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Our Daily Thread 11-18-13

Good Morning!

On this day in 1477 William Caxton produced “Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres,” which was the first book to be printed in England.

In 1865 Samuel L. Clemens published “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” under the pen name “Mark Twain” in the New York “Saturday Press.” 

In 1928 the first successful sound-synchronized animated cartoon premiered in New York. It was Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willie,” starring Mickey Mouse.

In 1959 William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur” premiered at Loew’s Theater in New York City’s Times Square.

In 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, Reverend Jim Jones persuaded his followers to commit suicide by drinking poison. Some people were shot to death. 914 cult members were left dead including over 200 children.

And in 1987 Congress issued the Iran-Contra Affair report. The report said that President Ronald Reagan bore “ultimate responsibility” for wrongdoing by his aides.

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Quote of the Day

“Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense.”

George Gallup

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Not many birthdays today, so we’ll start with Mickey. 🙂

Then some Ben-Hur.

And we’ll finish with some of that imposter. 🙂

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Anyone have a QoD?

51 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-18-13”

  4. The other day Donna asked us about President Kennedy and what the Kenney allure was. I said I wasn’t born yet but had read most of the biographies on the Kennedy’s. She asked what drew me to them and I said growing up seeing pictures of Jacquelyn in the grocery store check out line.
    Even one of the tabloid covers from my youth proclaimed that Princess Di’s saves Jackie O’s life. At one time Jackie O was the most photographed woman in the world.

    Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready for church I had Sunday Morning on TV and they were looking at the Camelot years and paying their homage. Two things stood out to me. One segment was that Papa Joe had run a Hollywood Studio. I had known that but had forgotten. He understood selling the story and the importance of image. He hired a professional photographer to create the image. Papa Joe was determined that one or more of his sons become President. It was supposed to be Joe Jr. but he was killed in the War, so Jack was next up. Papa Joe understood the difference between black and white and color. All the previous Presidents had been photographed in black and white. Look back, most of the photos of Jack and Jackie are in color and even the candid ones look like something that belong in a magazine. How many other Presidents had home movies at the ready to share with the public. We were sold a package.

    The second thing was at the very end. I will go look for it and see if I can share it with you, but a commentator said that “that day in Dallas, is when the Depression Era/World War II generation stopped being youthful and conquering the world, and became middle aged and old. Sharp contrast between black and white and “in living color”.

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  7. Good morning, all. I had a relaxing weekend. Hubby took the girls to the ranch for the weekend and I stayed home alone. I was able to get some much needed projects completed as well as have some rejuvenating alone time for the first time in a month! I awoke this morning feeling very rested and ready to begin the fourth week of homeschooling. Becca’s making a lot of progress — having frequent A-Ha! moments. We are doing school from 9-12 each day, which seems to be enough for now. Monday afternoons we have nothing on the schedule, but Becca has a playdate this afternoon. Tuesday evenings she has an acting class. Wednesday afternoons will be spent at a local park with a homeschool support group. Thursday afternoons she has a homeschool gymnastics group and Friday afternoons she will be taking a homeschool pottery class.

    Connie (our nanny) is here today, which means I can go to the Moms in Prayer Group this afternoon. I’ve missed the last three weeks and am really looking forward to going today. It’s a solid group of about 12 women who meet to pray for our kids’ school, teachers and administrators. I like each woman in the group and have already begun developing relationships with a few of them. Sometimes, it feels like I live in a community of Stepford Wives, so the women in my prayer group feel like a breath of fresh air.

    I enjoyed the article posted yesterday about how to raise a pagan kid in a Christian home. All three of my brothers are atheists, even though they went to church every week growing up.

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  10. Chas: A playdate is simply a pre-arranged date to play. The kids in our neighborhood are all very scheduled and without making a formal playdate are usually unavailable to play. For example, Becca’s friend she’s playing with today has scheduled activities every afternoon except for Mondays.

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  11. Speaking of Kennedy, a Facebook friend asked if we prefer stories about conspiracies or Oswald. I believe the conspiracy theories came about because being killed by “a silly little communist (Jackie’s words)” doesn’t fit the progressive martyr image that Kennedy’s admirers want for him. It’s the same way that the MSM tries to connect every violent tragedy in the country to the evil Right Wing. Gabby Gifford, Marco McMillan, Tryvon Martin, Hurricane Katraina, let’s keep digging until we find a conservative, Christian, tea partier from the South to blame. They’re still trying to do that with Kennedy. I ‘m sure if they keep looking they’ll eventually decide that George Bush killed Kennedy.

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  12. We had a big party yesterday celebrating our new house, new adorable granddaughter and all four books published this year. Maybe 70 people in our house, many brought bottles of wine (we live in wine country . . . ) lots of books went out the door with my signature in them. My husband and I did a reading, I told the fabulous sporting women-are-saved story from The Goldrush Christmas and, best of all, my Stargazer walked in the door to surprise us.

    I’m taking him out to breakfast in a little bit before he flies back to New Mexico.

    I was so exhausted after the whole event, however, I barely made it through an impromptu family dinner (at our former house with daughter-in-law cooking pasta!), I went to bed at 7:30 and slept for nine straight hours!

    God is good. My life is rich. I’ve got the Christmas letter nearly written. I may actually have a “normal” life for awhile, now.

    She laughed.

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  13. KBells, don’t you think also that “criminal element” is brought into play because Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner killed Oswald before he could talk too much? Did Ruby have ties to the Mafia and was he sent to shut Oswald up?

    Yesterday, on Sunday Morning they interviewed Ruby’s niece and had letters he had written to his brother from prison. You could make an argument on both sides of that one.

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  14. I saw a show a few months ago where these guys tried to prove Oswald innocent and ended up just proving the opposite. They proved that a marksman of his caliber could have easily gotten off that many shots in that amount of time. They proved he could easily have hit his mark from that distance and angle. They proved that he had plenty of time to get from the School book depository to place where he was arrested at the time he was arrested. Plus if the Mafia did it why would the government care to cover that up? That’s little better than a “silly little communist”.

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  16. My grandmother used to say, “I swan”. There was a radio program sponsored by Swan soap. It was called “Swan” because it floated. But, Ivory was the first floating soap. Anyhow, when the program went off, the announcer would say, “I Swan, how about you?”

    Everyone says “Coke” now, it’s a generic term for soft drink. Some people in western SC called it a “dope”. And a friend from Montana said “a bottle of pop”. Just as there were loyal Ford and Chevrolet fans in SC, there were Coke and Pepsi fans. They were loyal to their product.

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  17. The theory is that Jack Ruby was part of the plot.
    It didn’t make any sense at all that Ruby would kill Oswald; especially the way it happened.
    No logic in it at all.
    The explanations are dumber than the action.

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  18. More than anything I think it was Jack Ruby’s killing of Oswald that prompted many Americans to question whether there was a lot more to this story that what appeared. There also was a sloppiness in handling some of the evidence — partly due to the panic of the moment and the chaos in the days that followed, but it left plenty of holes that were quickly filled by speculation. It especially fell short when compared to today’s standards of rigid criminal analysis (of course we have many more tools at our disposal now, also, than they did then).

    michelle, that will be a weekend you’ll remember. 🙂 Sounds like you had great fun.

    I loved hanging out in the dirt with the horses and sheep and border collies yesterday. I love the smell of hay and even horse manure. 🙂 Really.

    I’m going to try to get in touch with the board member of place I met yesterday to let her know we’re always interested in doing stories from our local horse country, if they have ideas they’d want to pass on. We haven’t done much on that lately. And I do think I’m the one to do it. 🙂

    We finished up Rom. 7 yesterday so next week we’ll get into Rom. 8. 🙂 🙂

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  21. This belongs on Rants & Raves, but we don’t have that, so here goes:

    😯

    I learned last night that Elliott Fry doesn’t have a football scholarship.
    Elliott Fry is a “walk on” freshman kicker from Texas. He and his family came to Carolina and he wanted to join the team as a kicker. They said they would try him.
    The Gamecocks beat the Gators Saturday night, 19-14. Elliott Fry kicked four field goals. I think the longest was 41 yards.
    Fry is six feet tall and weighs 150 pounds. You can see why they were skeptical.
    Spurrier said that Fry will be on scholarship in January.

    🙂

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  22. No coach ever wants to waste a roster spot, or scholarship money on a kicker. But when you need a good one, you’re glad you did. Kickers can be 1 of 2 things, the Hero, or the goat. Nobody likes the latter type, but everybody loves the Hero. Well, except the other team.

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  23. A kicker who can:
    Put a kickoff beyond the field of play
    Who can put the ball inside the ten yard line,
    Who can put the ball through the goalposts from anywhere inside the 30 yard line,
    Is worth his scholarship.

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  24. They all say “pop” in the midwest, I remember noticing that as a kid when we’d go back to Iowa a lot.

    Not everyone in the Midwest. In Missouri a lot of people say “soda” or “sodie”. There were a lot of people from Iowa at the Missouri college I went to, and so there were always the differences. You could tell where someone was from by whether they said soda or pop. I was form Arizona and said “Coke” for everything, so I started saying “soda pop” to be understood.

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  25. I think “pop” might be more of an upper Midwest thing. I heard a story on the radio the other day that the word “pop” was first used by Faygo (which started in Detroit) because of the sound the bottle makes when you open it.

    Moving from LA to Michigan years ago I had to get used to “pop” instead of “soft drink”.

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  27. Sometimes it’s a minor embarrassment when I go to KFC and order a small Coke.

    A man, in an advertisement on the radio, says “My father was in the Marines”. Everyone who knows Marine culture knows to say, “My father was a Marine”. Ask JoeB.

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  29. Peter, I grew up in Arizona too, and my family said “pop.” But my family was “from all over,” so we had more influence from outside Arizona than within it, I think. But anyone trying to figure out “where I’m from” by how I talk might have a hard time with it, since some of my influence would have come from New England (which I’ve visited only once, decades ago) or maybe even from Africa (Nigeria), which I’ve never visited. My mom, my primary “language teacher,” grew up in New England, spent some young adult years in the South, met Dad and married in Nigeria, and then lived in several regions of the U.S. before finally settling in Arizona for the last half of her life (39 out of 78 years).

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  36. Pop here, but you knew that.

    Husband is off with some of the folk to dance class, small engine repair class, karate, Costco, and somewhere to pick up a dryer. Ours went out and the repairman cannot get here until mid December. At thirty three loads per week, that is a lot of hanging out. Could be done, but he prefers to just buy a dryer to go with the second washer, so when we do have to wait for a repairman, life will move along.

    He will also need to replace another door knob mechanism as the twelve year old girl finally put an end to it. The boys have been able to keep all of the other door knobs up and running but this one, she actually snapped the metal rod in it. They also got the sand out of the girls’ bathroom toilet mechanism so it is no longer getting turned off every time it refills so it does not run the well dry. I told the older girls they really did not want to put a sand decoration in their bathroom, but they did not believe me. I guess the little girls convinced them later. Too late.

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  40. Mumsee, I am almost finished reading Are We There Yet? by Sue Badeau. The book reminds me so much of your family. Do you know them? Seems like y’all would have interlocking circles of acquaintances.

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  44. Janice, nope, but it sure sounds interesting! We actually don’t know anybody with more than four adopted children, and not many of them. We don’t actually do anything with anybody who has adopted children. But, our second son sold our bus for us (it is cheaper for us to just take two cars), to a family with eighteen children, fifteen adopted. So there are large families out there. It would be very interesting to get to know some of them and learn how they do it. In case we ever decide to become a large family. Which we might do, as everyone is doing so well here, and we can see so many more children still surviving in foster care. Not to say it is easy….

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  45. ATV’s are fun but we exchanged ours for children. We got the better deal. But it is easy to let the ATV do what our legs are supposed to do.

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  47. Mumsee, I agree with you, but since we have a large driveway and lots of snow and we don’t want to ruin our witness to our neighbours by ‘expecting’ them to plough us out, we decided a quad was the way to go for us.

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  48. We, however, elected to go with the children and shovels. Once in a while, the county feels sorry for them and runs the big equipment in, but they do a good job.

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  51. My favorite theory that I have read lately is that the Kennedy assassination was not a conspiracy, but it *was* a cover-up.

    The reasoning, in much less detail than it was posted in, is that conspiracies just don’t happen. Someone will always talk – you just can’t get that many people to keep a secret!

    On the other hand, the FBI and CIA did cover up their massive incompetence, before and following the assassination. They had been watching Oswald because of his trips to the Soviet Union and *should* have deemed him a credible enough threat. However, Hoover had no love for the liberal Kennedy. Basically, Oswald could have stapled a note to Hoover’s forehead that he was going to kill Kennedy, and it would not have been believed, but if it had been a Nixon administration, Oswald would have gotten much more scrutiny.

    Afterwards, their reaction was “Oh my goodness, that nut job actually did it!” At that point it’s just a cover-up to avoid embarrassment, as opposed to any actual wrong-doing or conspiracy.

    Don’t know about that, but I have always thought that the simplest explanations for things – eg, “Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone” – make more sense than convoluted conspiracies.

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