Good Morning!
It’s Friday!!! 🙂
On this day in 1777 the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, precursor to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1867 the first stock ticker was unveiled in New York City.
In 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.
In 1940 the first 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under peacetime conscription.
In 1986 a government tribunal in Nicaragua convicted American Eugene Hasenfus of charges related to his role in delivering arms to Contra rebels. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison and was pardoned a month later.
In 1992 Richard Petty drove in the final race of his 35-year career.
And in 1993 a judge in Mineola, NY, sentenced Joey Buttafuoco to six months in jail for the statutory rape of Amy Fisher. Fisher was serving a prison sentence for shooting and wounding Buttafuoco’s wife, Mary Jo.
_________________________________________________
Quote of the Day
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Thomas Jefferson
_________________________________________________
Today is David Carr’s birthday. No, not the guy who was the Giant’s back-up QB. The other one from Third Day. 🙂
And it’s Miguel DeJesus’ of Smalltown Poets too.
And today in 1956 this man made his acting debut in this movie.
_________________________________________________
Wandering Views 
My wife has the day off, so I get to sleep in today.
And yet I’m awake. 😦
Oh well…..
LikeLike
I’m awake too, just barely.
LikeLike
Maybe I’ll do something fun, like go get an oil change, or maybe a haircut.
Or maybe I’ll try going back to bed….
I choose C. Final answer. 🙂
LikeLike
Mornin’ Chas.
Jo’s around too, but she may have fallen asleep, I’m not sure.
LikeLike
I learned a bit of history yesterday. I never knew Nellie Bly was anything but a song.
JFK was shot in the head, but he wasn’t killed instantly. He died in the hospital some time later. We all knew he was going to die, but it wasn’t immediately.
LikeLike
Wait. I’m up before 7:00, but I can’t be first? Maybe I should have come over here sooner. 🙂
My husband and younger daughter are going out to breakfast for some daddy/daughter time. I’m editing a novel.
LikeLike
‘morning Cheryl. I’m just waiting around for ol’ slowpoke.
Is it Friday yet?
LikeLike
My husband sent me this link of beauty in largely unseen areas in America. Worth noting that three of the 19 images are from my home state of Arizona (which also has many well-known photogenic spots, including the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and the Painted Desert), and another three are from Mumsee’s neck of the woods, or at least her largely unforested state.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/16-photos-that-make-you-appreciate-america/2013/04/04/7c1f91f6-9ca6-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_gallery.html#photo=1
LikeLike
Rough night last night. I’ve hardly slept and the Alarm Dog still went off at his normal time. They are fed. I have coffee. I am trying to remind myself that life is good. I will let you know when I get there.
LikeLike
Happy belated birthday to IBNO – I tried to send wishes yesterday, but Sasktel was having major 4G problems.
Here’s hoping the fix we ran last night on the work computer has worked and we will have a printer this morning. Hard to print receipts with no printer!
Have a great day, everyone!
LikeLike
Cheryl, they were “Photo’s that make you appreciate America” . I was expecting prettiest places. Only one was east of the Mississippi, and it wasn’t the best one.
You are surely aware, from your travels, that spme of the prettiest scenery is in the Appalachian mountains. The SC coast is pretty also.
LikeLike
From the prayer thread, but not part of it.
I have a theory that king size beds are the source of many of the world’s problems.
😉
Watch the Islamization of Europe. It will happen to America. Albeit more slowly. It is their intent. Just as Christian missionaries intend to meke Christians through the world. Muslims intned to bring shiria to all the world. By force if necessary.
And they are relentless.
LikeLike
Today is my last day at my current position. Monday and all next week, I will be in Dallas. The month of December should be less hectic, which should allow me some time to work around the house. Helen is coming to visit in January. I am going to order lunch for the people I work with. Seems like it is the least I could do regarding their support of me the last 3 years.
LikeLike
It’s cloudy. It’s been cold, but warming up. But it’s Friday!
LikeLike
My husband and I were blessed to go to a prescreening of the movie, The Christmas Candle. It was written by Max Lucado. Susan Boyle both sings and acts in the movie. She is great! All the acting and filming is superb so I highly suggest that everyone see it. It is rated PG and the only thing that I saw that would cause that could be a woman who was pregnant out of wedlock, but that is so common I am not sure that earned the rating. It was filmed in England and is beautiful just on that level. You do not want to miss this Christmas treat.
LikeLike
At our house, our children are required to make their own beds. I mean it. They are given some two by fours, one by fours, bolts, etc, and they make their own beds. They are bunk beds and only large enough for a twin mattress (some of the rooms are barely large enough for that) though some of them are made extra long for the extra long mattresses given to the extra long boys (last count was over six feet two inches for two of them). They like to make their beds. The first time.
LikeLike
The pics were of the other Idaho. It is pretty, but it has that immense city right in the middle of it. Go Boise. Go far.
LikeLike
The west rocks. We really do have some of the most beautiful expanses of open space and wildlife.
So our November heat wave may have finally broken, it’s cool and overcast again this morning. The way it should be, although some of my sun-worshipping fellow Angelenos aren’t happy about it.
LikeLike
And someone on fb said it’s even raining not far away, just across the harbor.
LikeLike
Proverbs 6:6
http://www.myamazingearth.com/2012/10/giant-ant-colony-excavated-you-wont-believe-what-they-build-underground/
LikeLike
Chas, yeah my husband thought that “nothing east of the Mississippi” was odd, too, but he thought I’d like the photos. I thought it was funny that the caption writer kept mentioning that some place had bighorn sheep; one photo of a beautiful lizard mentioned how lovely the scenery was, and that they had bighorn sheep, and completely failed to mention the lizard, let alone identify it.
LikeLike
Well here’s some Smoky Mountain wildlife for you.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/14/brave-photographer-takes-on-elk-for-7-minutes-and-it-was-all-caught-on-video/
LikeLike
For all you experts in grammar and the English language:
Wake up
Get up
Shut up
Pump up
Fill up
Look up
Ad infinitum
Serious question: What part of speech is “up”?
It’s used everywhere, but the word “up” is unnecessary in almost every instance it’s used.
You can say, “jump up”, “look up”, etc. That isn’t what I’m talking about.
Climb “up” is not really necessary.
LikeLike
See if this link helps, Chas.
http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/adv_place.html
I was remembering that directional words are adverbs in general. But if you think of the assumed implication of what is said, such as “wake up” means “wake from your sleep” it takes on the role of a prepositional phrase.
Not sure if I am explaining this correctly, but that is my limited understanding. I am sure that Cheryl, Michelle or Peter can do a better explanation.
LikeLike
Thanx Janice. I’m interested in what some others asy.
The “up” thing was used for jokes by the Tail Twister today. I’m the spoiler who had a serious question. Sometimes my logic gets in the way of fun.
I saw the elk thing on an e-mail I got. But the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy had the program today and we saw wome pictures better than those on the link.
LikeLike
Chas, I delete all sorts of instances like that, and “up” isn’t the only one. “He sat down at the table” might be necessary, because it tells you he is in the act of sitting, not currently (ongoing) sitting. And yet if someone writes . . .
“Chris! Come over here!”
Chris wandered over and sat down next to his friend.
. . . the “down” isn’t necessary.
“Would” is another that can usually be deleted. “He would eat breakfast at the same time every Saturday” can just as easily (and with less “wood”) be rewritten to “He ate breakfast at the same time every Saturday.” Same with “When we would wake up, he would wake up.” Sometimes the “would” makes it a little clearer that it’s past tense, continuing action, not just one usage, but that can often be shown other ways in the context. (“When we were children, Dad kept track of us like a mother hen. When we squabbled, he was there to separate us. When we went to bed, he took advantage of the chance to sleep. But when we awoke, he awoke too.”)
Another one I learned well in English classes, with a teacher who zeroed in on it, and I zero in on it on critques and constantly change it in editing:
Nearly all uses of “There are/were/is etc.” can be recast.
“There is rain in the forecast” can be “Rain is in the forecast” or better. (The sentence can be rewritten to take out the weak “is” altogether. “The forecast calls for rain” “Channel five predicted rain.”)
“There is plenty of food waiting to be eaten” has a really obvious fix, since you already have a verb present and ready to be used: “Plenty of food waits to be eaten.”
I’ve seen really good, strong verbs “buried” in the sentence in this way. Look at the difference between “There were five German shepherds lunging on their chains” and “Five German shepherds lunged on their chains.” In the first sentence, the dogs are part of the scenery; in the second, they snarl directly at you.
LikeLike
Thanx Cheryl. I’m sure that bothers you more than it does me.
As I said, I’m too technical to get the jokes.
LikeLike
Wow, it is grammar lesson time on the blog. Interesting, I am learning.
I did give up and go to bed before Aj posted last night. fun to read this Saturday morning
LikeLike
Chas- Those are called “periphrastic” verbs in grammatical terms. That means that the verbs are often used with a word like “up” to distinguish them from the verb without the extra word. For instance: “Get from the couch” has more than one interpretation, so one might use “Get up from the couch” to tell someone to stand. Without “up”, one could interpret that command as “Get away from the couch”. “Wake up” can be rewritten as “awaken”, but most people don’t use fancier words anymore. American vernacular is much less refined than it used to be, which I think is a shame.
Along that line, my students often get redundant with Spanish verbs, since many of our periphrastic verbs are not such in Spanish. “Look for” or “look up” (a word in the dictionary) is buscar. Búscala en el diccionario = “Look for it / Look it up in the dictionary.” They often want to add por when using the word, which would mean “Look for for it in the dictionary” or “Look it up for in the dictionary.”
As for the pictures Cheryl posted, I am still waiting for them to load (15 minutes, so far). They wouldn’t do so at school, and the home computer is rather slow. I do notice that they were taken by employees of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Most of the land managed by Uncle Sam is out West, which would explain so many of them being out there.
LikeLike
I, honestly, couldn’t have explained. I learned something, too!
Donna wrote a nice article about JFK. 🙂
LikeLike
Do you have a link for Donna’s article??
LikeLike
Story link:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/topic/jfk-50-years-later
LikeLike
Oh, Donna. Is that the Pulitzer committee calling? (I wonder, though, my high school English teacher would have had a cow over the short paragraphs. Is there a difference between research paper and journalistic writing rules?)
LikeLike
AJ — Oh yeah. I was an English major when I signed up for my first reporting class in college. Couldn’t believe it when I was told a short sentence = a paragraph. WHAT??! What about the subject sentence? What about paragraphs that were a proper 5 sentences long?
Took me a while to transition from formal essay writing to journalism. It all seemed very wrong, but once I got the hang of it I kind of liked the informality of it all. A good fit for me.
LikeLike
Journalism is writing for the guy in the donut shop, it’s written the way people talk.
I had a writing coach who used to say the best way to write a news story on deadline was to pretend you were telling the story to your roommate (or whomever) — just spit it out, most important stuff first.
LikeLike
Well written and easy to read. It is hard to analyze 50 years later. I remember being in junior high and hearing the news. Of course no one will forget the picture of little John at the funeral. So much has come out since then that it is hard to go back to what we felt then. I was proud that my initials were JK
LikeLike
I got a picture and two sentences.
LikeLike
Click on the picture & it goes to the full story. You’ll like seeing michelle’s quotes. 🙂
Running with the story on Sunday will be shorter ‘vignettes’ — people’s personal stories about where they were when the heard the news, we all did some of those (I did 2, our congresswoman & a retired newspaper reporter who had was just beginning his career in 1963).
LikeLike