Good Morning!
On this day in 1556 an earthquake in Shanxi Province, China, was thought to have killed about 830,000 people.
In 1845 the U.S. Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
In 1849 English-born Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree. It was from the Medical Institution of Geneva, NY.
In 1907 Charles Curtis, of Kansas, began serving in the United States Senate. He was the first American Indian to become a U.S. Senator. He resigned in March of 1929 to become President Herbert Hoover’s Vice President.
In 1950 the Israeli Knesset approved a resolution proclaiming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
In 1964 ratification of the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was completed.
And in 1973 President Nixon announced that an accord had been reached to end the Vietnam War.
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Quote of the Day
“In circumstances dark as these, it becomes us as men and Christians to reflect that whilst every prudent measure should be taken to ward off the impending judgments … all confidence must be withheld from the means we use and reposed only on that God who rules in the armies of heaven and without whose blessing the best human councils are but foolishness and all created power vanity. It is the happiness of his church that when the powers of earth and hell combine against it … then the throne of grace is of the easiest access and its appeal thither is graciously invited by that Father of mercies who has assured it that when His children ask bread He will not give them a stone. … That it be, and hereby is, recommended to the good people of this colony … as a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer … to confess the sins … to implore the forgiveness of all our transgressions … and especially that the union of the American colonies in defense of their rights, for which, hitherto, we desire to thank Almighty God, may be preserved and confirmed. … and that America may soon behold a gracious interposition of Heaven.”
John Hancock
“The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775”, William Lincoln, editor, (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838), pp. 144-145, proclamation of John Hancock from Concord, April 15, 1775, four days before the British marched on Lexington and Concord which resulted in the “shot heard round the world”.”
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Today is the birthday of Rick Heil of SonicFlood. From TheTrueSeven who has like a thousand Christian music videos. It’s a good channel. You should check it out. 🙂
And it’s Jason Davies’, of Between Thieves too.
And it’s Mike Hogan’s as well. So the Dave Crowder Band finishes up. 🙂
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Wandering Views 
Good morning everyone.
The man on the radio says it’s going to get cold tonight. It’s 18.4 now. He says we’re in for a cold snap.
In j1971, the #1 song on this day was “Knock Three Times”. A nice melody, but a dumb song.
Was it someone here who was talking about the science fiction novel Ender’s Game?
I’m reading it now. I have a major problem with it. But I will finish it.
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Morning Chas. Getting late here and I need my sleep. My students probably went to bed hours ago!.
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Chas, if you have a major problem with it, why do you not put it aside and read something more edifying?
Do you continue reading it because you want to make the problem known by a review, or is it because you always finish what you start and you paid good money for it, too? If I really have a problem with a book, I won’t. devote my time to it. There are other books more worth the reading and I look for those.
Cheryl, I so much appreciated what you said about Harry Potter and how it makes it seem that good things come from breaking rules. That helps me better understand why a child I know always has to do her own thing outside of an assigned activity. It’s not a total breaking of rules, but a kind of testing that indicates the child discounts the teacher’s instruction. It’s an attitude of “child knows best,” I can see that being fostered by books like Harry Potter that make the child the final authority. The child who has been given a steady mind diet to think its all about them and their own power will not want to submit to God.
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It happened again this morning as husband was getting ready to leave for work, Bosley who had been running all around plopped down by husband’s feet and put her front paws over his shoes to try and keep him here. It is so endearing!
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JaniceG, I was thinking last night about the progression of your posts relating to Bosley. I wish I’d kept all of them since the very first one about him showing up at your house and you not wanting to encourage him to stay. I think that if they were all compiled, one after the other, it would be an adorable story. I may just go back and do that.
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Linda it does make you smile to think how a little kitten showed up at Janice’s house and she was determined to keep her quard up, not keep the kitten and find it a home, listing all the reasons it wasn’t a good idea to today when she describes said kitten as “so endearing”. I kinda suspected that is how things would turn out. I, myself, have fallen victim to the charms of a kitten…it happens to the best of us.
I understand while Chas is finishing the book. There have only been two books I started reading and didn’t finish. All the King’s Men and Poisonwood Bible. I always think if I read it to the end I will understand what the author was trying to do. I have also found that if sometimes if I read the last few pages of some books and find out what happens it will make me slow down and enjoy reading the book more. Does anyone else do that? I do that mostly with mysteries.
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Very important QOD:
When it comes to “that time”, will Chas have his pet rock stuffed and placed on the mantle?
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I will quit reading, if I find the book horrible or one I feel is just a total waste of time. I might continue reading to discuss it with others or for information I may think will be useful. I never read the end first. That will keep me reading more, but I really don’t want to know the end before I get there.
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Kim, I read all the way to the end of the Poisonwood Bible, but only because someone I respected had loaned it to me and I figured it must get good at some point. She loaned me another one or two of Oprah’s questionable picks (Oprah and the friend both seemed to have this thing about Christianity being more bad than good, even though my friend called herself a Christian and probably was), until I saw the pattern and told her I didn’t like those books.
I have only stopped reading a handful of books in my life, though sometimes it takes a while to get through one. Let’s see, Hunchback of Notre Dame I had out from my school library (college) over summer, and it had tiny print that was hurting my eyes, and when I was about 140 pages in, I realized I still had no idea what was going on, and furthermore I didn’t care, and it wasn’t worth hurting my eyes for a book I didn’t want to read. Also, Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat read like it was written by someone who was drunk; it was all about drinking and chasing pretty women. I read a few pages and then glanced through the rest and it looked like it never did get a story line, so I threw it away.
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Thanks for the kind thoughts about Bosley. 🙂
I don’t think I have ever read the end of the book first. I, personally, would find it bothersome to know the end unless perhaps it is a true life story and I am curios to know how a person got to where they ended up.
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The advantage of pet rocks is that they never die. And the vet bill is zero.
My problem with the book is the maturity level of the kids. The kids are going to save humanity from space invaders. But these are pre-teen kids. Brilliant beyond comprehension. I can buy that. But mental capacity and maturity are different things. You can’t have kids acting and thinking like minature adults, no matter how smart they are.
It’s a logic problem.
Like the song “Knock Three Times”. It.s a logic problem. No matter what her morals, no woman is going to meet some guy in the hallway. Unless she’s in the business. That changes things.
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e.g. And it’s an eight year old saying this:
“Now he knew what he hated so much. He had no control over his won life. They ran everything. They made all the dicisions. Only the game was left to him, that was all.”
He’s haveing a great problem with that. I did too. It was the story of my life. But I made it through. I really can’t connect. But I will plod on.
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OK Chas, I didn’t know the lyrics to “Knock Three Times”. I know the melody somewhere in my memory from the choras. That is just a creepy song about a stalker. If I had an upstairs neighbor who had been watching me like that I would call the police or move.
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“Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me.
Twice on the pipe if the answer is no.”
Yeah, Chas, I agree on the lyrics. But I disagree on the melody. It was typical of the early pop/rock songs in that it has a simple repetition of three or four chords.
As for not finishing a book, there have been a few I put down. I have some theological books on my shelf that I started reading 20 years ago but couldn’t get much out of them. Perhaps I wasn’t ready and should try again.
Some classical literature I’ve read I either didn’t finish or skipped long descriptive passages and/or chapters that to me did not contribute to the story line. Les Miserables is the most recent that I did that. A friend told me every chapter was necessary to get the idea of the story, but I did not see the reason for several chapters about the Paris sewer system. One chapter of summary of all the different ages and changes would have sufficed for me to know that Jean Valjean had a confusing maze to pass through to escape the authorities and rescue Marius, carrying him on his back. I also read Moby Dick and fell asleep reading the history of whaling, so I started skipping those chapters as well. I got the main part of the stories, but found the tangents made me forget what was happening in the actual tale. I guess it’s because I am not of the gentility of the 1800s and actually have other things to do besides sit around all day reading novels. If I could do that, then the long descriptions wouldn’t detract so much.
When the children were young, I started reading The Swiss Family Robinson toi them, but gave up after they said it was too boring. I had a hard time with it as well, reading chapter after chapter of the family killing animals just to find out what they were. Other than the ridiculous ending, maybe the Disney movie, despite its faults, was the better choice for it’s brevity.
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Michelle, I sent you an e-mail.
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Busy day for everyone? Or is everyone in a place with no power?
I am at home today, as it is again too cold for the children to be out waiting for a school bus. -25° windchill factor this morning. Currently it’s 6°. I think, at least the schools recognize that it’s too cold.” But then I remember reading the Little House books, and learning that Laura had to teach school in a drafty shack in -40° weather, walking 2 miles to get there and having to start the fire herself. Either we’re wimps, or we’ve gotten wiser.
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Same here Peter. Many schools are closed in the mountain areas north of here because of the below zero temps. It’s brutal, and this snow ain’t goin’ nowhere for a long time with this cold.
And I’ll go with wiser and wussier. 🙂
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A sunny 60 here in arid northern California . . . I walked with my prayer partner this morning and she was talking about putting her heart in step with God’s even if that meant a drought here. When we prayed, she went first and then I asked God for mercy . . . and to send rain. 🙂
I’m not feeling 100% today and wanted to leave the 6 am gym class early. I decided my scratchy throat was a good excuse to skip sit ups (besides I was walking in the park an hour later), so I left.
In the dark parking lot, however, a woman I didn’t know said, “are you Michelle?”
(Do you suppose it was the UCLA sweatshirt that gave me away?)
She wants to write a book (!) and several of my friends had told her to look for me. (Of course!)
Fortunately, she doesn’t want to write a book so much as put together a 260 page book of family letters, Jewish family in Hungary during WWII, for her relatives and was seeking information on how to do that.
I gave her my card and by the time I got home from walking with my prayer partner, she’d already read all my posts about Hungary. I now have to research ways to get a book printed that won’t break the bank.
If I don’t take a nap first . . .
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Janice’s point is well taken about children and the books they read and the movies they watch. I’ve felt for years the night terrors my niece experienced were because she watched Disney movies before she went to bed. I still get the creeps over those Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp and will never watch The Little Mermaid again after that horrible witch octopus.
What are parents thinking?
A book is better than a movie, however, because a person brings to a book an imagination based on their personal experience. I can only bring to that book my own notion of horror, so it’s not as intense.
A movie, however, is someone’s else notion and experience of horror and it conveys things I may never have thought of. For example, I refused to let my children play or watch Mutant Ninja Turtle media because I didn’t think the “most ridiculous idea a bunch of guys came up with while eating pizza and drinking beer,” should be an influence on my kids.
They’re perfectly fine all these years later.
However, I probably need to have this conversation with my adult children raising children . . .
I’ve come to think children are as innocent as we say they are, when it comes to media use. They believe people when they tell them something–because why would they not? If a child, however, is raised on the cynicism and two-faced nature of current media products, aren’t they being trained not to trust authority?
That was always my complaint about H. Potter. I kept wanting someone to take him down a notch or two, not by beating him up, but by ensuring he received appropriate consequences for his actions.
I mean, really, what was that school thinking allowing snakes and dragons to hang about the property?
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I refused to let my children play or watch Mutant Ninja Turtle media … They’re perfectly fine all these years later.
And so did mine. I think of all the silly “edutainment” available now-a-days that people think are necessary – Sesame Street, Barney, Dora – yet really do nothing in the way of serious education, and realize my children grew up without any of it and are fine, intelligent young adults.
And I hadn’t thought about the scariness of some of Disney’s characters, but I remember the gruesomeness of some of the stories on which they are based, I can see the wisdom of not showing them to young children. Modern parents make the mistake of letting 4- and 5-year-olds watch shows meant for much older children. Really young children are not ready for something written with a 10-year-old in mind.
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Am I the only person in the world who doessn’t know (nor care) who Justin Beaver is?
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Even the female defense attorneys on Fox News are beautiful.
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I agree with Michelle on the media. We didn’t have a tv for years to keep it out. I had a teacher tell me how scared my 5 year old was at school when they showed the Little Mermaid, so I watched it. It was terrifying and they showed it at school to the kinder class! When I finally got a vcr with a small tv, it was delightful to pick a few movies to show. Sargeant York had a strong impact and Chariots of Fire, too.
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I was going to agree with Michelle about movies being more harmful than books, but then I remembered how there were certain books on my father’s shelves that I would tremble to look at – books like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll and My. Hyde, in other words classics that are well worth reading. I started to read when I was five, and developed reading comprehension quickly, so I could understand the violent scenes in the stories without being able to maturely process why the violence was being related. My siblings and I once reminisced about the trauma done to us by reading the ‘Real-Life Adventure’ stories in the Reader’s Digest – they used to haunt my dreams. We did occasionally see a movie that frightened us, but our viewing of movies was generally limited to good old classics and we did not have a television. Children’s fears are hard to predict, which is why parents need to be alert.
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My brother was quite frightened of the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. I think he was quite young when he first saw that and got scared, probably 3 or 4 or maybe younger. I don’t remember how old he was when he got over that fear. When we were kids, the movie was televised every year, and we watched it every year, too.
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I feel that books as well as movies can take children into unknown worlds where they have no good reason to be. And so much depends on the individual child.
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I was very frightened after seeing Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte. Don’t remember my age, but the fear lasted several years. Seems like it had something to do with a head rolling don some stairs,
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I wish I had not seen so many violent movies in my youth. They’ve left some disturbing images in my mind.
Books don’t have nearly the disturbing effects on me as movies do. I read Jaws in high school, but did not see the movie, and I don’t plan to ever change that.
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Some children may tend toward imagining the worst so that they may see in their imagination something even more horrific or realistic seeming in the pages and words in a book than what is shown in a movie.
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That is true, Janice, about seeing more in the words than I would in the movie. When I finally watched dramatizations of the Sherlock Holmes stories as an adult, I was surprised that there was less gore than I had imagined. But I don’t think it was that I constantly imagined the worst, rather words always have conveyed more vivid impressions to me than pictures. When I was tested for my learning style in school I came up as a verbal learner, meaning that words, written or spoken, are the most important thing to me. I prefer reading over watching movies – I actually have a hard time concentrating on action movies because of the lack of dialogue. For the most immersive entertainment experience, I read aloud, because then I am both reading and speaking words.
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I saw “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein”. It didn’t scare me at all.
Other than that, I never went to scary movies.
I never understood paying money to get scared.
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I agree with Chas. I don’t even want to get scared for free!
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After I saw Jaws, I didn’t go into the ocean for YEARS!
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Michelle, when I read a book it is like I have visual display as if I am watching a movie. Maybe that is why I am a slower reader than some others. And books often have more details than a movie can portray. When I watch movies it is sometimes difficult for me to catch the whole story because I might focus on something in the background on the screen and momentarily think about that and miss what was said. So it all depends on how someone takes in media. I am trying to understand how you are thinking the written words have less effect. Is it because the book is small and a movie is bigger than life? Is it because you are thinking the person is only hearing a story and not visualizing it in their mind, too? I think Phos is right that it depends on learning style.
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I think it depends on learning style, too. My husband has to see what is going on, because what he imagines is worse than the actual. For example, when he burned his hand very badly the doctor was going to debride it and told him not to look. He insisted that he needed to watch, so the doc insisted that then he had to lie down while she worked. It turned out just fine for both. He even wants/needs to watch when having a root canal – the dentist gives him a mirror so he can look whenever he wants. (I’d rather not see). I think when he reads, he creates the whole world around what is happening. I think he is sometimes disappointed with movies after reading the book because they didn’t live up to his imagination.
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I’m talking about a young child only bringing to the book his experience. That changes with age.
When I read aloud to my children and they didn’t understand something, they could ask me about it and I could tailor my explanation to them. I also could see the effect the words were having on them and stop to discuss it with them.
(I also could skip parts I knew would frighten).
Parents who let their children mindlessly watch movies assuming they are suitable for children, are asking for trouble.
We had a problem with Jurassic Park. One of my sons desperately wanted to see it, but he was only 9 years old. I knew once it was breached with him, the younger one would get to see the movie and I thought he was too young at 5. Steven Spielberg helped me with that one when he said, “I think Jurassic Park is too intense for my children. I wouldn’t let anyone under 10 see it.”
My 9 year-old hated that answer, but how could he argue with the director?
(Spielberg has seven children)
When my son turned 10, he got to see the movie. The third boy saw it at 7. 😦
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We recently saw something on TV and I made a comment that it was part of what was wrong with people now. They can’t separate what is on screen from what is real. This involved 4 or 5 women stabbing a man. Today I read where a 14 year old stabbed her sister 40 times for being “disrespectful”, I could live my life without turning on the TV as long as I had a book. My sweet husband on the other hand wants me to stop what I am doing and watch with him.
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Michelle, I’m e-mailing you one option that I have used, with the pros and cons and some photos of the final results.
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Kim, my husband loves tv, and I rather read. He also reads a lot. He is a much faster reader than I am so he has time for both except during the worst of tax season.. I wish I could read in the same room with the tv on, but that does not work for me. I do watch tv with my husband, but some shows are too violent for me. He will change to a different show if I really protest about the content. But sometimes I find myself wishing for a quiet evening of reading only. It is funny that Bosley likes to watch tv, especially sports. Her eyes are constantly tracking the football and sometimes she paws at the screen.
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After I saw Jaws, I didn’t go into the ocean for YEARS!
I never saw Jaws and didn’t go in the ocean for years either. Of course, I live in the middle of the country, so the nearest ocean is 100s of miles away.
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Interesting map and the most and least “biblically-minded” cities.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/23/these-are-the-10-most-and-least-bible-minded-cities-in-america-did-yours-make-the-list/
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I like a well-made (but not overly bloody or anything) scary movie.
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Last night I mentioned our considering an option I thought of to suspend the eviction of our tenants, & do some more moving around & whatnot in our part of the house, to ease some financial pressure for my husband. After we discussed the pros & cons, I left the decision in his hands.
Today Lee told me he has decided against the idea of suspending the eviction. I am relieved. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it would only make things slightly better, but there’d still be a lot of difficulties & frustrations to deal with. But I felt I needed to give him the option.
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I was a young child only bringing my experience – only 6 or 7 and I had seen very few movies and none of them violent; but when the book said that someone’s throat was cut and the body was lying in a pool of blood, I could see it vividly, probably because I had cut my finger and it bled.
My parents read to me, especially my father. They tried to be very careful, but I was too quick at reading for them – they never expected me to be able to read those books. I was forbidden to touch those classics until I was older, after I frightened my younger sibling with my recounting of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”.
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That sounds great, Karen. I think it is incumbent on your tenants to think outside the box in coming up with arrangements for living elsewhere.
And so wonderful to hear that you and Lee are on the same page about it. That’s very important.
I’ll continue praying for you all.
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Janice – Could you use ear plugs or listen to music with ear buds while he watches TV? I have done that. These days I just have to turn off my hearing aids. 🙂 (Sound does still penetrate those or ear plugs, but I find it muffles the sound enough that I can tune out the rest.)
Thank you for mentioning you are a slow reader. I think I am a bit slower than some other avid readers I know, but have been embarrassed to admit it. I think some (not anyone here) brag about how fast they read, how quickly they got through a book, as if reading fast means one is smarter or has better reading comprehension skills.
But I know I have good reading comprehension skills, I just choose to read at a slower pace than others. Like you, I am seeing it in my mind, & I really don’t want to read any faster. Right now, with various things going on, & trying to keep up with this blog, Facebook, email, & various online articles, along with World magazine (print version), it takes me a fairly long time, compared to others, to finish reading a book. But I enjoy reading little by little, & taking my time.
I will admit, though, that I am trying to trim down my online reading to make some more time for book reading.
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Thanks, 6 Arrows. (I always start to capitalize “6”, but that doesn’t work. 🙂 )
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Janice – Sorry. I meant to write “slower”, not “slow”.
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^ looks a bit like an arrow. You could do six of them and call me ^^^^^^ Arrows. 😉
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Karen, that was my prayer. I did speak to someone today that knows more about tenancy than I do. Make sure the next correspondence about the notice to move. Give them 30 days from the date of the letter. Have an attorrney write it. After that you will have to involve the law.
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I’m trying to trim down my online reading too, Karen, and read more hard copies of books and magazines again like I used to before our internet days. It is kind of nice to hold actual print materials. I like the feel of that in my hands.
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Kim – If we feel that is necessary, we’ll do that.
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Karen, will be praying for you, what a difficult situation. But you’ve been more than patient (though I also understand how hard it is to find housing that’s affordable). Sigh.
I can’t imagine wanting to watch a root canal that’s being done on one of MY teeth! I even turn away during a routine blood test.
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I look away during a shot. I had myself put under to get my impacted wisdom teeth removed. (Of course, they were big teeth at the back of a small mouth; I basically just didn’t want to know about it, just do it.)
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“After I saw Jaws, I didn’t go into the ocean for YEARS!”
I still won’t. 😯
I’ve seen too many shark movies and shark weeks on Animal Planet. I know how it ends. It’s also why I have a rule about making sure wherever I am, I’m at the top of the food chain.
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I won’t watch needles or my own blood being drawn either. Don’t wanna see it.
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