Good Morning!
It’s finally Friday! 🙂
It’s the black one too.
On this day in 1864 The Sand Creek Massacre occurred in Colorado when a militia led by Colonel John Chivington, killed at least 400 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who had surrendered and had been given permission to camp.
In 1890 Navy defeated Army by a score of 24-0 in the first Army-Navy football game. The game was played at West Point, NY. They got lucky. 🙂
In 1929 the first airplane flight over the South Pole was made by U.S. Navy Lt. Comdr. Richard E. Byrd.
In 1947 the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution that called for the division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
And in 1963 President Johnson named a commission headed by Earl Warren to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.
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Quotes of the Day
“I gave in, and admitted that God was God.”
“Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
C. S. Lewis
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Today is Holly Starr’s birthday.
It’s also Merle Travis’. From BransonMusicFactory
And it’s Barry Goudreau’s as well.
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Wandering Views 
Merle Travis didn’t invent finger picking style, but he introduced it to country. Every finger picking guitarist today owes Merle Travis, including Chet Atkins. Chet says that as a kid in Georgia, he listened to Merle and tried to figure out what he was doing. He missed it and created his own, five finger style.
Merle says he learned from a couple of fellows named Ike Everly and Mose Gregor.
“I wasn’t thinking of sitting no styles or nothing. I just wanted to play the guitar and flirt with the girls.”l
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We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at Elvera’s sister’s house. Mel cooked prime rib on the grille. Polly’s two girls were there, one with her children. (Only one has kids.)
Thanksgiving at Polly’s has been a tradition when the Christmas Dinner moved from her house to ours.
🙂 Chuck & Linda are coming this afternoon.
😦 Chucks other kids aren’t coming this year. That means at least nine fewer than before. And Annie Lee has died. I don’t know how much longer this will continue.
The younger generation has no interest in the larger family.
It’s sad, in a way. But I understand; I was like that.
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Missing family here. I need to make the croissant rolls for a dinner tomorrow, but I just don’t want to and it is late. I am realizing that not wanting to make them is because of some memories of doing it all alone. Oh, well, better get over it and go cook.
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I wish I weren’t venturing out, but I am doing an open house in Orange Beach today.
We have a lot of leftovers!
Chas, I think as long as the older generation is around to do what they have always done, the younger won’t step up. Once it isn’t there anymore they will step up and continue.
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I have to venture over to Walmart to pick up a prescription refill and I’m not looking forward to it. I think I’ll wait a while hoping that things will settle down later in the day.
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I have to go out and get some essentials. I’m told the worst of Black Friday is over.
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I have someplace to go between 2 malls. 😯
But I know a back way that’ll take me right where I need to go. 🙂
We do need to stop at Walgreen’s or CVS for an advent calendar. But that shouldn’t be bad and they’re only a few blocks over. I was out earlier downtown and it wasn’t bad.
And tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, so if you need something and can, give them a try. 🙂
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Okay, the dough for the rolls is done and in the fridge. It is now 12:30am and I think time for bed. I feel better now that I realized why I did not want to make these wonderful rolls.
Our annual store sale is tomorrow morning. They got in special things, even appliances, that they don’t usually carry so that we can shop. However they posted a warning that the candy canes they ordered did not come! so my class will not be getting a treat.
Time to sleep.
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Chas, we never had a larger family with whom we could celebrate holidays. All the grandparents were dead long before the youngest of us were born, and in fact my oldest brother (14 years my senior) vaguely remembers just one of them, since the last one of them died when he was about ten. And our aunts and uncles lived a long way away and it was extremely rare that we saw any of them. But we had seven of us, and with our parents and eventually a wife or two of my brothers in the mix, we still had a full house. Then we all started moving away, and my mom moved to a one-bedroom apartment (!), and getting together for holidays was well-nigh impossible.
One of the things that was sad about my husband being sick this weekend, unable to attend the family Thanksgiving, is how many years I’ve had without a family Thanksgiving. In the years between 22 (the age at which I went to college) and 44 (the age at which I married), I had Thanksgiving with my mom just once, and that was only since her husband died of a heart attack the day before Thanksgiving, and I was able to fly out Thanksgiving day to be with her and the brother who was supposed to be hosting both her and her husband.
Now I’ve had just two Thanksgiving with a husband and in-laws (since I didn’t have one with my husband yesterday), and we just don’t know if we’ll have another with my father-in-law or another with both the girls able to attend, or whatever.
Some years ago, when I first moved to Nashville, my sister-in-law in Chattanooga tried to establish a three-household rotation for Thanksgivings–my house one year, their house one year, and my sister’s house one year. But my house simply wasn’t big enough (my table seated six adults, more if some were children since I had a bench on one side), and my sister was reluctant to travel for any of the holidays, since they wanted to establish a home family tradition (presumably like the one we had growing up, but when we were growing up we had no larger family network in which we could participate). But in years to come it might actually be easier on here if they had established a tradition of going somewhere on Thanksgiving and they could keep it up. As it ended up, in my years in Nashville I usually went to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving and my sister’s for Christmas. A couple years I switched them, but that was the usual pattern. But now, when Aunt Cheryl coming for Christmas could actually be something for them to look forward to in a season they might otherwise dread, I won’t be able to be there. 😦 I wish I could, but we simply can’t travel that far in winter, and local family would also be disappointed if we weren’t here. I still wish we could, but we can’t.
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Cheryl reminded me. The Collins’ Christmas dinner used to be rotated between the children’s houses. That’s before the family became so large. The family consisted of parents and eight children and their kids. The family had nine, but Elvera’s brother joined the Army in 1939 and never returned, except for short visits.
Our family never participated in any sort of get-together. Dad always said they were “snooty”. But when I matured and got to know them, they seemed like nice folks. They were all well off. We could have been after 1943, but dad always spent his money before he got it.
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I will be counter cultural and wish everyone a Happy Blue Sky Friday for that is the color from my window. When son was young we would go on walks and I would point out God made and man made things to him. God made Blue Sky Friday and man made Black Friday. You go out into God’s creation to see the blue sky and you go into man’s creation to experience adding to the black gross sales figures that counter the expenses that cause businesses to be in the red for most of the year. For that reason, I do prefer Black Friday over Red Friday, but Blue Sky Friday is my top choice.
Not much I need to shop for. I do need a new toaster oven, but am taking my time deciding what size and if I want a combo convection oven. Counter space is a factor in my decision.
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Good Black Friday morning to all. So why is it called Black Friday, anyway? This day puts retailers in the black and consumers in the red.
Here are some cartoons to read while you wait in line at the mall.
Mrs L and I are babysitting the two older grandchildren while D1 and D3 are shopping at a mall 90 miles away and my son-in-law is at work. When you live in Northeast Missouri, there are not a lot of choices as to where to go. They left a 6AM and have the 1-year-old with them, as we didn’t think she could handle being away from mommy for so long. We hope to go visit a family here and then take the children out for lunch. They like the idea of “going bye-bye” with grandpa and grandma.
We moved the car seats over to our minivan last night. Now I know why so many people don’t bother installing them correctly. One almost needs an engineering degree to figure out what connects where. I firmly believe that before a product goes out on the market, that the engineers should have to work with it. Let’s see them put two car seats in a minivan outside with the temp around 25°F. Does anyone else remember the small car back in the 70s called the Chevy Monza? If you bought it with an 8 cylinder engine, and it needed a tuneup, the mechanic had to remove the engine to get to some of the spark plugs. Why couldn’t the engineers see that?
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Janice, we had a different infamous “blue sky” in my family.
When my older brothers were little, one time one of them was getting teased, and in a futile attempt to change the subject, he said, “Look at the blue sky!” Only problem was, the sky wasn’t blue at the time, but full of storm clouds. Ever after, “Look at the blue sky” meant “Nice attempt you’re making to change the subject!” My husband has used the line a couple times alrready, after hearing the story.
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My son and his family have this arrangement. They never move the car seat. Whoever has the children take the car with the carseat. That solves that.
i.e. If you’r not taking the children, take the other car.
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I would have suggested that, Chas, but D1 and husband have three small children- one went with D1 and we have the other two. So moving the easier car seats was best, since the youngest still has to face the rear and has a harder car seat to move.
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I am glad you shared that “blue sky”moment, Cheryl. That makes for a good tradition.
When son was two and started into a preschool class at a local church (he later dropped out of the class because asthma kicked in the door to our lives), and I went to pick him up one day, the teacher told me he had done something to get into trouble. She said she took him out in the hallway to talk to him about what he had done. At that moment she said the child who she didn’t know could talk went into a big discussion about the hallway wallpaper as a means of distracting her from the trouble he was in. I guess that was his “blue sky” moment at preschool 🙂
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It’s dark and has been raining steadily here this morning. And it looks like I’ll need a roof fix, I’m seeing wet spots near a corner of the living room ceiling. Sigh. 😦
No shopping for me today, it’s a work day. We’ve never had the Friday after Thanksgiving off — and we know not to ask to use a vacation day on that day, either, especially now that our staffing is so meager. One of us (not me, I hope) will probably be out interviewing Black Friday shoppers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKwwV3f6si8
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Kind of related to my request on the prayer thread…
Over on Facebook, I shared this link, which shows how an attempt at socialism was disastrous for the Pilgrims…
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/11/richard-j-maybury/the-great-thanksgiving-hoax/
Discussing this today, Emily & I started to get into a bit of an argument. I had made the point on my Facebook post that the failure of experiments in socialism is due to human nature. Emily disagreed, saying that it is a cultural thing, that our western culture is more selfish in that way.
She said that there was some study in which different groups of people were given an amount of money. They could decide to all keep the money for themselves, or share with everyone. (I’m assuming everyone may have been given differing amounts of money, or else there would be no reason to share.) Supposedly, according to Emily, Americans tended to want to keep what they were given, but some more primitive tribe (or tribes) shared everything happily, because that’s what they were used to in their culture.
Therefore, to Emily, the failure of socialism is not due to innate selfish human nature, but due to differences in cultural expectations. And there was another time when I had a similar conversation (sinful human nature vs. cultural expectations) with Chrissy about another topic.
The reason I see this as somewhat symptomatic of spiritual blindness is that negating what we know to be human nature also seems to negate the reality of our sin nature.
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You are right, Karen. Given their feelings about culture, I am curios as to how they explain 9/11, the piracy on the seas, the selling of humans as slaves in other cultures, etc. People don’t have to look too deeply into other cultures, unless they have been brainwashed and blinded, to see all cultures are sin sick and need Jesus, our only hope for salvation. Of course many believe telling children of Jesus is brainwashing. Well, in a sense I suppose it is because it works to remove evil and replace it with God’s good and best thoughts to improve our lives and the lives around us.
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Karen, you can ask exactly what cultures have existed on a socialist pattern.
Then you can ask why they are so backward.
Because every culture that has tried it is a backward culture.
Soviet Union was a first class military with a backward culture.
China was too until they opened for capitalism.
Ask about China’s “Great Leap Forward”.
At no time in history and in no culture has socialism been successful.
The early church tried it, and failed.
At no time in history and in no successful culture has a man been allowed to marry a man, nor a female to a female. It is a violation of”
Nature
Logic
Biological necessity
And laws in most cultures.
Wait until they impose sharia They will kill both partners in this arrangement.
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Chas, I was just telling husband yesterday how O has all of these opposing viewpoint supporters who will do away with each other given the opportunity. The Muslims, the Communists, the homosexuals, etc. My husband then included the artists and intellectuals who are squashed first so they will no longer have influence.
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Christianity is based on hope of transformation of the individual for good based on a personal relationship with Jesus. All these other group thinks are based more on gang mentality instead of individual transformation. Christians always see the hope of transformation in people so there is that reason to let people live. A fundamentalist Muslim only looks at the person for a moment to see if they call Allah their God and if not then it can justify killing.
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Venturing out to shop? Excuse me? um, no.
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We had a great Thanksgiving here in Oklahoma City. We invited neighbors next door, who have small children and neighbors across the street. The next door neighbors are from either Mexico or Central America. They have two children that are absolutely adorable. Their little girl calls me grandpa. She and her brother helped Cindi decorate the tree after the meal. We all had a blast. I have decided to wait on shopping. I read the news headlines about all the goofiness going on so I will wait. I have to buy some toys, don’t you know. It is what grandpa’s do. 😉 .
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Joe, thank you for being grandpa. Our children absolutely adore our neighbors who are the resident grandpa and grandma. Today, grandma called to ask if little guy (the seven year old) could come over as she normally has him on Thursday but yesterday, two of the older boys were over putting some finishing touches on a false roof they are building for her shop in the big shop so she can work in the winter. Grandpa is working with the older boys on getting the Cadillac up and running that grandpa and grandma gave to the boys last Christmas. It is such a wonderful thing for children to have somebody who cares besides the parents. Thanks again.
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It is a beautiful day here today…in the 50’s and blue blue sky! No shopping for me…no sir…
We had a quiet and lovely Thanksgiving…lots and lots of leftovers…no cooking for me in the coming week! Our guests were delightful company and we had moments of wonderful and insightful conversation. We offered our prayer of thanksgiving before the meal and in closing we gave Him all thanks in Jesus name….our Muslim guests respected our faith….and they are willing to answer questions concerning their faith….I’m not certain just what our Lord has planned in the timeline of this friendship…but, I trust His plan is for good…and prayerfully for eyes to be opened, ears to hear…and the truth of His salvation to be grasped….and received….
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No shopping for me.
No turkey leftovers today for us, either. There was a lot of food yesterday at the gathering we went to at my parents’ house. Unfortunately, we’re pretty sure the oven wasn’t working right, but we didn’t figure that that might be the case until the turkey (13 lbs.) had been in the oven for six hours, and still was not done.
My mom had started the (unstuffed) turkey at 7:00 a.m. at 325 degrees. Two hours later she turned it up to 350. I’m not sure why she changed the temperature; if that’s what she always does, or what. Sometime later she put stuffing in it, she thought after noon. Anyway, she took the turkey out when she figured it would be done, turned off the oven, then realized the button that pops up when it’s done had not popped up. So she put the turkey back in the oven.
Our family had arrived by this time, and I was in the kitchen, standing near the oven, which is in the wall rather than being part of a stove, so with an open oven door, an adult or tall child would feel the heat near one’s face. Mom was lamenting that the turkey seemed to be taking so long this time when I noticed that the oven was off. I asked her how long it had been off (with the turkey inside of it), and she said only a few minutes. (She had forgotten to turn the oven back on when she put the turkey back in.)
It seemed funny to me that the oven didn’t feel nearly as hot as I would expect it to be after being on for over five hours at the above temperatures, and off for only a few minutes. Anyway, we turned the oven back on to 350 and let the turkey go until 1:00 p.m., but, although the outside of the turkey was pretty well browned, the button hadn’t popped up, and the juices were still running pinkish/red after six hours of cooking time.
Unfortunately, neither my mom, nor my sister-in-law, who lives next door, had a meat thermometer, that we could check the bird’s internal temperature. Mom had had a thermometer that she placed in the oven to check its temperature accuracy, but she had dropped and broken it a few weeks ago, and never replaced it, so we were unable to determine how far off the actual operating temperature was.
She had had similar trouble with her oven a few years ago (it was quite old), but had replaced it with a new oven, albeit one that was still in the wall, so we were all rather surprised that an oven that new could be having problems. But we wanted to be on the safe side, and figured that if the oven’s actual temperature was a good deal lower than the set temperature, that turkey probably was not safe to eat, having been at least two hours in a very warm environment not hot enough to actually cook it.
So we decided we would enjoy the many other foods that were provided for the meal, and not consume the turkey. Better to waste a 13-pound turkey than to give 19 people food poisoning.
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We wandered around town looking for Donna, but didn’t see her so we went home.
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Chas – That did come up, briefly. (I was trying to briefly make a point without letting the conversation degenerate further into an argument.) Emily said, & I have read others say this elsewhere, that communism is an extreme form of socialism, & that’s why it didn’t work. Supposedly, if real socialism were tried, it would work well.
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Oh, Anonyomous is “in town”? I didn’t know — Sorry, was chained to my desk at the newsroom all day. Two stories to file.
As long as I’ve worked the Friday after Thanksgiving, I still haven’t reached a full state of acceptance. 😉
But we did get the best parking spots in the garage. We were the only company in our building working today apparently.
At least I didn’t have to interview Black Friday shoppers.
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What does one ask a Black Friday shopper?
Chuck and Linda came over from Greensboro. None of the others did.
We went out to a Black Friday dinner at Outback. It was like any other time.
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“Why are you doing this?”
“What are you shopping for?”
“Is this enjoyable?”
Or, put more simply: “What’s wrong with you?”
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All of you have yourselves a good weekend. I’ll have my nose in a book, so I’ll catch up with the weekend threads next week. December already when we get there!
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I suppose I would ask a Black Friday shopper what was the best bargain they ever found on a Black Friday?
Then I would ask about who they are making all this effort for. Are they buying for self or someone else?
And, do they set a budget for Black Friday shopping?
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