Good Morning!
It’s Thursday, we’re almost there. 🙂
On this day in 1845 The United States Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, MD.
In 1886 the tuxedo dinner jacket made its U.S. debut in New York City.
In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson triggered the explosion of the Gamboa Dike that ended the construction of the Panama Canal.
In 1965 The Red Baron made his first appearance in the “Peanuts” comic strip.
And in 1987 Tom McClean finished rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. It set the record at 54 days and 18 hours.
_________________________________________________
Quote of the Day
“The reasons he gave me for destroying Darien were, that the Southerners must be made to feel that this was a real war, and that they were to be swept away by the hand of God, like the Jews of old. In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance, I myself don’t like it. Then he says, “We are outlawed, and therefore not bound by the rules of regular warfare”; but that makes it nonetheless revolting to wreak our vengeance on the innocent and defenceless.”
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
Commander, 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
_________________________________________________
OK, since today is Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday, we’ll go with a clip from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s classic film of Verdi’s dark tragedy Rigoletto, featuring Luciano Pavarotti.
It’s also Tanya Tuckers.
And it’s Midge Ure’s too.
_________________________________________________
Wandering Views 
Morning all. They had a special 10/10 event at our store today. They had received a 40 foot container a couple of weeks ago. Today they closed for the morning and opened at noon with something from everything that was in the container. I went over at 1 with some other teachers. You wouldn’t believe the joy to find things you haven’t seen for a while. I bought olives and all sorts of things. You just can’t imagine never seein these things and then suddently they are there. Even got the last box of Raisin Bran for an occasional treat.
LikeLike
Pavarotti wakes a person up with all those notes he hits!
Thanks to all who made suggestions for books for the prison ministry. You all gave some excellent choices.
Anyone else going to S, C, today to have supper on a boat?
LikeLike
Glad to hear that you got some treats, Jo. Did you get a can of black olives or the little green ones stuffed with red pepper?
LikeLike
Good evening, Jo. So glad you were able to get some special treats! My sister, who is in Kibigora, Rwanda, rejoices over similar things. It’s hard to imagine living that way when one is living in the land of plenty!
I’m taking Becca for her comprehensive eye exam this morning, so I won’t be around much today. Y’all have fun!
LikeLike
The South wreaked its own vengeance on Mr. Shaw and his regiment.
LikeLike
black olives. I also got peanut m and m’s. and even a Snickers bar. I got candy corn to share with the staff at school. also some shell pasta that I need to represent the chrysalis when we do a life cycle of the butterfly (rotelle noodles for the caterpillar and barley for the eggs)
LikeLike
Janice, sounds like you are referring to the World magazine event. It certainly sounded interesting.
LikeLike
Janice, I am so glad you mentioned your prison ministry books. I would like to recommend Broken roads to Grace by Jim Lee. He attends church with me if you would like to get in touch with him. Our Deacon at church is very involved in the prison ministry. They are going into Fountain Prison this weekend (I think) with 12 THOUSAND cookies for the Kairos Ministry. Walt recommended this book as one they have taken with them. I have a copy of the book and have enjoyed reading it myself.
LikeLike
Good Thursday morning everyone. I woke a few minutes before six. I said, “I’ll roll out in a couple of minutes”. A couple of minutes later it was 7:30. Don’t know why.
Rick, I don’t know where Daren is. If it was on Sherman’s march, nobody wreaked havoc on Mr. Shaw.
LikeLike
Chas, After being annihilated at Fort Wagner, neither Mr. Shaw nor his regiment ever wreaked havoc again.
LikeLike
Good morning everyone. I went to the eye doctor yesterday. New prescription needed. Plus there is some scar tissue developing around where the lens implants were installed. I might need laser surgery later on.
LikeLike
Karen, I know you didn’t ask for our opinion, but mine is that if your tenants have four adults in their household and still cannot pay to rent a decent place to live, there is something seriously wrong. And you are not helping them – you are enabling them.
LikeLike
Driversguy, my mom just had laser surgery on her eye last week. It was no more difficult that a standard eye exam.
LikeLike
I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep early this morning so spent some time reading and pondering the parables in Luke 15. Definitely worth a little insomnia, but I’m tired this morning!
Linda, we don’t know what other people have gone through/are going through, what circumstances have led up to different points in others’ lives. Maybe they made mistakes that put them in the position they are in. But maybe not. Perhaps it is just a series of unforeseen circumstances. I find it helpful to always remember “there but for the grace of God go I” — or any of the rest of us. Everyone now seems to be on the same page and making an all-out effort — I’m praying a new home soon becomes available. God can and does work wonders often in the least expected moments, amen?
LikeLike
Ricky,
Col. Shaw and his men refused to participate in the burning of the city. He was ordered to do so but refused the order. They saw it as cruel and unjust.
While what the Confederate soldiers did after his death was considered by them to be an insult, today it’s seen as an honor.
“The 54th Regiment was sent to Charleston, South Carolina to take part in the operations against the Confederates stationed there. On July 18, 1863, along with two brigades of white troops, the 54th assaulted Confederate Battery Wagner. As the unit hesitated in the face of fierce Confederate fire, Shaw led his men into battle by shouting, “Forward, Fifty-Fourth, forward!” He mounted a parapet and urged his men forward, but was shot through the heart and died almost instantly. According to the Colors Sergeant of the 54th, he was shot and killed while trying to lead the unit forward and fell on the outside of the fort.
The victorious Confederates buried him in a mass grave with many of his men, an act they intended as an insult.[3] Following the battle, commanding Confederate General Johnson Hagood returned the bodies of the other Union officers who had died, but left Shaw’s where it was. Hagood informed a captured Union surgeon that “had he been in command of white troops, I should have given him an honorable burial; as it is, I shall bury him in the common trench with the negroes that fell with him.”[4] Although the gesture was intended as an insult, it came to be seen as an honor by Shaw’s friends and family that he was buried with his soldiers.
Efforts were made to recover Shaw’s body (which had been stripped and robbed prior to burial), but his father publicly proclaimed that he was proud to know that his son was interred with his troops, befitting his role as a soldier and a crusader for emancipation.[5] In a letter to the regimental surgeon, Lincoln Stone, Frank Shaw wrote:
“We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers….We can imagine no holier place than that in which he lies, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company. – what a body-guard he has!”
LikeLike
QoD: What’s the boldest thing you ever did?
I can think of a few things that were rather bold (for me), but probably the one where I was the boldest was the time in 6th grade when I didn’t complete some in-school project that was to be done by the end of the school day (an art project — I am terrible at art, BTW, so it was difficult for me to do it, even though I was working at it). Anyway, our teacher, a tall, heavy-set, rather fearsome-looking and -sounding woman told us that anyone who didn’t finish would not be going home until they completed it.
I don’t know if she thought I was wasting time (maybe I was, but that wasn’t typical for me) or she was very intent on following through with exactly what she said, but when the end of the day came and I wasn’t done with the project, I left anyway, and got on the bus. Well, before the bus pulled away from the curb, this teacher got on the bus, stomped on back to where I was sitting, and told me in no uncertain terms that I was to get off this bus right now and finish my project.
I refused. I said absolutely nothing, but I did not budge an inch.
An older student, who was also sitting toward the back of the bus, told me, with her voice trembling, “You better get off the bus”.
But I didn’t. I was very timid, and quite afraid of having the bus leave without me. We lived a long way out in the country, and we always rode the bus; our parents never picked us up from school. And the thought of being left behind with that teacher was especially frightening.
When the teacher finally saw that I was not going to get off that bus, she stomped back down the aisle and exited the bus. I don’t remember if she said anything before turning around to leave. I don’t even remember if there were repercussions the next day at school or anytime afterward, but I do remember how empowered I’d felt having (silently) stood up to a woman like that.
LikeLike
I will reply on the political thread.
LikeLike
Karen, you mentioned the difficulty your tenants are facing due to low income and high cost of living in Connecticut. From my understanding, based on my sister’s experiences living in several different states, East Coast, West Coast, and in between, living on the coasts, especially in California and the North East, is definitely more expensive.
Is there any reason living in a less-expensive part of the country wouldn’t be an option? It’s not like they would be leaving behind members of their nuclear family when they’re all living together now anyway. Could they keep their family intact and all go to a lower-cost-of-living state?
LikeLike
The boldest thing I ever did?
Well. I don’t know if it was getting up at midnight, donning my guitar, and singing love songs under my girlfriend’s window…
or asking her to marry me a few months later.
Both were death defying acts from this poor benighted country boy from Alaska.
LikeLike
For an introvert, I mean….
LikeLike
I don’t know that I’m especially bold. Dumb maybe.
On June 8, 1957, I had recently graduated from U. of S. Carolina. I married Elvera Collins and we moved into a house trailer on which she made the down payment.
In August, the two of us quit our jobs (mine part-time @ $0.80/hr) and moved our house trailer to Southwestern Seminary in Ft Worth, Texas. We didn’t have a place for our house trailer when we arrived and neither of us had a job.
It may have been faith. It may have been dumb.
I doubt that it was bold.
LikeLike
I never wondered why The Citadel named its football stadium “The Johnson Haygood Stadium”. Now I know.
I don’t know that it still is. It was in the 1950;s. I never heard of the Battery Wagner battle and I lived in N. Charleston from 1941-1949.
LikeLike
In researching the battle, I learned several thinga about Johnson Hagood, incliuding this:
In 1877, Hagood was named the first chairman of The Citadel’s Board of Visitors, a position he held until 1889 when Col. C. Schultz Gadsden, Class of 1852, replaced him. He also served as president of the Association of Citadel Graduates, the forerunner to The Citadel Alumni Association.
In 1878, Hagood was re-elected comptroller, and in 1880, was voted in as governor. His admirable reorganization of the state’s finances was complemented by his honest, business-like and common sense administration as governor. During his term as governor, the General Assembly passed a law that disqualified anyone participating in a duel from holding public office.
The stadium is still Johnson Hagood Stadium.
LikeLike
Donna, you are right, of course. I didn’t mean to be harsh. But a lot of times people get “stuck” and need a kick in the butt to get them unstuck. This may not be the case here. But I do have to wonder why at least two of the four can’t make a decent wage. The parents can’t be that old if the children are 19 and 26.
LikeLike
Great choice with the Verdi selection, AJ! I like La donna e mobile, and you can’t go wrong with Pavarotti!
Here’s another one of my favorite Verdi pieces, the Triumphal March from Aida. 🙂
LikeLike
I just noticed that on one of our calendars it says that October 16 is “National Boss Day”.
Is “Boss” a noun or a verb? 😉
LikeLike
Playing a lot of Verdi, lately. Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco. Anvil Chorus. Selections from Othello.
Also, getting to play a lot of Wagner, since it is his bicentennial year as well!
LikeLike
Verdi and Wagner apparently didn’t think too highly of each other. It was interesting to read this from a Wikipedia article on Verdi:
Verdi and Wagner, who were the leaders of their respective schools of music, seemed to resent each other greatly, though they never met. Verdi’s comments on Wagner and his music are few and hardly benevolent (“He invariably chooses, unnecessarily, the untrodden path, attempting to fly where a rational person would walk with better results”), but at least one of them is kind: upon learning of Wagner’s death, Verdi lamented, “Sad, sad, sad! … a name that will leave a most powerful impression on the history of art.”[16] Of Wagner’s comments on Verdi, only one is well-known. After listening to Verdi’s Requiem, the German, prolific and eloquent in his comments on some other composers, stated, “It would be best not to say anything.”
Ouch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdi
LikeLike
Linda, theoretically the parents could be “that old.” My parents were 53 and 45 when their youngest was born (which would have made them 72 and 64 when he was 19, except that Dad died at 67), and my mom’s dad was 57 when she was born. So it’s always theoretically possible that at least one parent is retirement age or disabled. But still, yes, a household with four adults should figure out its own issues when their presence is causing stress for another family.
LikeLike
Friday morning here and off to enjoy my class.
LikeLike
Cheryl, I was thinking the same thing you said. My husband and I were 48 and 45 when our youngest was born, which will put us in our mid- to late-sixties when she is 19. And it is still possible for me to get pregnant, at age 51, albeit pretty unlikely, so that would put us in our seventies when/if we’re blessed to raise another child from birth to adulthood.
Linda, I agree with you in wondering why, with four adults in a household, they can’t seem to generate enough income among the four of them to afford a place that will accept them and their pets.
But, as Donna says, we don’t know all the details and history of how they got to the position they’re in. They do, though, and hopefully they’ll start esteeming Karen and her family higher than themselves since they know the stress it is causing the family.
Definitely a matter to pray about.
LikeLike
I’m glad it isn’t Friday morning yet.
🙂
LikeLike
Friday morning is better than Monday morning. 🙂
LikeLike
Good evening everyone. It has been a day. There are changes going on at the real estate company where I work. It could be good for me if I get bold enough to go for it. Still pondering…..
LikeLike
My mouth is sore — today was my 6-month dental cleaning followed by full mouth X-rays, which I always hate. No issues, thankfully, but it’s soup for me tonight for dinner. I took the afternoon off on sick/doctor time (the appt was at 3:15 and took a good hour) so I’m home much earlier than usual.
It’s still light out so I may dash Cowboy to the dog park for a short visit. I also came home to find that Tess had eaten nearly a full bag of doggie omega supplement powder. It needs to be refrigerated but I apparently forgot to put the closed bag back into the refrigerator this morning after putting the 1 scoop each in their dinner bowls.
I can’t believe they ate (almost) that whole bag … (I also found one of my empty glass containers, snap-on plastic lid still on it, had been hauled out to the backyard at some point. It’s filthy, but still intact so I’ll wash it up. Sheesh.)
LikeLike
And considering the mess our country is in, this might not be such a bad thing.
LikeLike
The Queen has determined that this system doesn’t work after all.
“Our democracy will last until the people learn that they can write checks to themselves from the treasurY” to paraphrasee one of our founding fathers (may have been Ben Franklin).
OTOH, they haven’t been doing so well themselves.
The Roman Empire lasted over 1000 years. English Empire lasted about 500 years. We lasted over 200. It may be over.
LikeLike
I may have to start drinking tea.
LikeLike
Jake and I went for a walk up the road. But it did not last long as Jake suddenly began barking very aggressively and hiding behind me. Don’t know what was out there but my flashlight did not show any eyes. She was very persuasive so we came home. Her in front, me in back, between her and “it”. Some dog.
LikeLike
for those of you who prayed for us last week, though son did not make it to Bible study, he made it this week and was a pleasure to have around. We celebrated his sixteenth birthday a couple of days late. Thanks for praying. I am optimistic.
LikeLike