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Our Daily Thread 5-10-13

Good Morning!

It’s Friday! 🙂  🙂

On this day in 1773 the English Parliament passed the Tea Act, which taxed all tea in the U.S. colonies.

In 1775 Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold led an attack on the British Fort Ticonderoga. They were successful and took it from the British.

In 1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union troops in Georgia.

In 1908 the first Mother’s Day observance took place during a church service in Grafton, West Virginia.  You can learn more about that by clicking.

In 1924 J. Edgar Hoover was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 1960 the USS Triton completed the first circumnavigation of the globe under water. The trip had begun on February 16.

And in 1968 Jim Morrison of the Doors incited a riot during a Chicago concert.

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Quote of the Day

“But look what happens when the government gives you rights. When the government gives you rights, unlike when God gives you rights, the government can take them away. When government gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those rights.”

Rick Santorum

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And since it’s Mr. Astaire’s birthday….

It’s also the birthday of the lead singer of this band….

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Anyone have a QoD for us today?

52 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 5-10-13”

  1. Today was suppose to Park Day at the Kid’s school, but it looks like it will rain all day. He is very disappointed. I can take him to that park anytime but not when all his school friends are there. 😦

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  4. Is it Friday yet?
    Guess who overslept this morning? One guess.
    We’ve alerady been to the Y though. Just a little behind schedule.
    We went to the Carolina Gospel Association cencert at Rutherfordton last night.
    The Hoppers were the headliners. It was nice but too long. We didn’t get home ’till 11:30 and it was Friday before we got to bed.
    Elvera was up at the regular time today, though.
    But only KBells is ahead of me today. So? Where is everyone?

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  5. What am I, chopped liver? lol

    Forgot to post this…
    Youngest son was selected as a goalkeeper to the SW Georgia High School All Star game. It’s a region coaches selected position. Pretty cool…it’s only his second year as a keeper!

    inbutnotof

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  6. Friday!!!! It’s been a long week, but the sun is shining (after rain last night). Fire hazard should be down today and everything should burst into green the next few days.
    Inbutnotof: congrats to your son!

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  11. Let’s hear it for the Tea Act! I don’t know why, but unless I put sugar or honey in tea, I get an upset stomach. But I can drink strong coffee black with no problem.

    So, since Chas overslept, maybe these will help him wake up and get going.

    QoD: Who is your favorite fictional mother?

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  13. As for my QoD, I’m trying to decide if Marmee in Little Women or Marilla in Anne of Green Gables is my favorite. Marilla wasn’t Anne’s mother, but did a good job of guiding Anne on the right path.

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  16. Yes Peter, a lot of Little Women was fictionalized. It wasn’t all rosy posy in the Alcott home. Mr. Alcott was a teacher and a thinker. That means he wasn’t able to support his family which is why Louisa started writing.
    The other “fictional” father that was a ne’er do well was Pa Ingalls. He didn’t like work too much either and neither did Almonzo Wilder which is why Rose Wilder Lane probably was the ghost writer behind the Little House series. She was tired of supporting her parents.

    I HATE it when I get in research mode and ruin things like that for myself!!!!

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  21. Peter, one might think from the books that he was a hard worker . . . or one might also read between the lines and notice he was always pulling up stakes to move farther west and that he never seemed to have “good luck.” Since they’re written from the point of view of a daughter who adored her daddy, it’s hard to get much of a fair perspective.

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  22. He was a dreamer–and not the only one! Dashed hopes, too.

    I liked the mother in Madeleine L’Engle’s Meet the Austins. Only later did I realize how I patterned a lot of my mothering after hers: loud classical music when you clean; dinner in the over on time, reading stories long after light’s out, painting the toilet seat right before you leave on vacation. I loved her creativity and subjected my innocent children to the same type of childhood–with a lot of moving thrown in, too! 🙂

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  23. Peter’s QoD: I would have to say Ma in the Little House on the Prairie Series. She was very real to me, as indeed the whole family was, since I also came from a family of four daughters. My father was the one who read us the series, as we washed and dried the dishes after supper. I think we all lived with the Ingalls family.

    Which leads me to say, Kim, don’t believe everything the modern researcher tells you. I have no doubt that if I were to become a famous author, and someone researched my family after I was dead and couldn’t speak for myself, they might conclude my father was ne’er do well, because he never has been able to make ends quite meet. They would be dead wrong. There is a certain truth that shines out of those books, which tells me better than any literary critique that Laura wrote those books (why shouldn’t a woman with her education have such an ability) and that her father was beloved to her. People who spoil the Ingalls family with their “research” are of the same ilk that endeavoured to prove Shakespeare never wrote his plays because an actor of his educational level couldn’t have done it. They remind me of the Pharisees who wondered at Christ – “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” They are snobs who can’t seem to leave well enough alone in order to make money on their next truth-telling take on America’s favorite author. Besides, fifty years from now, their intellectual heirs will have a completely different take.

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  24. Phos- I didn’t realize I opened a can of worms! But I agree that modern critics always look at classic fiction through modern, liberal lenses. I my opinion, their lenses are a bit myopic.

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  26. Phos, I have a collection of artlcles that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in a local newspaper. The writing style is quite different. I started not NOT wanting to believe that Laura didn’t write the books. By the time I was done I had to change my mind.

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  27. Some comments I have on yesterday’s Mother’s Day discussion…

    Cheryl & Kim – (re: not being “step” grandmothers) Forrest has 6 grandparents. Well, 5. No, actually only 4 real grandparents. Of course, you know that Lee & I are 2 of those. Then there are R’s mom & step-dad, & his dad & step-mom.

    R’s dad has only seen Forrest three times, I think. (Shortly after birth, at his 1st birthday party, & during a recent visit back to Connecticut. – But he lived in Connecticut until recently. – There may have been another brief visit sometime during Forrest’s first year, but I’m not sure.) He didn’t even send a card for his 2nd birthday. His wife, R’s step-mom, doesn’t seem to feel any connection to her husband’s grandchild at all. (From what I’ve heard, she didn’t really want her husband to have much to do with his kids from his first marriage.)

    So, Forrest’s real paternal grandfather is R’s step-dad. That’s how we all feel.

    Cheryl – That is sweet that you love your grandnephew. My brother doesn’t seem the least bit interested in Forrest. 😦 He hasn’t even been to one of Forrest’s birthday parties, although his wife & daughter attended both. (He was golfing for one, bowling for the other. Real important stuff.)

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  28. NancyJill – My heart hurts for you, sister. Although Emily & I have a very good relationship, she has directly & indirectly indicated that she disagrees with some of our ways in raising her & her sister. I have winced at times.

    But I’ve also apologized, in a general way, for anything I may have done or said when she was a child that may have hurt her. I also have told her that we did what we thought best at the time, out of deep love for our daughters, but being human, we made some mistakes.

    There was a period of time, starting when she was a teen & continuing for a few years, when Emily refused to say “I love you” to her dad. Finally, with some insight God gave to both Lee & me, Lee invited Emily to a breakfast out (she was living with R at the time). During that breakfast, he apologized for some of the things he did when she was younger (like yelling a lot).

    Keep in mind that he was struggling with alcoholism (unbeknownst to us) when the girls were younger, & that influenced how he reacted (or over-reacted) to his daughters. By the time of this breakfast, he had been sober for several years.

    Emily admitted to Lee that she had been a very stubborn teenager.

    A few days later, Lee had dropped her off at her apartment (I forget why he was driving her somewhere that evening), & after he said “I love you, Emily,” he heard her quietly answer “I love you, too, Daddy.” You can imagine how that deeply touched his heart (& mine!).

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  29. I liked Oliva Walton and also Clair Huxtable. Another QOD; what fictional mother reminds you most of your own? My mom was little like Edith Bunker….in a good way. 🙂

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  30. Marilla would be the favorite fictional. My mom was unlike any other. She was kind and gentle and read to me and took care of me if I was ill. She let me lie on the couch with my head on her shoulder and we chatted. She was a Girl Scout leader even though she did not want to be and left it to us (high school girls) to run our troop. She played tennis with me, took me camping and canoeing. She put up with me. She taught me to love reading. She did not can or keep a spotless house, she did have a small garden. Others might have a different perspective. But I know of no fictional mothers like her.

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  31. Phos/Kim,

    When I was a kid I always liked the idea of a father like Pa Ingalls. My father worked the same job, in the same town, for nearly 40 years, until he couldn’t any longer. We were poor, and it was never gonna be any better than it was as long as we stayed there. I was correct in that conclusion too.

    So I always kinda envied that whole idea of a father who would pick the whole family up and follow the dream for something better for all. Naive I guess, as we all know, the grass isn’t always greener. Sometimes playing it safe and eeking out an existence is better, especially when you could end up worse off. I wanted to wander. That’s why I liked him, that want for something more. That, and you knew he loved his family. Ne’er do well is not at all what I think of when I think of him.

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  32. My grandfather was always chasing the greener grass. They moved back and forth across the country a number of times in search of the better job. He was a mechanical engineer. Well, he moved, found a job, then my grandma packed up all the seven children and moved to where he was. Riding the train and bus. With three children in cloth diapers……

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  33. AJ, my father was always looking for something better and never found it. I suspect that he didn’t know what he was looking for. I went to six schools thrugh the seventh grade. He and mom worked in a cotton mill, and dad was always looking for something else. He finally landed a job as an electrician when they were building the steel plant in Charleston. He quit several times to try something else, but eventually retired from there. He never had any money. That wasn’t because he didn’t have a good job after 1941, it was that he couldn’t hadnle what he made.
    I learned a lot from him. Lots of things not to do.

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  34. This was not entirely his fault. He, and two brothers were abandoned as children and after about three months of stealing food and sleeping in barns, they were separated and reared by uncles. They worked for their board. He left at 17 and made his own way. He quit school in the seventh grade. So, he didn’t have much of a chance.

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  35. Chas makes a good point. Historians need to your their “way back machine” and judge people by the times in which they lived, not by 2013 standards.

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  36. The Real, et al. My father moved to greener grass, but only once; leaving the subsistence farm that his family had worked for centuries and seasonal work at a lumber mill (which closed soon after), and traveled west across several provinces to find work. He became an office technician, and after he married and had a family, built a house and never moved again. He didn’t leave his work, his work kept leaving him. It was always a small local company that would sell out to a larger company, which would then discontinue my father, as he was getting to be an older model. He always wanted to travel, having a boundless curiosity about other places and people, but he stuck to his work faithfully, and if we never had much, we never starved either. He gave us a rich intellectual inheritance – my mother taught me the academics, but it was my father who shaped my understanding in literature, music, art, history, geography, and science. There was no shame in always being poor – our ancestors were always poor too, being crop farmers, manual labourers or servants. But many of them were rich in faith, and all of them had moved at one time or another to greener pastures, or I would never have been born on the western side of the Atlantic.

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  37. Now, as for my mother, Ma Ingalls would probably be the most like her. Both of them were school teachers who gave up their work to become mothers. Both of them were resourceful and knew how to take care of a house, a garden and animals. Both of them taught their own children the skills they knew and encouraged their children to learn more than they themselves knew. Both of them instilled good character into their children by precept and example. But my mother has a will of her own that makes itself known and she is never shocked when her husband sings slightly racy songs 😀

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  38. Hey everyone….the sun is shining…and the iris’s are shooting through the ground…Spring might be here!
    Favorite fictional mom….I love all the aforementioned….Marmee…Marilla…Olivia Walton…all good and favorites….I will say I loved Myrna Loy as Lillian Gilbreth in Cheaper by the Dozen…the movie…but I did love Lillian Gilbreth in the book…not really a fictional character…but, I just loved the book and the 1950’s movie version of the book….
    And thanks..Karen…I have had those conversations with all of my kids…telling them I did what I knew was best for them in raising them…and I apologize for all the mistakes I have made…I just wouldn’t classify our relationships as “close”…I love each one of them…they live their lives…and sometimes they even remember they have a Mother…it is what it is…

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  39. My father talked about the greener pastures but never went to find them. At one time he talked about going to Canada, Alaska and Australia. He said he should have been born in the days of the Pioneers. He grew up poor. Not “I don’t have the right brand of shoes” poor but barefoot and hungry poor. He worked hard and managed to rsise us working class.

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  40. They sound like interesting people who have lived interesting lives. 🙂

    We were poor,but my dad made sure we didn’t go hungry. And we knew we were loved. Part of the reason I wanted better was because my father worked a dangerous job that nearly killed him twice. It took a horrible physical toll on him. He’s 71 and severely handicapped because of it. He did that for us. I never really appreciated that until I was much older. But as a child part of wanting better was just getting my father something safer. We saw as kids the pain my father suffered and the things we no longer did together because of it all. That’s why I always dreamed of better. There is so much about my dad I missed as a Child. As an adult I appreciate him so much more for doing some of the things he did even though it wasn’t what I wanted.

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  41. Kim, Re – the authorship: I have read some of Laura’s personal diary and some letters she wrote to her husband when she was on a visit to her daughter. It never occurred to me after reading them to doubt her authorship of the series. Writers’ styles change significantly depending upon the genre they are using. I have read some of Dickens’ journalistic accounts and the style is quite different than his novels. It changes still more when they are writing for children – Louisa May Alcott’s melodramatic adult novels are completely foreign to her sentimental children’s works. Writers also change as they mature in their profession. I recently came across some of Jane Austen’s very early writings which were extremely exaggerated satires, and I was amazed to realize how much she toned down and polished her wit in her novels.

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  43. AJ, me too. I have lots of trouble with my laptop. The problems are that:
    1. All the keys are on one level and the small elevation makes a difference somehow.
    2. It’s hard to find the home keys, and when I do, I have to look at the keyboard to maintain it. Almost back to hunt and peck for me.
    3. And some keys, specifically the “delete” key is in a different place.

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  44. Roscuro, I came on here to say something much like what you said above, except for the part about having read Laura’s diary.

    So far I have written (or mostly written) five books, two of them published. My first book was on a serious subject (“serious” meaning instructional, not casual), and it had short chapters so the reader could “absorb” the topic of one chapter before going on to the next. My next book was in an established series and thus had to follow an established style, and it had some humor in it. I also got partly through writing a book with a co-author, reworking his material but using my “style” more than his since English isn’t his first language and his sermons and material I’m using are awkward. Then there’s the book that is fairly standard chapter lengths, but with lots and lots of true stories in it–if I could use a “standard” style it would probably be this one. And finally I’ve written (but again not published) a book for children, fiction. If you looked at pieces of all of them, you probably wouldn’t think they all had the same author; you might guess they had five different authors. Part of that is greater experience as a writer than when I wrote my first book more than a dozen years ago, and part of it is what the specifics of the book demand. C. S. Lewis wrote in even more different book types, and his writing varies from simple children’s tales to deep academic text, and includes poetry and several fiction types. Since he is kind of my literary hero, I don’t try too hard to establish one specific style.

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  45. I have been having computer trouble lately. I am thinking of not having the internet connection at home and just use the internet at the office. It would save some money and also I would probably get more done at home.

    I saw on Peter’s post that he has trouble with tea unless it has honey or sugar in it. I have discovered for myself that I can not drink tea on an empty stomach because of something about the way it processes in the body. I like to drink unsweetened tea but it requires a meal with it. Coffee is fine unsweetened and on an empty stomach for me.

    My mother was always busy dealing with food, I suppose because both my parents had a farming background. My father planted gardens and my mother did freezing and canning. She also was very involved with food because of my brother’s diabetes. I wished for a mom to be more involved with me like Mumsee’s mom was with her. My mother did not take much time to teach me about cooking, but she did teach me to use the sewing machine. I was actually better at figuring out difficult patterns and how they were to fit together and I could get her sewing machine unjammed when she could not. I have quite a different skill set than my mother had. I am much more creative than she was. I learned to crochet afghans and taught her how to do that. Also, as I started going to friends homes and learning about different foods, I would try to fix some foods that our family did not have so I taught my mother about some new recipes. We tended to have a plate full of vegetables and ground meat patties a lot. At one point I did complain about never having any sweets in my brown bag lunch like other children because of my brother’s diabetes so my mother did start making some cakes and putting slices in my lunch so I had some and could share some. I think I had an increase of friends around that time 🙂 .

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  46. The daughter who kept us on our knees for so many years…well…she surprised me with flowers for Mother’s Day…the card said she is blessed to have me for her Mom…and she cherishes me and the memories I made for her as a child…and here I have been feeling like a failure…thanking the Lord tonight…for sending me encouragement through the tears…this may not be such an awful Mother’s Day after all…… 🙂

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  48. That also just brought to mind the time after my mom had died and my cousins and I were going through desk drawers and other papers inside the house.

    My cousin found a Mother’s Day card I’d written to my mom, maybe a few years earlier, among the items. I’d written an especially heartfelt note that year about how we were such good friends and had so much fun together (I think we’d taken a trip that previous year).

    My mom died very unexpectedly and one of the things that caused me so much angst (which I’d expressed to my one cousin) was wondering if my mom knew how much I loved her.

    When my cousin handed me that card she said, “See? She knew.” I was so grateful I’d written those words. I always told my mom I loved her and we did have a great time together (usually), but there also were prickly points as there are in any mother-daughter relationship, I think.

    And since she died so suddenly, I was left with that heartache of worrying whether she felt all was well between us at the time of her death. (Only a month before she died, I’d had a surgery and had snapped at her a couple times when she was trying to over-mother me afterward. 😦 )

    So be sure to send those cards, tell them how much you love your mom and how much you appreciate all she’s done. 🙂

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  49. I gave her Mother’s Day cards every year, of course, and we typically went out to eat or did something, usually on the Saturday before to avoid the crowds.

    But how sweet to see that she’d “saved” that card in particular. 🙂

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  51. I did write a very nice letter of tribute for my mother to let her know how much I appreciated her and gave it to her when our family was out to eat dinner on one occasion. I am glad I did that. We loved each other despite our differences. I just sometimes wished we had more interests in common so we could have been closer. In college I had a boyfriend whose sister was a stewardist and she and her mom were always taking nice trips together. It was then I guess I realized what I was missing. After I got married and my husband and I got a timeshare we did get my mother to go on a few trips with us. She visited Williamsburg/Jamestown, a trip to Florida and finally went with us to Hilton Head. I was glad she could do those trips with us and our son when he was young and before she had major afflictions.

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  52. I’m enjoying reading these Mother’s Day thoughts tonight…a peaceful way to end the day. NancyJill @ 22:43:09, that’s beautiful.

    Good night, all.

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