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Our Daily Thread 1-7-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1610 Galileo Galilei sighted four of Jupiter’s moons. He named them Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

In 1782 The Bank of North America opened in Philadelphia. It was the first commercial bank in the United States.

In 1789 Americans voted for the electors that would choose George Washington to be the first U.S. president.

In 1927 in Hinckley IL, the Harlem Globetrotters played their first game.

In 1953 President Harry Truman announced the development of the hydrogen bomb.

And in 1968 the cost of a U.S. first class stamp was raised to 6 cents.

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Quote of the Day

“Using taxes to punish the rich, in reality, punishes everyone because we are all interconnected. High taxes and excessive regulation and massive debt are not working.”

Rand Paul

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Today is Charles Billingsley’s birthday.

Today is also Rick Elias’ birthday. So here he is doing a Rich Mullins song that wasn’t released until after his death, with the Ragamuffin Band.

And on this day in 1940 “Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch” debuted.

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Anyone have a QoD?

79 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-7-14”

  3. I would just like my Canadian friends to know that I don’t appreciate them sending this cold down to us. Countries have been invaded for far less you know. 🙂

    But don’t worry, if we do invade, it won’t be until Spring, because there’s no way I’m going out in this. But we could! If we wanted to…. 🙂

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  4. 7 degrees in Atlanta on the 7th. That’ll wake up a person. And so will a fur blur chasing a little paper ball made from a Steak and Shake burger wrapper. Almost as prized as a catnip mouse and a lot less expensive.

    Now to get my coffee and try to do my Bible study while ignoring the fully energized kitten activity. Maybe she will soon go back into zonk mode. Yes, right when my coffee is ready, she has plopped into my lap while purring loudly. Do I dare disturb her?

    No one who has heard a kitten purr should ever doubt the love of our creative God. He is so good and gives more than we think or imagine to ask for.

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  5. We didn’t have Internet last night (but hey, at least we had power . . . at -16 or so, that matters) . . . and the reason we didn’t have internet was that the town nearby didn’t have power. And since all my in-laws live there and our daughter was kinda “stranded” at work there (she chose to stay in town since our house isn’t “plowed out” yet), we have naturally been concerned about all of them. At least they have fireplaces. And after seven hours or so, they got their power back.

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  7. This is the first time I’ve seen the minus number on my thernomometer. -1.4 degrees now. It’s supposed to zoom up to 20 today and get cold again tonight. But not as cold. The worst, according to them is over. It will be cold, but not as cold.
    Henderson County schools are closed.
    I’ve seen it colder in Virginia and Greenland. This is a record here.
    I hope Kim had a nice BD. I thought it would be today, but I was wrong. Don’t tell anyone. 🙂

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  11. Janice talks abut her kittern purring. Socks didn’t purr she pounced.
    Youngest GD, JennyK had a kitten. Mrs. Netbeau gave it to er. It was free.
    When I would go to Chucks, I walked around barefoot, just like at home.
    From under the bed, behond the couch, no telling where, that kitten would poujnce on my toes. Then scamper away.
    Seems cute, untill you recall the purpose of this. She was practicing to attack and kill some victim. Sharpening her skill as a preditor.

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  12. “Phos fiddles for you” That is the name of the tour.
    That was a wild finish! Auburn beat up on FSU for 58.5 minutes. Then they let them have it.
    I missed three of my picks. The ones I missed were the sure things. I didn’t think Bama nor Auburn could lose.
    And I thought sure Baylor would beat Central Florida.
    But I went back and saw that the Gamecocks only beat them by three points.
    Central Florida is for real.
    That’s all the football for me until the last of August.

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  13. It is 18 degrees here. We are not amused. The high today is 36 degrees and YES I have to go out in this.
    Roscuro can put me on the violin tour. I can make arrangements for her to play at my church. There is a young woman who has had some difficulty who sometimes sings. She is a tall, slip of a thing, but when she opens her mouth and song comes out,..you just catch your breath.
    Auburn let a good lead get away from them last night and lost, but it was a good game. I watched until the end.

    Chas, most kittens are free. The local vets say that there are two kitten seasons a year.
    Miss Bosley is lucky that she found a good home before it got down to 7 degrees. Poor Baby.

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  15. Kim, don’t say “poor baby” when she’s nestled is a warm lap and gets the first of the tuna.:lol:

    HRW has a clip about boilingwater turning to snow. I haven’t seen anything that spectacular, but in Greenland (Maybe Goose Bay) I spilled hot coffee on the floor of the plane and it glazed over instantly. They used auxiliary heat to warm the engines, but once they started, it was warm. Those four engines put out lots of heat. An interesting sight for me: When someone else was at the radio, I would go to the back of the planeand look out. At night there was nothing to see but the pink glow of the exaust.

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  16. It has zoomed up to 2.5 degrees and may not see the minus figure again in Hendersonville.
    At that temperature, going out to get the paper becomes a project. But I didn’t really need all that fixing because the wind isn’t blowing and it wasn’t bad the short time I was out.

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  17. Yes, I know about what Bosley is in practice for and it is a good thing. We had two kittens we got from my parents outdoor cat, Mama San. That was the year before our son was born. They stayed indoors for a year and then became outdoor cats. They were great hunters which they needed to be to supplement what I had to feed them. Once a neighbor was disturbed that one of the cats was chasing a chipmunk so the neighbor was out in our bushes trying to rescue the chipmunk from the cat. My husband and I still laugh about that. We did not have much money back then to feed ourselves or the cats. I thought this is good commentary on the state of our nation. Neighbors are worried about the cat’s diet when the people next to them may not have enough to eat. These were very nice neighbors and I do appreciate the sympathy for the chipmunk. But the chipmunks previously had made holes going into our basement which was not good. I appreciated the cat’s eradication program more than I appreciated the neighbor’s misplaced sympathy.

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  19. Maybe Chas meant FREE to roam all over the house? Miss Bosley was cost free, in that I did not pay to get her, but if one claims ownership then there are requirements regarding shots, health maintenance, boarding, etc. that can be quite costly.

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  20. Chas, you reminded me that years ago my dad bream fished a lot. We would have fried bream quite a bit. I had a cat named Precious and would pick the fish off the bones and feed it to him. My dad would often comment that he was a CAT and would have been happy picking the fish off the bones for himself and that would free me up to pick the fish off the bones for my dad. 😉

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  22. Kim, my father spoke about fishing for bream, too.

    Once when my husband, son and I went camping I caught a little fish in the stream. I determined it was a sunfish. When I checked out your link I discovered that is a bream.

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  23. ~~~***ANNOUNCEMENT: Football post to follow***~~~

    Since the Bowl Edition is buried in last year’s posts, I’ll tell you here and now that In But Not Of is the winner with 8 correct bowl game predictions. Chas came in 2nd with 7. Two of u had 6 correct- myself and Kim (I can’t believe Kim chose Florida State over that school from Alabama!). With 5 correct id Tychicus. The others: with 4 each- kbells and 6 arrows. And Aj takes the cellar with 3.

    Maybe later on I’ll count the totals for the whole season (yes, I’ve saved all the results). I can say that 6 Arrows deserves special recognition for only missing the final score last night by 2 points!

    So: Virtual High Five to IBNO and Special Atta-Girl to 6 Arrows!

    ~~~You may now resume your kitten thread.~~~

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  27. Yeah!1 INBO and 6Arrows. !!!!!!!!!!!1
    Gamecocks have a tough schedule next year. Opening with A&M, and they play Auburn at Auburn. But there ain’t no easy games in the SEC.
    We’ll see.

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  29. Kim, we’d feel sorry for your bitter cold and all that, but you know how we react when Donna tells us it is only 65 there and she needs to get out her winter coat?

    Well, here is what it looks like at my house: It got down to -14 and it is now -8. Our backyard looks like the arctic, with some drifts several feet high. The mail didn’t deliver yesterday (I didn’t know the mail ever didn’t deliver!), and my FedEx package delivery was officially postponed from yesterday to today, only it probably won’t happen today either, since our driveway isn’t accessible. (We have a neighbor who normally plows us, but he didn’t have time yesterday before leaving town, so we’ll have to go out with a snowblower when it gets a little warmer.) Misten is going out for just minutes at a time. She’ll stop to eat a little snow, and then she heads to the one spot in the yard where grass shows, next to the garage (my husband shoveled a path to it from the back door yesterday), where she goes potty without any preliminaries and then she heads right back up the path, where one of us is waiting at the door to open it and let her back in.

    In fact, as I type at my computer I sit next to a big picture window that looks out across a panoramic view of snowy fields. Yesterday I noticed there was a tiny little bit of snow in the door crack, inside, near the bottom. Today that snow had not melted, and further, the door jamb and the inside lock had both frosted up. My husband just ran a strip of masking tape along the crack to seal out the air for now, but you know how doors just shrink a little in cold.

    And the Canadians are probably thinking I’m a wimp by now (hey, I grew up in Phoenix, and I deal with heat better than cold! I’ve experienced 122 F twice, and I “like” that better than the -65 wind chill I’ve also experienced). But basically we’re too busy staying warm to spend any energy feeling sorry for you. Sorry ’bout that.

    🙂

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  30. I do feel for all of you in this cold. It IS pretty bad. At least we are prepared with technical clothing and furnaces and insulation in our houses 🙂 It’s currently -11F with no wind right now. Hubby & Keva have just left for their morning run (about 5 miles). Oh, and we didn’t send it down to you – you’ll have to talk to God about these weather patterns. 🙂

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  32. I know, Kim. After 14 years in Chicago I rarely found Nashville all that cold, but had I moved there straight from Phoenix I would have found it incredibly cold. And I don’t like going out in anything below 50 or so. Only a very good man brought me back to snow country.

    (Oh, and this is my backyard. The “front” of the picture–this side of the little clump of flowers, if those are visible–is supposed to be a deck. It’s probably clearer if you click on my name and look at the larger picture. But there is no visible difference between that and the rest of the yard; it’s all just hills of snow. The bottom railing is even covered on most of the fence.)

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  33. I made Johnny Cakes this morning using the recipe I got from Michelle’s author’s Prairie cookbook. Son had seconds. My mother use to make these corn cakes for us to have with dinner (supper), so I was glad to find this easy recipe.

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  34. 10 signs your cat actually likes you (in honor of today’s kitten thread):

    1. Head bonking.

    2. Powerful purrs.

    3. Love bites.

    4. Tail twitching at the tip.

    5. Tummy up.

    6. Licking your hair or ears.

    7. Kneading.

    8. Slow blinking.

    9. Naps on or near you.

    10. Gifting, like giving you a mouse.

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  35. There’s this strange thing in the corner of my screen right now. We have a weather app there, and the number is 2°. Strange thing that has no minus sign in front of it. It must be summer or something for it to be above 0°.

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  36. We’re supposed to make it up to 70 degrees today, 64 degrees for tomorrow’s high.

    Is that gloating? 😮

    Cheryl’s backyard snow pic looked like a large lake or other body of water until I enlarged it.

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  38. I thought the same thing about Cheryl’s snow picture. It looks like nice waves of water until you enlarge it. Wbaves lapping the beach on the nice days at Sea Pines were so slack that I told Son some lakes have bigger waves. We saw an unusual amount of star fish on the beach. Sometimes we see sand dollars but not this time.

    According to your list, Donna, Miss Bosley does like me. 🙂

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  40. Peter, tThe original list was titled “10 signs your cat actually loves you.” Don’t know what made me change love to like, but it seemed more appropriate for a cat. 😉

    And according to that list, Annie really, really likes me, too. 🙂

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  41. lovely picture, Cheryl. I like Chas’ name for the coming tour. Roscuro, do you want us to help you plan a route to everyone???
    Tychicus, I like your joke

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  45. Good Afternoon, Y’all!

    Thanks for the high fives! RE the comment about Auburn winning for 58.5 minutes…not so much, FSU started terribly but from about 25 minutes in outscored AU 31-10. Good game…

    My dog pats me. She taps on me with a paw when I’m petting her…

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  46. This is the post I promised Karen O and Kim.
    To start, this is based partly on my own observations, with the blank spots filled in by those, like Aji Suun, who lived longer in the culture and know more of the language than I.

    In the Islamic/traditional West African culture, polygamy is not only permitted, it is the thing to do. One man told me that it was necessary for women that men have more than one wife. It is believed that only through her husband’s prayers can a woman enter paradise. Thus, even a woman past the age of childbearing who is widowed will remarry in order to have an intercessor. Immense pressure by peers is put upon a man with only one wife to take another. Two wives is the minimum expected, three is desirable, but four is pushing the limit. However, divorce is common and easy, so a man may actually have had far more than four wives, just not simultaneously.

    The first noticeable impact that polygamy has is economic. The country where I was is one of the poorest in Africa and unemployment or underemployment is more common than a secure and well-paying job. We all know how difficult it can be to raise a stable family on a low income here; but multiply the average family (a wife and three children) by three and double the number of children for each wife and you can get an idea of how polygamy negatively impacts family economics. As a result, the men don’t try to provide for all his family’s needs. Most will buy a bag of rice each month for the compound to eat, and many will try to provide more than that, but their income is their own and no one considers that they have a responsibility to spend it on their family. Those who do try to provide for their family suffer economically. One employee openly expressed his gratitude to the team for discouraging him from a third marriage, saying he could never have built his own compound if he had taken another wife.

    It is the wives’ responsibility to buy the meat and vegetables that go on the rice when it is their turn to cook – in addition to clothes, medicine, school supplies and anything else they and their own children need. Many grow food or make handcrafts to sell in the markets, while others take jobs as cleaners or cooks in order to provide for these needs. Others beg or borrow, and prostitution is not an uncommon solution to the problem. If they can gain favour with their husband, he may give more to them than their co-wives – I knew several women who were either the favorite wife or the one left to struggle on her own.

    This separation of the husband’s and his wives’ income and responsibilities leads to a separation of cultures. The men view women as sexual objects and/or nags and scolds (depending on their experience); while the women’s world is one long struggle against hunger and sickness as they raise their children – and in the fight, they become the nags, scolds, and, as I mentioned, sexual objects that men view them as being.
    As you can imagine, none of this results in companionable ad equitable relationships between men and their wives. Further complicating matters is the relationships between co-wives – most tolerate one another for the sake of survival, fights between them (and their children) are common, and true friendships between them are rare. I know of one man who openly expressed regret that he had taken a second wife, as it destroyed the close relationship he had with his first one – I also heard the first wife express her unhappiness with the second marriage. Other women told us that our marriages were better because they are between a man and just one woman. However, no one is willing to be the one to rock the boat, so each generation tells the next generation to put up with it, because that’s the way it has got to be. Monogamous marriages are considered the mark of Christians, and thus, one method used to prevent conversion in a man who seems to be interested in exiting Islam is to give him another wife.

    There are other problems created indirectly by the multiple marriages. Each wife wants to have children, not only to gain favour with her husband but also to help her in her work and take care of her in her old age. With the high rate of child mortality, the more children one has the better – I once told one educated woman about the one child policy in China and her immediate response was, “What if that child dies?” The children inherit the rivalries between the co-wives – I know of some grown children who are trying to build a new home for themselves and their mother because they were so mistreated by their stepfamily. When a mother dies, her children are left to the tender mercies of the co-wives – some women go to the extent of denying food to their rival’s children. There are of course cases of unusual generosity by stepmothers, but they are the more marked because they are uncommon.

    All this is not to say that the people in the culture are more cruel or selfish than any of the rest of the world. They are not – there is as much good and bad in them as in any other society. It is simply that those who would be selfish and cruel go without check, because the system of polygamy and the resulting patriarchy gives more opportunity for those tendencies to develop. In 2011, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that Canada’s law against polygamous marriages was constitutional, even though it violated the religious freedom of certain groups, because the risk to women and children from polygamy outweighed the loss of freedom. The Court was right and one only needs to look at a polygamous society to see that harm is done to women and their children.

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  47. I haven’t read today’s thread yet, but I see there’s a lot of monkey business at the end of yesterday’s. 😉

    I did skim a little on today’s Our Daily Thread, though, and saw an Atta-girl and another congratulatory note on my tiebreaker score. Thank you, Peter and Chas. 🙂 I gotta say being part of that last college football thread was pretty fun. Maybe next year I’ll know a little more about what I’m doing if I join in! 🙂

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  48. I would love to visit all you people (and play for you); but I daren’t say that I’m going on a concert tour – that would be earning money, which isn’t permitted for the likes of me. Can’t even do charitable concerts, as I was told the next time I wanted to do something out of the goodness of my heart (that’s the exact words), I had to have closer ties to my own country.

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  49. Roscuro – Thank you sharing your observations & thoughts on polygamy.

    Do you happen to know how the kind of polygamy one would find here in the states compares to Muslim/African polygamy? I vaguely recall reading a while back that there is a greater prevalence of child abuse in polygamous families.

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  50. Karen, child abuse is yet another of the indirect consequences. There is of course, the maltreatment of stepchildren which I mentioned. Some of it is carelessness – with so many children in a compound, they are often ignored, until their bad behaviour attracts anger and they get beaten for it. The neglect also allows inter-sibling abuse to occur – as wives are married at different times, there are much older and much younger children. Sometimes it is in the form of violence; at other times it is sexual experimentation as children are sexualized early. The lack of surveillance also leaves the children open to other predators who would use them. Men are not encouraged to control their sexual urges (that is another factor in taking more than one wife) and so rape, sodomy and incest happen more frequently than anyone will admit.

    As for polygamy in States versus polygamy in Africa – human nature does not change. As I wrote about the beliefs surrounding polygamy, I was remembering how the Mormons hold the same reasons for marrying more than one wife. I have very limited experience with polygamists who are non-religious; but polygamy was in place where I was long before Islam moved in, and the much older and more deeply rooted tradition of animism is not a far cry from the Mother Earth/Higher Power superstitions of many ‘non-religious’ in the West. I would say that those who think polygamy would turn out differently here are indulging in a covert racism in thinking Westerners could get better results than Africans or Asians under the same circumstances.

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  51. Roscuro, it wouldn’t necessarily be racist. They might think that since the standard of living / income is higher in America, or with wives who work anyway and limit the number of their children, polygamy might work. (In other words, if an educated wife has a good job and only has one or two children, whom she places in day care while she works, then the circumstances might be different–theoretically.)

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  52. But I have a different question, one I’ve always wondered about in terms of polygamy. I suspect one reason that polygamy was tolerated, even among the Israelites, in Old Testament days was that it was better to be a second wife than not be married in a society in which women had no livelihood (and an Israelite man was expected to support his family; the law even says he is not to give a wife less food or marital rights or I forget what else because he takes another wife). And in a society where men might die in war, there might well be more women than men, so polygamy might almost be a necessary evil.

    But in today’s polygamous societies, are there a lot more women than men, or are there a lot of men without a wife at all? Statistically there are slightly more females than men (more born, more survive), but a slight enough difference that only a few men would get a second wife if all men and all women were married. So how does that work?

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  53. which isn’t permitted for the likes of me.

    Yeah, I do recall that incident with immigration that held up your travel plans. Okay, but come visit and play a hymn at church. Can your hosts help with travel expenses?

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  54. My cat taps me on the face, too. If she can’t get me up to let her out in the morning by walking over me and meowing, she takes a paw (nails pulled in!) and starts tap-tap-tapping my cheek.

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  55. Cheryl – I remember hearing that in the polygamous sects in the states, many young men are driven from the community so as to not be rivals to the older men wanting more wives.

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  56. Hey Kim, did you know that you share a birthday with someone in our house? We have a little one-day-old…

    stuffed betta fish 😉

    A late Christmas present for 6th Arrow which arrived yesterday, so of course that is it’s birthday, according to the 6-year-old recipient. 🙂

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  57. I was just going to ask a sports question when I realized Chas already answered it. In the UCF versus Baylor match-up, I didn’t know what UCF stood for. My first thought was University of California something. Fresno came to mind after that, but I’ve only heard of UCLA and USC for college football.

    Never thought UCF could be University of Central Florida. I learn something new every day. 😉

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  58. Karen, yes, I’ve heard that too. But I doubt things like that would work within a wider culture that endorses polygamy–there’d be no place for the men to go. It only works if you’re a fringe sect within a larger community that doesn’t practice polygamy.

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  59. Speaking of how to pronounce peoples’ names around here, how is “Phos” pronounced? I say it “Fahz”, but now I’m wondering if it is something like “Fose” (rhyming with dose, not rose). How do you say it, Roscuro? 😉

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  61. Cheryl, I do not have statistics and they would be hard to obtain them as marriages are not registered with the government. However, on the surface, there does not seem to be a problem with younger men finding wives. One reason may be a statistical fluke that I read about in the book Unnatural Selection that more girls are born closer to the equator. However, men typically do not get married until their late twenties, early thirties (they run around before that, but that’s another story). The first marriage is typically arranged within the family, often a first cousin. The woman is often considerably younger than the man – I knew a 15 year old who was a first wife, but some of the villagers thought that was pushing it. Not that long ago, girls as young as 13 were married, but with more opportunities for education, more and more parents try to let their girls finish school before arranging their marriages; but that still means most 18 and 19 year olds are married to men at least 10 years their senior . So It seems like there are enough women because men are constantly drawing from a pool of women in the next generation. In addition, the second and third marriages may well be to divorced or widowed women.

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  62. Glad you enjoyed the recipe, Janice. We overindulged with the oreo cookie balls–very rich–if anyone wants a cookbook, let me know and I can email you one.

    In other news, plotting up a storm. Does anyone know anything about bagpipes?

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  63. 6 Arrows, Phos is just a transliteration of the Greek word for light, spelt phi, omega, sigma. As omega makes the long ‘o’ sound, the word is pronounced to rhyme with dose 🙂

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  65. Michelle – in order to learn the bagpipes, one should start upon a chanter. It’s quieter than the ‘pipes and thus doesn’t hurt the ears as much when making mistakes. Also, bagpipes are not only used in Scottish music – they are also used in Irish and some French and Spanish music (and all of their bagpipes sound much better than the Scottish version). It was widely used in medieval music and another name for it was the sackbut. That’s about all I can think of off the top of my head 😀
    Oh, and in order to find Scottish bagpipers, one should go to Nova Scotia, Canada, as there are more people who play the pipes there than in Scotland – that’s an unofficial fact learned from friends who visited Scotland and couldn’t find any pipers and when they asked after them, they were referred to the afore mentioned province.

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  66. Peter: Can your hosts help with travel expenses?
    Well, they were a bit sticky about that too. However, and I mean this seriously, if the Lord wants me to visit y’all (did I pronounce that right?), He’ll provide the money and the method of transport [no car and no license – it expired while I was away and due to peculiar circumstances, I can’t simply renew it again].

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  67. Only half my class showed up for school today. Its not uncommon in my school for grades 7 and 8s to stay home in bad weather. Their parents are more concerned about getting to work and so leave the kids to manage on their own. With only half the class, I didn’t want to continue with my plans since I would only have to redo them the next day. Thinking about how to occupy their time somewhat constructively I remembered the video I posted yesterday and with a short scientific explanation relating it to the particle theory (current unit of study), I boiled some water and took the kids outside. And yes it was cold enough to turn hot water into snow.

    Aj — Rand Paul’s wrong, Taxes are actually low for the post war period and is one of the major reasons for the high debt not to mention unnecessary wars.

    roscuro — My school has a family of five boys who all play the bagpipes. We have them play for graduation, remembrance day, etc. It adds something to the occasion. They normally charge for weddings, funerals, etc but play free for the school. And their not cheap.

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  70. So apparently they are planning a tour: Phos and her violin and Michelle and her bagpipes. Should be interesting. Where are they starting? How will Phos get across the border? Should we all send sincere references to the border guards so they will leave her alone?

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  71. Mumsee, curb your imagination. It may get some of us in trouble someday… wait a minute, never mind…
    Just think, it is almost two years since I started uncertainly to visit somebody whom I had never met, with a few emails, an out-of-date blog, and several hundred anonymous comments on a news site to go by. And just look at what it led me into: Africa, deadly snakes, a medical evacuation and now, a general invitation to visit other anonymous commenters – where will it end?! No wonder I have grey hairs.

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  72. Let’s see, she crosses over in NY and hops over to our friends on the east coast. Maybe starting with Mmacmurray up there in Maine, then working her way down. Don’t forget to stop by to visit NJLawyer and tell her we miss her…..

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  73. …when she gets to Alabama, she will turn north headed for Iowa and the folk along the way. Then dart across to Colorado and quick up to Idaho. Then over to Oregon and down to the California set. It will be summer and just time to cut back across the southern strata so it will seem like she is back in Africa…

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  76. Waait a minute… how come I have never been invited to northern Saskatchewan? That is a place I would most definitely like to visit. Though I still have to make it to the wonderstump land to show the children that part of the coast. I am afraid I don’t get to far from the nest these days.

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  77. Should this tour take a looooong time, I will be home next Christmas and stay for six months. Perhaps i will take my own tour and drag Donna along to use up her excess vacation days.

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  78. NY? I live in CA, but I’m always up for a road trip. But I play the clarinet MUCH better than the bagpipes.

    I’m wondering how long bagpipes can sit in a chest before they go “bad” and won’t play anymore.

    Research, you know. 🙂

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  79. I figured you could bike over. I suspect it depends on the temps it was kept in. If it was kept cool but not cold and lightly humid but not wet, It probably would still work. We saw some in a museum in Greece that were in ideal conditions but they did not look useable but maybe they had been a few years in less than ideal…

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