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Our Daily Thread 3-27-13

Good Morning!

On this day in 1794 the U.S. Congress and President Washington authorized the creation of the U.S. Navy.

In 1841 the first steam fire engine was tested in New York City.

In 1866 U.S. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill, which later became the 14th amendment.

In 1884 the first long-distance telephone call was made from Boston to New York.

And in 1912 the first cherry blossom trees were planted in Washington, DC. The trees were a gift from Japan.

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Quote of the Day

“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”

Henry  Ford

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Since I have driven my daughter crazy the last few days by giving her the pleasure of hearing my rendition of this song, (repeatedly I might add), it’s only fair I do the same for you. Not my version though, Gloria’s.

You’re welcome. 🙂

Remember when roller skating was cool? 🙂

Yeah, me neither. 😯

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Anyone have a QoD?

51 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-27-13”

  1. I never learned to roller skate. When I was a kid, only girls did that. I don’t know why. I went roller skating once in the Air Force, on a date. Everybody there was helpful, nobody made fun of me. “Comeon corporal, you can do it?”
    But I never tried it again.
    It amazed me at what a young age Jennifer was ice skating. She hadn’t been walking long. She just took to it. This was in Charleston, SC. When I lived there there were no winter sports.

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  3. Finally! Something I can brag about. I haven’t been on roller skates in a few years but I still was good enough BG was impressed. Before that I was amazing. I was even good enough that once upon a time they brought the handicapped children skating. One cocky jerk was skating around making fun of them. He got tripped and landed flat on his behind much to the laughter of his friends and he never knew why. I don’t believe I fell at the same time he did…. Hmmn. Perhaps I wasn’t close enough.

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  4. Last night Cheryl asked if “lame” was still used amound young adults…around here my young adult relies on non-verbal communication to convey that opinion.

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  6. Good Morning, Y’all!

    Average roller skater. Mostly in middle school…that was where we went.

    QOD: Can you whistle (a tune)? If so , do you? This is a continuation of a conversation at a book study yesterday…

    I can and do…often enough to sometimes annoy, I guess. Apparently, it is a stress reliever. Guess Snow White’s little friends were on to something…

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  7. The same man who taught me to whistle also told me that “a whistlin’ woman and a crowing hen will both come to no good end”. I mostly whistle to get the dog’s attention.

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  8. I was an OK roller skater, but when we say skater in SoCal we mean skateboarding and I did a lot of that. It is scary the hills I’ve bombed. And it is funny that I get nervous when my boys bomb the same hills.

    QoD: I was a whistlin fool growing up. I would whistle if I was walking alone, doing house work, surfing or skating. In my 40s I gave it up because I realized it was giving me smoker looking wrinkles 😉 Oh vanity. Whistling is not like riding a bike; since we got our puppy at Christmas I whistle for her and it has taken me some practice. This is hard when you have a puppy looking at you like, C’mon, you can do better than that!

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  9. I Will Survive. That has become my theme song but not the way the song goes. A long time ago, somebody sent me a you tube rendition of a space alien singing that song and the disco light falling on it. Then a grown child gave me a musical card with that song. I get it out to play it once in a while when the stress is getting high. Sometimes the life has given us can be very difficult but I know I will survive and then some.

    Roller skating, we did that but then converted our skates into boards and off we went.

    Our youth group here had an old dad that tagged along and when we went skating about ten years ago, he was amazing. He was about seventy four at the time.

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  10. I used to love to roller skate. I first starter using a key to put my wheels on, of course. You had to watch out for those cracks in the sidewalk. I liked going to the roller rink, but this wasn’t done too often, because it cost money and was further away than the ice rink. I ice skated several times a week in the winter at the outdoor rink. I was never great at either kind of skating.

    I have a nephew whose wife is on a roller derby team. It must be coming back or was I just completely out of the loop? (no pun intended)

    I am not a good whistler and seldom do it. I would rather hum.

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  11. Lots of skateboarding here, as well…
    Lost a lot of skin over the years. Had a lot of fun…

    We had a cool skate park called the Paved Wave. Me and some friends built a plywood ramp…that wasn’t as good…

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  12. We had the key skates. Until we hammered them onto a board to make a skateboard. It had to be a cooperative effort though as my brother and I only had one skate we shared.

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  15. Good Morning. I was never a good roller skater at the rink…boy, all those kids whizzing past you at 50mph, turning round and round…I hung onto the wall for dear life! Skating on the sidewalk in front of our house was the most fun. I had metal skates (still have ’em), with a key… leather straps for the ankles..wore my saddle oxfords for good support and off I would go…the sound of metal wheels gliding down the sidewalk is something you just don’t hear anymore…kind of like the sound of a rotary phone…just the thought gives me the warm fuzzy’s 🙂 Oh…I cannot whistle a tune…just enough to call the dogs back into the house.

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  16. Lots to talk about this morning—skating, whistling and lame!

    Let’s see if this works:

    Skating gave me broken hips, and whistling gave me lame lips.

    I went to the roller rink a few times and it was okay, but with no lessons and no aim except not to fall down it seemed a bit boring to just go round and round while the music played. Seems like there was one incident where a little kid went down directly in front of me and I had to do some kind of odd gymnastics move to avoid crunching the child.

    The best part of roller skates was doing what Mumsee said and turning them into homemade skate boards.

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  17. Recently there was a discussion about whistling in our Sunday School class. One of the teachers said that boys are better at whistling than girls. The third teacher and I both began to whistle to show that girls “can to” whistle. The teacher who said they don’t do so well with it is the one who can’t. Has anyone else ever heard that about whistling? I thought it would be a possibility for anyone. It just takes persistent effort to learn.

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  20. I whistle, but usually when I’m alone so I don’t annoy others. My daughter feels the same way about my whistling as she does my singing. She thinks it’s lame. 🙂

    I didn’t roller skate much, but I did skateboard. My first one was the best. I could beat my older brother down McKeen street hill. OK, McKeen St. slope would be more accurate. But my skateboard was the kind you sat down on. It was a scaled model of a Winnebago RV, and it was fast! Only problem was stopping it took a toll on your sneakers. But I didn’t care, I loved that thing. Eventually I did get a skateboard, but it was never as much fun.

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  21. Tammy, I read what you wrote on yesterday’s thread about what your son likes. My son is graduating with a double major in English and Philosophy. He has very similar likes to what you wrote about your son. When my son was young we were using the Calvert homeschool curriculum, and I taught him to write the beautiful Calvert script handwriting. Later as he got into Tolkien it seemed my son’s writing changed and appeared to look somewhat like Tolkien’s. I’ve heard you are suppose to pick your battles, and that was one that I chose not to enter. Tolkien does battle scenes far better than I do.

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  24. I whistle all the time, often accompanying a soundtrack in my head. One day in exasperation, my husband said, “Okay, I give up. WHAT are you whistling?”

    I had to stop and think about it. “Ah, the piccolo part to Stars and Stripes Forever.”

    No wonder he couldn’t figure it out.

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  25. Just in from five days at Mt Hermon Christian Writers Conference and with a mountain of laundry to do. Had a couple conversations with Lynn Vincent. She taught two workshops on narrative non-fiction and they were greatly praised. I sat in the end of one and she’s as calm, detailed and professional as you would expect. It was great to see her.

    I took an advanced fiction writing track from writer Davis Bunn which spun me around in it’s high level discussions and application to my current story. He challenged me personally when we met to go deep and not waste a terrific possibility with shallow writing.

    Not that I would WANT to write a shallow story, but the writing of this one–the WWI story–may cause a large amount of disruption in my life.

    Why ever not?

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  27. RE: from yesterday’s thread-
    the real Aj Mar 26, 2013 @ 22:54:03
    Cheryl,

    That is a cool pic.

    Peter,

    Was your old pic the same kind or different? I liked that much better than your new pic.

    Just sayin’…..

    Yes, AJ, my picture was a saguaro, but not of the blossoms. Mine was taken for the sun shining between the two giants of the desert.

    And you’re just jealous of my new picture since my team is still in the dance. And as far as I know, yours isn’t. 😛

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  28. Yes Peter,

    The Blue Devils are still in it. They’re Duke, it’s always a safe bet that they make the 16 or 8 at a minimum. Next victim, MSU Spartans. Just keep winning and we’ll see who’s better in a couple/3 rounds. 🙂

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  29. I remember when skating was cool. We went to the rink almost every week for a while. I could never do more than move forward. I could go fast, but not fast enough to win races- the cornering was not my strong point.

    And I can whistle almost any tune, if the range is not too high or low. For instance, The Star Spangled Banner- I cannot hit the highest note, and I think the low ones are a little sharp when I whistle them.

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  30. Well, AJ- As much as I want them too, I don’t think the Wildcats will get past the Buckeyes. But with all the surprises this time around, who knows?

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  32. Oh, is it Ricky who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area? I’ll be down that way starting tomorrow night. There is the Fellowship Conference at Camp Copass near Denton Thurs evening – Sunday morning, if you’re interested. There is a registration fee, and I think there might be a few spaces left, not sure. Check here for more details.

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  33. I’ve never before watched college basketball (I did watch a few Bulls games when I lived in Chicago, esp. the year they played the Suns–I rooted for the Suns, and still have the Suns T-shirt I asked my mom to send for my birthday), but with IU a #1 seed and a fairly strong team, I’m watching with my hubby. I don’t think they’ll win it all this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did next year, with another year of experience for some of their younger players. I hope they at least win their next game and make it into the Elite Eight. Our state needs a little respect. 🙂

    My husband whistles around the house occasionally, and I like it. (He also plays the piano, and I’ve never before lived with anyone who played an instrument–or played in my house anyway, since I think I’ve had one or two pianists for roommates, but we didn’t have a piano. Our younger girl plays the piano beautifully, but rarely plays.) I cannot whistle at all, not even enough to call the dog. I never have known why, but one day I read Anne Frank (I don’t remember whether it was in the Diaries or elsewhere) saying that she can’t whistle because of her overbite, and it occurred to me that might be my reason too. (I don’t know who told her that was the reason she couldn’t whistle, so I don’t know how accurate the reason might be.) Whatever the reason, I just cannot.

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  34. Speaking of skateboarding…my older cousin D moved home from Monterey, CA when I was in second grade. He thought it was fun to bring me up to date on what all I was missing not growing up in CA like he did. He taught me to skateboard and because he was 4 or 5 years older I idolized him and did whatever he told me to do. You wouldn’t believe the ramps he built and had me jump.

    Recently a 15 year old boy was killed in Orange Beach on a skateboard. He was skateboarding on the ramps to a parking garage at a condo and went out in the the traffic. A visitor from Wisconsin hit and killed him. It was awful..

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  35. When I was young, I roller skated. When I was an adult in my 20s and teaching high school I was invited to a roller skating party by some of the students. To my hideous embarrassment,, I could no longer roller skate. Now that I am almost 70, almost nothing embarrasses me. I doubt when I get to Hell and discover that God and Satan are real, I will be embarrassed, even then. Will you be embarrassed when you die and discover there is no there, there? Oh, I forgot. It doesn’t work that way. No wonder a lot of people believe in God, just like Pascal said.

    Tomorrow I will have an MRI of my brain. I expect when I exit, the doctors will say (in my hearing), “Just as we expected. Nothing but mush for brains.”

    “I beg your pardon,” I will retort. “That’s no mush. That’s oatmeal. Much better for the zombies to devour.”

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  36. Hey, y’all want a blast from the past, a look at one of the old World mag web discussions (Joel Mark and I went head to head on quite a few posts) as reposted on an article by Frank Schaeffer? (In the headline, he refers to “Word” magazine, but he links a whole post worth of blog comments that started by commenting on one of his books, using our comments to “prove” how weird evangelicals are. Should we feel honored?)

    Here’s the link: http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2012/04/plumbing-depths-of-evangelical-madness.html

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  39. I didn’t really get his point either. What he offered up as evidence of “madness” among evangelicals was for the most part an inaccurate portrayal of the debate that went on in the comment section. Most of it seemed downright reasonable. Maybe he meant the comments from the liberal commenters. 🙂

    So I would say yes, you should. 🙂

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  40. Kare2012,

    Lynn was the blog moderator at World for a while. Best-selling author as well. She used to actually get into the mix sometimes, unlike most there. She even has a scepter from Make-it-man, for bonking those who needed it. She wrote Sarah Palin’s memoir.

    Here’s the Wiki link on her.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Vincent

    “Lynn Vincent (born 1962) is a bestselling conservative American writer, journalist, and author or co-author of 10 books. Vincent’s work focuses on memoirs, politics and current events. She co-wrote Sarah Palin’s 2009 memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life.[1] She is a member of the Republican Party.

    Vincent’s best-known solo work is Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together. The tale of a friendship between a wealthy Texan and a black homeless man has been on the New York Times Best Seller list since October 2008.

    In 2010, Vincent wrote, with Todd Burpo, Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, the story of the four-year old son of a Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery visits heaven.

    Vincent, a U.S. Navy veteran, spent 11 years as an investigative reporter and feature writer for WORLD magazine, a conservative Christian newsweekly with a paid subscribership of more than 120,000. She has lectured on writing at the World Journalism Institute, and at The King’s College in New York City.”

    She’s a nice lady. About the only thing bad about her was she’s a die-hard Chargers fan.

    She also helped me scratch something off my bucket list, which was to correspond with a best selling author. 🙂

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  42. Chas, I admit I haven’t followed Frank Schaeffer much (in terms of reading him), though I read one of his book in the eighties and I own that and one other. I’ve followed a bit of his “life story,” but from a distance. But that column (and a couple of the ones in the sidebar, like 50 Wonderful Things Obama Has Done–or something similar–and the obit on Charles Colson) told me he really has gone off the deep end. And the comments are all by people in agreement with him, which means he basically has a lunatic-fringe following. His father would have grieved greatly.

    It was kind of interesting to reread a World blog comment chain complete with Phos and several other regulars, even if he was using it for weird purposes. One doesn’t expect to see oneself “quoted” by an author in such a way.

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  44. That was quite a long comment thread that Cheryl linked to — but I liked her comment on #100 the best. 🙂 “100!”

    Like Random, I roller skated a lot as a kid — my mom taught me to skate at the roller rink at Okoboji Lake in Iowa and later I took lessons. A few of us went to class every Saturday morning for a year or two in our little skating skirts, the moms taking turns driving us.

    But when I bought a pair of used white shoe skates I saw advertised in the newspaper (when I was in my 30s), I was horrified to also learn I no longer had the knack. How can that be? I kept trying to recapture the hang of it — skating on the bike path on the beach — but down I’d go after only a short ways. It was so easy and natural to me all through my childhood. I probably skated last when I was in college, still no problem.

    (Interesting since the woman I bought them from told me she’d barely worn them, she thought she’d remember how to skate, but no, she could not stay upright.)

    So then I also turned around and advertised them in the newspaper. Sold them to someone who said she wanted to try skating again, she hadn’t skated since she was a kid. 😉 Wonder how she made out?

    After that I bought a bike to ride on the beach. You really never do forget how to ride a bike. 🙂

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  46. Cheryl,

    It’s kind of weird to be commenting on a comment you made on World so long ago, but this struck me. You said,

    “…Seriously, the truth of the Gospel is far more serious than not hurting Colson’s feelings, and I’d be heartily disappointed in theologians who would say privately, ‘Well, I don’t agree with the document exactly, but I respect the man, so I’m not going to say anything.’ That simply isn’t proper when theologians believe an issue to be worded inappropriately. It isn’t ‘personal’; it has nothing to do with whether they like or respect Colson. Respect for the Gospel is more important.”

    It just reminded me of when Paul opposed Peter to his face and in his letter to the Galatians when Peter compromised the gospel by failing to share table fellowship with Gentiles. I can just imagine people piping in with things like, “Paul should keep his feelings to himself rather than smearing Peter in public like that…” In fact, no doubt there were people saying things like that.

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  48. Michelle,

    I was in Mt. Hermon in February for my church’s retreat. I know you live a little farther from me than that–out in Sonoma, isn’t it? But we really aren’t that far apart. I’m in the South Bay area about a half hour from Mt. Hermon. Maybe we should meet sometime.

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  49. Mumsee: Hey, Random, is your house still in place? How are the chickens?

    I presume your inquiry is based on news reports of houses sliding off cliffs and into the ocean or at least down to the beach, here on Whidbey Island. My wife and I were very intelligent not to make enough money to live in a Mac Mansion on a cliff with a gorgeous view of the ocean. As of 8:40 pm PST our house is fine and our chickens are fine. The three gray-spotted chickens go straight to bed at night like good little chickens, but the one surviving black chicken putters around outside for another half hour, kind of irritating when my wife and I want to go to bed ourselves.

    Tonight, however, as soon as “Blackie” saw me coming she ran inside and jumped up on the perch and said, “Such a good little chicken am I to go straight to bed.”

    However, one never knows. As a (not especially useful or competent) volunteer for the Red Cross, I know that we are always in danger of a huge earthquake (Cacade Fault), of a tree falling on our house from a wind storm, or of a huge forest conflagration fire storm. It’s a beautiful and idyllic paradise, but the only safe place, of course, is Heaven. As the poet said,

    The grave’s a fine and private place,
    But none I think do there embrace.

    Thank you for thinking of me and checking me. I hope things are well with you and your loved ones.

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  51. Ree, thanks.

    I was actually playing around with a google search. My husband had read an article with a picture on top, and I said, “Isn’t that Flannery O’Connor?” He verified that it was . . . by running the photo through google! I hadn’t known that was possible! To test it out, I put a photo of a bird I wanted identified (it didn’t help me at all), and then I put in Misten’s photo with her snowy nose . . . and since I used that photo on World’s blog, it came up with some hits, including that page from F.S.’s website or blog!

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