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Our Daily Thread 1-8-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1675 the first corporation was charted in the United States. The company was the New York Fishing Company.

In 1790 George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address.

In 1815 The Battle of New Orleans began. The War of 1812 had officially ended on December 24, 1814, with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The news of the signing had not reached British troops in time to prevent their attack on New Orleans.

In 1877 Crazy Horse (Tashunca-uitco) and his warriors fought their final battle against the U.S. Cavalry in Montana.

In 1962 Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was exhibited in America for the first time at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The next day the exhibit opened to the public.

And in 1973 the trial opened in Washington, of seven men accused of bugging Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC.

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Quote of the Day

“Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?”

James Longstreet

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Today would have been Elvis Aaron Presley’s birthday.

And it was on today’s date in 1957, at the age of 22, that he took his US Army pre-induction test. So this one seemed the obvious choice. 🙂

It’s also Christy Lane’s.

And composer Robert Schumann’s. So we’ll finish with “Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra,” from the Ossia Symphony Orchestra

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QoD?

Most of the US and Canada are enduring some brutally low temperatures right now. So let’s think warm, pleasant thoughts today. To help us get in the right frame of mind, finish this statement.

As soon as Spring comes I’m going to……..

I’ll take the obvious answer….

Defrost. 😯

63 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-8-14”

  1. Elvis served his time in the Army. I always admired him for that, even though I didn’t like his music. Lotsa guys inhis position would have, and likely did, find a way to get out of it.
    During WW II, lots of actors, singers, etc. went. I started to name some, but the list is long.

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  3. What’s all this business about getting Phos into the USA?
    All she has to do is go to Mexico, cross over into Arizona and she qualifies for a green card and possibly citizenship.
    Just like that!
    😆

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  4. Good morning! Coffee pot overflowed this morning since I tried to make extra in it for son. Then I remembered that is why I inherited the pot from the office. It had problems. It is good for two to four cups, but six is too many.

    When it is spring I hope to get a few plants from the nursery to add extra color to our yard.

    It is in the teens this morning and will make it up to middle age for the high today in Atlanta.

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  5. Hi Janice, I thought I was driving everyone away this morning.
    It’s 9.4 degrees in Hendersonville, ten degrees warmer than yesterday. It’s supposed to get above freezing, mid thirties, toeday..

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  6. Michelle, Covenant College uses bagpipes because they are the Scots. Also I know that there is an annual event at Stone Mountain called the Scottish Highland Games. So those places might be helpful for your research needs.

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  7. At one time I heard that Elvis was a distant relative to my mother’s side of the family, and one of the backup musicians who played for Johnny Cash was a relative to my husband’s mother.

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  9. Ugh, -38F with windchill of -51F again. I’m so DONE with this persistent cold – normals highs are about 5F. Guess it’s long underwear again for the hour drive to work.

    Hubby got to ride a horse during an outdoor citizenship court once. He carried the Canadian flag and then he and another warden flanked the ceremony on horseback, flags flapping in the wind. Then the procession of judge and new citizens walked up to take their places led by a bagpiper. Thankfully the horses were absolutely unflappable as they had never heard bagpipes before and the guy had to walk right under their noses! Those things are extremely loud! (But I love them)

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  11. Good morning, all.

    I’m not sure what research Michelle is doing, but if she’s looking into bagpipe playing bands, the school I attended as a youngster, St. Thomas Episcopal, in Houston, Texas, has an award winning bagpipe and drums band. They are superb!

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  13. Good Morning Everyone. It is 27 degrees here. It should be warmer by the weekend but then will rain. Just my luck as I am doing an open house all weekend. 😦
    I didn’t get to check back with you last night, Hubbykins made shrimp and pasta and then wanted me to watch a movie with him. It was Big Fish. I hadn’t seen it before, but I would recommend it. First, no cursing, second, no sex. It was just a story of a father and son, of a good man that many loved and the son didn’t understand. Have any of you seen it?

    I am lucky. I probably won’t have to wait until Spring to warm up. I just need to wait a week or so, perhaps not that long. I will sit in the sun. I will set a timer and give myself 30 minutes in the back yard to close my eyes and soak up the warmth of the sun. I will call it my Vitamin D Therapy.

    I am somewhat excited, today I am meeting with a real estate coach/mentor. She is going to try to help me set goals and find ways to achieve them. I have declared that 2014 is my year. The market is moving in a positive direction and if I am to make money in real estate this is the year to do that. Wish me well.

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  14. I have today, basically, to come up with a story involving bagpipes. Deeper research can come (and will come) later. In the meantime I need to know if a bagpipe locked in a chest for 40 years is playable and/ or repairable– in the 19th century.

    41degrees here. County north of us has assumed drought status. We won’t be landscaping this year.

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  15. Michelle, I should think they would be repairable. The pipes themselves are wooden, and can last a long time – I found a site offering a set of hundred year old pipes for sale: http://www.dunbarbagpipes.com/usedpipes.html. The reeds would have to be replaced and the bag, which is made of animal skin, may or may not be in good repair – leather can last a while or disintegrate quickly depending on conditions. All in all the idea sounds feasible.

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  16. We have Scottish festivals & games in several places in Southern California every year. And one of the top bagpipe players lives in our area, he gets a lot of film work.

    Of course, the best part of the Scottish festivals is the border collies doing sheepherding. 🙂

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  17. Thanks, I think this is going to work. Just told the sketch story line to my husband and he liked it. It’s always challenging to come up quickly with an idea and then have to back fill your story line in the middle, particularly when you have a limited number of words. 🙂

    And our favorite Scot is moving back in with us next week when she returns for her missionary furlough from Sicily. She sent us a sheet on “returning culture shock.” I wonder if you had something like that, Phos?

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  18. Yep, Donna, the border collie was one of my favorite parts of the Grandfather Mountain event. I was only disappointed they herded ducks and not sheep. The taber toss was amazing. My very favorite part was probably all the tartans and kilts, though . . . and I made a mistake of not taking pictures of them early, assuming I’d see hundreds during the day and could take photos anytime I wanted, but apparently what I saw in the morning was some sort of informal parade of tartans, because I never saw the concentration of them again. Oh well, it was gorgeous, and who knows but I may get another chance to attend someday.

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  19. Yes, Michelle, reverse culture shock is difficult. I simply can’t go into a grocery store for a while. Seeing so many cars on the road and actually driving on a road without potholes. It is all so strange and takes getting used to. I simply stay out of stores.

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  21. For anyone who might be interested in this kind of service: I wrote about this guy a year ago, he does personalized WWII research for individuals, families, groups. He just put up a new website. He does it on his own time, it’s not his day job, but he’s managed to collect quite a bit of documentation and is adept at finding people’s stories.

    http://www.ww2research.com/

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  22. Michelle, my emotional reactions to change are always delayed. It took a while for culture shock to set in when I arrived in the Gambia, and so it is taking a while for the reverse culture shock to set in. Of course, it also was delayed first by my illness, as I couldn’t really think about much beyond trying to breathe and rest, and then by having all my family here for Christmas, as I focused on being with them. In fact, I might be said to be having family culture shock more than anything, since I’m adjusting to my youngest sibling being married and a new mother (she got married just three weeks before I went to Africa and became pregnant and delivered while I was away) and to my second sibling being engaged and preparing to get married (that all developed while I was away) and also adjusting to the precarious family finances (I’d forgotten how challenging it is for us – in the Gambia, I seemed rich in comparison to the villagers).

    I have only been in a grocery store once since my arrival home and haven’t gone to any other kind of store – at first I was too weak to go anywhere and now, due to the car troubles, my mobility is limited in another way. We live in a rural area and the only town of any size is 20 minutes drive away (and it would be considered a small town). I was thinking today that the Gambia has a greater mobility than we do in rural Canada – there, a villager could get a ride on a horse cart to the main road and hail one of the gilly-gillys (vans converted to small buses) which drove by on a regular basis – here, if you live in the country you must own a car in order to be able to go anywhere (or pay a horrendous taxi fee).

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  23. It got warm enough for me to take the little red bells and snowfakes down from the barberry bush by the mailbox.

    I see that typo and will leave it since they are fake snowflakes. The thermometer in the utility room read 26, but I am sure it is warmer in the sunny areas. It felt downright balmy in fact!.

    Phos, I am glad we now know how to pronounce your name. I was thinking of the sound of the first syllable of phosphorus.

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  25. I have a homework assignment and need to ask a favor of all of you. In speaking with the professional coach today I told her about my involvement here and how you have all become my “family” of sorts. She got a little teary eyed when I told her of my Idaho adventure and called it a God Thing…so she got it!
    She asked me what I was passionate about. I couldn’t answer the question. She suggested that I ask all of you what you see me being passionate about. Since sometime in 2004 I have shared more with all of you than with most anyone else in my “real” life. This is a serious question and will help me grow both personally and professionally. You are welcome to answer either here or email me at K L B 1668 at ya hoo dot com

    Thank you in advance.

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  26. QoD: As soon as Spring comes I’m going to……..

    …spring for joy! Warmer temperatures! More sunshine! First four arrows with spring birthdays in about a 3-week time span! I love spring! 🙂

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  28. Michelle, I am one of those Southern Scotch/Irish/ Heinz 57’s I have a little Native American, Scotch, Irish, German, English, and heck let’s toss in some African just to make it more interesting.

    I will send you a photo of the Black Coat of Arms. My grandfather had this done back in the “Roots” era of the 1970’s —you know that story. The geneologist traced us back to the younger brother of some minor nobility that could not inherit so he took to “horse-theiving”, this led my grandfather to say, “That’s enough, bubba, you can stop right there, I’ve heard enough!”

    Ancestry dot com has led me to question the stories I grew up hearing. I was told my great-grandfather came into Florida as first generation Scot. I traced him back to the Carolina’s in 1790, but can’t get far enough to be DAR. Perhaps the horse thieving gene was great enough he had to hop on a boat from Carolina to Florida?

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  29. Good Afternoon, Y’all!

    Kim…a weird answer…Maybe you are passionate about balance? You always strike me as one who strives to find balance in things. Example: you seem to find a balance point between old, deep rooted, southern fried tradition and the new southern style.

    I am also certain that you are passionate about family…no explanation necessary.

    Hope all have a blessed day…

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  30. Kim, that question was asked on the dating website through which I met my husband, and I said something like, “The places I’ve volunteered through the years can probably answer this question best” and I mentioned teaching Sunday school and counseling at camp, crisis pregnancy centers, driving seniors to the doctor and doing foster care. That’s one possible aid to the answer–what do you do “for free.” Planning dinners comes to mind; feeding people.

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  31. On a different note CAUTION: pet thread alert: I now see why people use hunting dogs, not herding dogs, to chase critters. 🙂

    Misten loves chasing rabbits and squirrels. She has no interest whatsoever in catching one, but she loves chasing them. (In Nashville one time when she was still pretty young, she was loose one day and scared up a half-grown rabbit. The rabbit was running along to get away from the dog, and suddenly saw a person–me–standing where it had planned to run. So it stopped to figure out its plan B. In my experience fully grown rabbits don’t do this; they keep multiple routes in their brains. But young rabbits are still memorizing escape routes, and can be caught up short when something unexpected comes up. Anyway, Misten politely stopped exactly where she was, too, to allow the rabbit to figure out its next move. If she’d been a hound, she’d have moved in for the kill, but a herding dog just thinks that it’s fun to chase.)

    Anyway, we have a rabbit hanging around; I’ve seen it three times in less than twenty-four hours. A little while ago I was up on a chair photographing birds that were on the ground eating some birdseed we scattered, and the rabbit showed up on the other side of the fence. I took a couple photos of it, and watched to see what it would do. Soon it had crawled under the fence and it was sucking up sunflower seeds too! I took several photos of the rabbit, and then I called my husband to let Misten outside.

    He put her out and told her, “Go get the bunny!” Apparently she thought he wanted to play with her, because next I heard, “No, silly dog. Go get the bunny!” The rabbit, by this time, was on alert. And suddenly Misten saw or smelled it. But instead of running along the cleared path (the rabbit was around the corner from her, but on that path), she decided to take the direct route and went up and over the mounded snow in the middle. And to her surprise, she didn’t glide smoothly over the top, but sank down into it.

    The rabbit, of course, got away, and I didn’t get any pictures of the best part, the floundering dog. She did, of course, get out fairly quickly, but her bunny was long gone.

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  33. Kim, I see a passion in you for your daughter and your family, a passion for helping others to be strong (not to become doormats), a passion for where you live and the beauty of it, a passion for beautiful things in your life. Hope that is helpful to you 🙂

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  35. Kim, I’d say a passion for feeding & taking care of people.

    And, of course gift wrapping as mumsee notes, this goes without saying.

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  36. So, the six year old elected to remain in her room today as she is not feeling well with this cold. So that left seven year old, who is extremely bonded to her, to his own devices. He chose to play a game they received this Christmas from somebody. It is a Curious George Hide and Seek game with a little walkie talkie that gives the players directions. At some points, all of the animals escape the zoo and go hide. The timer on the walkie talkie starts announcing that the animals are hiding. After sufficient time elapses, the speaker tells them that the player must go find the animals. A fun game. But even more amusing when just one person is playing. He would take the panda bear mask for his little sister, put it behind his back, and walk around the room until he hid it from himself. Then he would wait for the direction to go look. He would look here there and everywhere until he eventually would find her mask just before the timer stopped. This went on for a good hour and a half.

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  37. A story about bagpipes.

    Once a man was upstairs practicing his bagpipes. As he walked back and forth (Bagpipers always march or walk when playing.) his wife yelled up to him to “Stop that awful racket!” So he quit walking.

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  38. Kim, I think you have a gift and passion for hospitality. You have a passion for beautiful settings whether it is regarding a home and its landscape, interior furnishings or a just right yet comfy table setting. You have a passion for things Southern because you have a strong sense of place. You feel passionate about music, too, because you often share in that regard. You also have a love of traditional church when done in an uplifting way. I also think you are passionate in seeing those you feel to be the underdog to receive good treatment. Perhaps that could be called a strong sense of justice.
    Hope that helps.

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  40. Online Jeopardy test in 45 minutes. I have been trying for several years to at least get to an audition. I watch the show every day and can answer a great majority of the questions (pop culture, art and opera are my weakest areas). Well, maybe someday you all will see my smiling face on TV.

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  41. Good luck Peter. Let us know how it turns out.
    Something tells me to leave Kim’s question alone, but not smart enugh to heed my own advice, I’m going to make a stab at it. I mean the best by this. I really do.

    What is Kim passionate about?

    It’s kind of dangerous to make a serious assessment about this from the data we have, though we have over ten years of input.
    From a distance, I have a few observations:

    Kim has had a trying time with her career. She worked with a guy whom she liked as a friend, but not as a colleague. After some time they made an amiable separation. She later worked at a job she liked, but left on terms that still bothers her at times. She now works at a job that has promise, and she is charging ahead on that.

    She is divorced from a guy she likes, but can’t live with because they have incompatible personalities. But she trusts him with her daughter because she’s convinced that he is responsible and loves his daughter.

    She has found a compatible mate and seems happy. I’m convinced that they have a happy and satisfying relationship. I gather that it relives some financial anxiety, but it created a family problem on both sides.

    She had a spiritual ????? (crisis isn’t the right word, but the right word won‘t come to me.) and tried various churches and decided that she would go back to her previous church because she likes the structured worship scenario. And she has lots of confidence in her pastor (priest?).

    I have considered all the factors that have elicited some emotion from Kim. But as far as I remember, the only thing that has made her cry is her daughter.

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  43. Kim, I have emailed you.

    On the topic of monogamy/polygamy that came up here recently, here is an interesting post by Matt Walsh. (Don’t be deceived by the title: “Monogamy is Unnatural.”) He’s not against monogamy! Read the whole article and see what he’s talking about.

    http://themattwalshblog.com/

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  44. Several of these posts made me laugh!

    Thanks for your missionary perspectives Jo and Phos. My husband read the letter Hillary sent and said it reminded him of returning from sea–how odd it was to be home without responsibilities and a set place. (If only I’d known–he could have mowed the lawn!). One of the reasons she’s coming to stay with us again is we’ve experienced this in and out life and have traveled enough to not be insulted when she points out something she appreciated in Europe that she doesn’t care for in the US. 🙂

    I was surprised when we attended the military tattoo at Edinburgh castle, how many international army bands have bagpipes! Funny to see Arabs in long white robes playing them.

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  47. Re: reverse culture shock. The mission our daughter went to Rwanda with for 9 months sent us (parents of the young adults) a list of things to watch for as our young people came home. She did go through a few things, at one point even suggesting that ‘maybe God doesn’t want me to work’ – I basically told her that when the ravens started bringing her food, she could be assured that God didn’t want her to work. She then found a job cooking at a seafood restaurant and the rest is history. Every now and then she gets restless and wants to do another short term stint overseas. Hopefully her paramedic certification will be of use should she ever go again.

    Kim, I think it’s safe to say that we all love you.

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  49. Forgot to say I enjoyed the Schumann video, AJ. Very good violinist! I didn’t know who she was, nor had I heard the piece before. Good stuff!

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  57. That was a good link, 6 Arrows. Are you the one who has posted links to his writing before? He’s a wise young man, and I hope he does a book or two. (I read several other essays beyond the one linked.)

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  58. I think Donna or Kim has linked him too. He’s usually a good read.

    You’re welcome 6. And tomorrow we’ll have “The Tempest” for John Knowles Paine’s birthday. I always enjoy that one.

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  59. Any time Mumsee! Just remember, our dog is an inside dog. He’s very, very spoiled 🙂 The cat, on the other hand, stays outside or in the shop.

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  60. Oh good, then husband can come along. You would be amazed at the number of people who believe dogs belong indoors, so don’t think you are unusual that way.

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  61. Cheryl, I know I thought about linking at least one or two of his posts here, but I can’t remember if I actually followed through. I know others have here, though — like AJ says, maybe Donna or Kim. I think Michelle did, too, and maybe KBells.

    AJ, ooh, “The Tempest”! Looking forward to that one!

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  63. No problem, 6 arrows. Had a wonderful visit with friends this evening. It is humbling to see folks dealing with serious health issues with dignity and grace. And to be so warmly welcomed and honored.

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