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Our Daily Thread 2-22-13

Good Morning!

It’s Finally Friday! 🙂

What should we talk about today?

And today is George Washington’s birthday so….

Quotes of the Day, from our first President.

“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical  education I received from her.”

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

George Washington

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Since it’s Friday, let’s have some music! From 2 of the kings of the 6 string.

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Oh, and 500! This is the 500th post here at Wandering Views. 🙂

A big fat THANK YOU! to all of you for coming along for the ride. It’s been fun. 🙂

I look forward to many more. Again, Thank You.

46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-22-13”

  1. Good Friday Morning Everyone~
    It’s Friday! You know what that means.
    No Y for us today. We have an Ice warning.
    It’s raining and 36 degrees at my house, but we have to cross the mountain to get to the Y and I decided not to do it.
    We could go through town and get there, but I decided not to do it.
    Otherwise,
    🙂
    Lions as usual.
    Congratulations to us for 500!

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  5. We are pre-op. Just waiting. The hospital is about and hour away from home and the rain this morning was horrid. Paul is so matter of fact about this. We are at Sacred Heart. I figure it never hurts to be in a Catholic Hospital.

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  10. We have a bit of snow on the ground and we’re supposed to have ice later. The birds are happy to have a tree full of bird feeders; we have a tree full of birds. Even got a female cardinal indulging herself with sunflower seeds this morning at both our sunflower feeders. And yesterday we had our first hairy woodpecker–neither of us is sure whether we’ve seen one before. (They look a lot like a downy, almost identical visually, but when you’re used to seeing the downy, there is no question at all this is a bigger bird. It also has a proportionately larger bill.)

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  12. Happy 500th, AJ! Great job 🙂

    Cheryl, the first time I ever heard a hairy woodpecker, I thought one of my kids had a squeak toy outside. I’d never heard a downy make a sound like that.

    We get hairy woodpeckers a lot in the winter and spring, but not as many as downies, which we have around all year. I’ve seen a hairy and a downy at our suet feeder at the same time, which is cool and easy to see the differences you pointed out above.

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  15. Michelle,

    I already did my taxes, and no, I didn’t tell them. The way I see it, I didn’t make any money on it, so they don’t need to know about it. 🙂

    Besides, that’s how they track you, ya’ know, when you give them too much info. 😯

    Now if I could write like you, edit like Cheryl, tell stories like Chas, or put lovely prayers to words like many of you on the prayer thread, I might be able to make some money off it the IRS would need to know about. But I’d have to allow ads, and I just don’t like ’em.

    And since the IRS hasn’t yet found a way to tax happiness, I’m OK there too. What I get from this is the fun of doing something I love, a stress reliever, and knowing all of you. Money is nice and all, but what I get from this is worth way more to me. That’s what I love about it.

    And I thank God, and all of you for that. 🙂

    Although I gotta tell ya’, there is some appeal to the
    Blogmanager/creator/mastermind title. Maybe I could even get MiM to make me a scepter. 🙂

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  16. Thanks for the blog, AJ! I was amazed at how fast you sprang into action when we learned we were being effectively booted way back when (how long ago was that, anyway??). Not that I blame the magazine, things change, they were moving on. I still enjoy popping over there but haven’t commented; I do like reading their site, though.

    Not sure I’ll continue to subscribe to the print edition this year, however. Is there a cheaper online only subscription or not? I don’t read the physical magazine as much as I do the online version, though it’s nice to be able to pass on the magazine, too.

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  17. Donna- World Mag has an online only subscription for $34.95. They also have i-pad subscriptions. I’m not promoting or selling here, just informing.

    AJ- Instead of a scepter (reserved only for the former Benevolent Dictator Lynn Vincent), maybe MiM could make you a wooden computer mouse. Or a log of some sort in the shape of a ‘B’, you know, a B-log.

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  19. I’ve gotten way behind in reading my World magazines. My sub is up in June, and I’m considering not renewing, either. When I renewed last year, I was already quite far behind (hadn’t finished the 2011 editions yet), but I like getting the magazine in presidential election years. However, I hardly read most of what I got in 2012. It doesn’t seem worth it to pay for something I’m hardly using, yet the magazine is one I was really fond of when I first started getting it because I was so thrilled to find a current events magazine out there without the usual mainstream slant.

    Getting internet at home, though, in January 2011, has for the most part brought about the demise of my reading hard copies of magazines to which I’ve been subscribing. Most of my news and informational reading I get from the internet now.

    But it’s still hard to give up the idea of getting World at home; it’s held a special place in my heart. I have a hard time making up my mind about such things…

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  20. 6 Arrows, I had the same dilemma. I let my subscription lapse for a few months at one point (when my credit card got renewed, the payment info they had for my automatic renewal was no longer current, and I thought “oh well, it will save me some money,” and eventually I renewed it). But when I was getting married, I let all my subscriptions run out. I still have two that had multi-year subscriptions. I’ll renew one of those when it runs out, but I just got the last issue of Dog Fancy. I’m thinking of “replacing” it with Birds and Blooms; I got that one year and enjoyed it. (I have a hard time throwing away old issues of magazines, and for that reason and financial ones, I limit myself, just two or three at a time. My husband gets one, too, and the girls get a couple.)

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  21. This is the true story of Lucky the chickadee.

    Lucky came to our yard pretty much every day. Though he flew as well as the other chickadees, was as friendly and perky as the other chickadees, there was just something different about him.

    You see, Lucky had no tail. I imagined he was nearly caught by a cat; my husband thought the other birds might have dared him to freeze himself to a metal pole and see what happened. Either way, tail or no tail, Lucky was lucky to be alive.

    Still, he came by every day, and we were happy to see him.

    A week ago I noticed that Lucky was growing new tail feathers. Once they started coming in, they grew in fast. Each day they were visibly longer, and it seems that it took only about five days to be long and full again.

    But Lucky is still distinctive. Because Lucky’s new feathers didn’t grow in white or gray, but pure white. He now has a warm rear end again, but he’s wearing plumes that don’t quite match the rest of his uniform.

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  23. I’ve two names above because my Ipad keeps forgetting who I am . . . so I have to keep telling it and I guess I figured if it heard it twice, it might remember this time! 🙂

    Sorry to hog the blog again, but if you want a chance to win my book and/or want to relive the story I’m sure I already told you hear about visiting the Navy Recruiting Station searching for info, you can read yet another blog posting about moi (how’s that for French?) here:

    Fan Friday Book Give Away With Guest Author Michelle Ule

    Funny, over on my own blog, I’m writing about that concept “need to know,” treachery and fooling small children–and remembering how very angry I still am at the traitorous Family of Spies.

    Later!

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  24. AJ – Thanks so much for the blog and thanks for inviting me back. I thought I had lost most of you in my absence. This seems to be a more pleasant version of the original. Fewer trolls. (One who thinks he’s a troll but really isn’t). Maybe you could ask Lynne for the scepter theat MIM made for her since she isn’t using it. 😉

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  25. Cheryl,

    I have the same problem as Lucky. What used to grow back as black and grey is now only white. 😦

    But hey, it still beats bald! 😆

    Michelle,

    You’re not hogging. You’re sharing. Hogging is not cool. Sharing is. 🙂

    And thank you all. Now stop, you’re making me 😳

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  27. Our local island newspaper prints obituaries in each edition. Some of the obituaries present the deceased person’s “faith-based affiliation” (today’s politically correct way of describing church membership). A few make no mention of such, so I infer they might have been an agnostic or atheist. A recent compilation indicated Whidbey Island has about 80 “faith-based” organizations. They didn’t list the one “faithless” based organization, started by you know who. We are up to about 30 members. We will meet next Tuesday (assuming I live that long). I am proposing we declare ourselves the “only cult that dares call itself a cult” but my “followers” pretty much ignore what I say. (Some cult leader I am.)

    Anyway, I’ve never seen an obituary where the deceased is described as a “proud life-long atheist,” or similar. I’ve written my own obituary, proudly declaiming my life-long atheism. I am not as eloquent or popular as Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the best-selling book MORTALITY as he prepared himself to die, but I am doing what I can. My wife likes to be discreet and low-profile. Nor am I sure I can depend on her to pay the $1,000 or so it will cost to get it published. [I have discovered the secret of how small town newspapers stay in business in this newspaper-unfriendly age.) Today I will mail a copy of my atheist self-obituary to my daughter. After all, after years of difficult graduate school she finally graduated and got herself a good job where they will pay her fairly well for doing medical research that saves children’s lives. So I will ask her to make sure it gets published so I can irritate the religious believers of Whidbey Island from the grave.

    Going to hell and proud of it. Well, I didn’t put that in my obituary. I saved that just for you. Pass it on to World magazine. It’s very windy. I have a couple of meetings I want to go to this afternoon and tonight. A tree might fall on me. Like the one that killed a nine year old girl not far from where I live a year or so ago. God’s ways are mysterious, my religious neighbors said at the time. Well, you know God better than I do, so pray for me. If you don’t hear from me by April, figure an ent got me.

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  29. I, too, thought that World got overly expensive (plus shortened to fewer issues) and let it lapse. I miss it a little, but not enough to pay their price. What I really miss is that I’d leave them laying on the coffee table and my in-laws and other unbelievers who visited would pick them up and read them. I’m not sure how much good that did from an evangelism standpoint but you never know.

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  33. 6 Arrows – Lots of homeschoolers use World to help teach their children current events from a Christian point of view.

    Linda – Part of the expense of World, I think, is that they don’t get the postage breaks that the big magazines do. IIRC, postage went way up for them a while back.

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  34. I really like what World Magazine does so I like to pay the price for the subscription to help them to be able to continue and to possibly expand. As homeschoolers we certainly benefited from their efforts beginning with God’s World News.

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  37. Apparently my tailbone is not the problem, according to my doctor. And he doesn’t think x-rays will be helpful at this point. About all he could do is prescribe painkillers, which is about what I expected. He did say, though, that I should feel free to go back to running if it doesn’t hurt too much – as long as I manage not to fall.

    I slipped on the ice in my driveway and fell yesterday, on my side this time. I slipped but managed not to fall on the ice in front of the church Wednesday, and on a wet patch of floor at work this morning. Fortunately the indoor track at the Y isn’t slippery, so I think I can manage not to fall there.

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  39. We subscribe and I enjoy reading it though it is tough to find time for it. I come on here in snippets. But the children really enjoy it so I have to get through it in order to pass it on. Worth doing in my opinion. One subscription gets read at least eight times. Good deal.

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  40. Karen and Janice — Good point about using World/God’s World News to teach the children current events from a Christian perspective. We had used one of the versions of GWN with 2nd Arrow one year when she was approximately middle school age, but it wasn’t a particularly good fit with her, and was rather expensive to be getting two subscriptions (to that and World), so we dropped the GWN sub and just let our kids peruse World at will as they got to ages where they desired to do that.

    Third Arrow (age 15) said, after I asked tonight, that she would like to continue getting World magazine, so…between my reading it a little…and her reading it a little…and 4th Arrow beginning to pick it up…and my hubby glancing at it now and then…maybe we ARE getting our money’s worth, even though I’m no longer reading every. single. article. like I used to. 😉

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  41. Cheryl — We had a painted lady butterfly named “Lucky”. We had gotten one of those butterfly kits where you can get caterpillars and food and watch their life cycles from caterpillars to butterflies. We got five caterpillars, and “Lucky” was the last to change into a chrysalis, but the first to emerge a butterfly.

    I don’t remember what the usual span of time was that they normally remain a chrysalis, but I remember Lucky emerged a few days earlier than would be expected (may have been Day 7 of a 10-14 day cycle, or Day 5 of a 7-10 day cycle, or something like that).

    Anyway, I guess you could say Lucky was premature. His wings weren’t fully developed; they were wavy, looking like wet permed hair, and laid horizontally, like how a moth holds its wings while at rest, except Lucky could never bring them upright like how a butterfly at rest normally holds its wings. So obviously, Lucky couldn’t fly.

    The other four caterpillars developed according to the expected timetable, and after all of them had emerged as butterflies, we kept them for another day or two. Second Arrow, grade school age at the time, was quite fond of watching the butterflies, noticing their “personalities” and giving them names based on said personalities.

    So, in addition to Lucky (why that name, I don’t remember; maybe because it was the first butterfly to emerge, or was “special” looking?), the other butterflies were named Slow, Medium, Busy, and Rodeo (the wild one). 🙂

    When we released the butterflies, we went outside and set the “Butterfly Garden” on the picnic table, and opened the top. We all laughed when Rodeo flew out first and was gone quicker than I can type this sentence 😉 Soon, the other three butterflies that could fly also flew out.

    And then, of course, what would happen to this emotional mom, who was a little sentimental about releasing *butterflies*, for heaven’s sakes 😉 but one of the butterflies, I think “Medium”, flew out of the box and landed right on 2nd Arrow and just clung to her. And to make it worse, my husband, in the sappiest voice you can imagine for a man, said to 2nd Arrow, “Oh, look, Medium doesn’t want to leave you, [2nd Arrow]”.

    Well, I about lost it right then and there 😉

    Anyway, we got four butterflies safely released into the wild, and Lucky stayed with us, living in his Butterfly Garden in our dining room for his full life span — a few days beyond the expected life span of (I think) 6-8 weeks.

    And yes, there were a few tears then, too. (And a little bit now, *sniff sniff*.) 😉

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  44. It’s customary for departing staffers to write an email. Here’s the latest from an editor whose last day was today (a hard day in so many ways):

    “I’ve been here 12 years.The first seven were amazing. Recently, less so. All in all, a pretty square deal.

    “I am mostly grateful to the many people who allowed me to share their stories: The lady who named her baby Richter because he was born during an earthquake. The woman who whispered to me her deepest secrets as she lay dying. The dude who bounced around the United States on a pair of springs attached to the bottom of his shoes. The man who wanted to be buried with a telephone — just in case.

    “The list is endless.

    “You’ll get no palaver from me about how wonderful you all all. You are not all wonderful. But I found a handful of gems, and to them, I only say this: I”ll talk to you next week. To the rest of you, onward through the fog.”

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  45. Heartbreaking what’s happening to community journalism. 😦 😦 😦

    (And, hey, do you think that man wanting to be buried with a telephone “just in case” might have been Random???)

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