” having found “no probable cause for her appeal.”  The stay of execution, the justices wrote, is “refused.” Celia was interviewed for a final time in her cell on the evening before her execution.  Again, she denied that anyone assisted her in any way.  She told her interrogator, as reported in the Fulton Telegraph, “as soon as I struck him the Devil got into me, and I struck him with a stick until he was dead, and then rolled him into the fire and burnt him up.”  Celia died on the gallows at 2:30 P.M

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