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Our Daily Thread 4-9-14

Good Morning!

On this day in 1833 Peterborough, NH, opened the first municipally supported public library in the United States.

In 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

In 1869 the Hudson Bay Company ceded its territory to Canada. 

In 1945 in Bari, Italy, the Liberty exploded and killed 360 people. 

And in 1963 Winston Churchill became the first honorary U.S. citizen

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Quote of the Day

“Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.” 🙂

Bill Cosby

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Today is Georg Matthias Monn’s birthday.

And it’s Carl Perkins’ as well. So here’s Carl with some other guys you may have heard of.

And here’s another from Carl and Johnny, with some other friends, paying tribute to Elvis.

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Anyone have a QoD?

62 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-9-14”

  2. Had a flood at school today, outdoors. It rained so hard for an hour that the rain was just pouring down the hill. The attempt at repairing the sinkhole was almost washed away. At least the construction department now knows the extent of our drainage problem. I foresee it taking months to fix. Meanwhile the ditch now crosses the covered walkway, so to get to the office I have to walk down the hill to the basketball court and then cross it to a sidewalk up to the office. I may need hip boots. Rain cleared but the ground is mush.

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  5. I love Easter Lilies. I bought some 4 or 5 years ago to put in some pots by my front door. They are still growing. They bloom a little late here.
    Last night at Bible study we read the Genesis story of Jacob’s daughter Dinah. The point was made that God sometimes uses the unholy for the holy , but in this case Jacob’s son’s Simeon and Levi used the holy for the unholy. Do any of you have any thoughts or insights on that passage. We decided to discuss it again next week. We also prayed for Lee and Karen last night.

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  6. Loved hearing the Monn piece. Don’t know that I have heard it before.

    Easter lillies are beautiful. I haven’t ever owned one. Maybe I need to do something about that.

    The grass really needs to be moved but the purple flowering spikes of the ajuga ate blooming within the mix and I hate to chop them down. At first it was the clover and violets, now the ajuga and next the dandilions. I do see a very good way out of mowing the lawn all summer at this rate! Just keep those weeds blooming! 🙂

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  7. Oops, no moving the grass.
    Mowing is more likely, though delayed.
    And the ajuga has nothing to do with eating blooms; they “are” blooming.
    🙂 😦 Silly Smartphone typos.

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  8. We did not follow Bill Cosby’s advice with our four children, but I always called them by whistling anyway. I don’t like to hear screeching voices shouting at children.

    OTOH, it’s cute to watch their ears prick up when they hear the whistle. 🙂 [Joke for Donna]

    An interesting article sent by a friend [NOT my astronomer son] about planet alignment and the possible end of the world next week:

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/469228/Four-blood-moons-Does-alignment-of-Mars-Earth-and-Sun-mean-the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh

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  9. Moving grass suits me. It may be better than mowing, in fact.
    I see in the Times-News That the First Methodist Church is making hot cross buns.
    Don’t those people know that a child might get one and take it to school. That would cause lots of trouble. Violating the Constitution, that is.

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  11. Morning. Grass is greening, flowering plants are showing signs of life. Taxes due next week. Guess which sign of Spring I detest?

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  13. Several years ago, my family was given a pot of Easter lilies to take home from the church. Within in a couple of hours I was sneezing, got a headache, and had asthma symptoms. We got rid of the lily, and my symptoms went away. Now I can’t have any plant related to the lily in the house (someone brought in a narcissus and the same thing happened). The same thing also happened when we were given a poinsettia, so I can’t have either of the classic seasonal plants in the house.

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  15. I confess, I am not eager for the end of the world to come. There is still so much to be done. I think of those yet unreached by the gospel, including many in the country we are praying for today and I hope we can get to them in time. Pastors, like the one quoted in Michelle’s link would be serving God so much more effectively if they concentrated more on teaching the Great Commission than on speculating when the end of the world might come. We are told to work while it is yet day, for the night is coming. Those who spend their lives trying to read the signs of His coming remind me of the third servant in the parable of the talents, “I buried your talent in the earth. Here it is again.” We all know what the Lord had to say to that useless servant.

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  16. Mumsee 🙂 They do have all sorts of flowers and plants in the house. Boston ferns, spider plants, Christmas cacti, orchids, aloe vera, geraniums, a Crown of Thorns plant, African violets, and many more. I have no problem with any of those, only the lilies and poinsettias trouble me.

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  17. Well, you have many redeeming qualities, so I suppose you can stay inside. They probably have outdoor plants around anyway. I have a daughter who claims to be sensitive to the hundred plus tomato and pepper plants I have in the house. We will never know because when i set them outside, the out doors will be so full of pollen, and that is where we spend our summer, we won’t know if it was the tomatoes or something else.

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  18. Of course, if she exhibited symptoms anywhere close to what you were having here, we would steamclean the place and get rid of all plant and animal forms and everything else.

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  19. Roscuro,

    “Pastors, like the one quoted in Michelle’s link would be serving God so much more effectively if they concentrated more on teaching the Great Commission than on speculating when the end of the world might come.”

    Funny you should mention that after what I just finished reading. I have a story for the news thread tomorrow that had me thinking a very similar response to the one you had to Michelle’s link. It’s an eye roller.

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  20. Why thank you kindly, Mumsee. My family does indeed have outdoor plants. There are at least eight flower beds, a herb garden, patches of rhubarb and asparagus, two very large vegetable gardens, some wildflowers in protected areas (so they don’t get mowed over), planters, and many trees of all kinds. We generally start seedling tomato and pepper plants, but this year, with a wedding in the works, not a lot has been done towards gardening. My second sibling is the one who inherited our grandfather’s green thumb – he built his own greenhouse and kept many acres of market gardens – and she is too busy to think of the garden (her fiancé also loves to grow plants, so they will get on well together). The snow is still sticking around – it actually snowed again yesterday – and my father complains bitterly of its continued presence.

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  21. Good Morning…it’s going to reach 70 here today! 🙂
    We cannot have lilies of any variety in the house…we all begin to sneeze and take on flu like symptoms…I do have day lilies planted out front though….
    Lovely flowers AJ…what are they? I first thought lilly of the valley…but then Cheryl mentioned crocus…we won’t be seeing any flowering around here for at least another month…

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  22. I had a fern in the house once. Poor, sad, little skinny fern. Brown and crispy. She did not do well.

    I remember to feed my dogs and the cat. But I don’t always remember to water indoor plants (or I’d completely overwater them) — so I no longer have them. I just pass them buy at the Home Depot or grocery store. The plants are fine with that.

    Good David Brooks piece, I shared that on FB from your post, michelle.

    Tossed and turned for a while early this morning, kept praying for Karen & Lee.

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  23. The Real, can you tell me what format is the best to send pictures for the blog header. Talking of plants has made me think of a few pictures to send.

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  27. Now that the thread has gone to seed, may I plant a question? I’m pretty much like Donna, in that I have whatever the opposite of a green thumb is. However, I wanted a Venus Fly Trap for our granddaughter, Emmy, after her Dad read to her about pitcher plants (why are they called this??). I bought one at a garden store and followed the directions but it seems to have died. Any words of wisdom?

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  28. Opposite of Mumsee, I like plants outside and animals inside. Animals are much easier to move out of the way than a plant. You don’t even have to get off the couch to move a dog.

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  29. I laugh and tell everyone that I am the only instance in the universe where two positives made a negative. Both my parents had green thumbs. I do not. My grandfather could just break off a stem or twig, whatever, stick it in the ground and it would grow. I do not possess that ability. I have sensitive skin so tomato, okra, corn, and squash plants make me itch. I have picked a fair share of peas and beans in my life.

    I have a theory that we are actually putting off the end times by continuing to predict when it will happen. Back to work now.

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  30. Donna, ferns not only need regular watering but a routine misting does them the best. I think they require double green thumbs. They are beautiful.

    First time for me to catch Bosley scaring herself in the mirror. She had bent down on the dresser, and I guess as she was still down low she turned and came face to face with herself. She did the bowed up and wild bushy tailed pose. She affects me like that sometimes when she pounces as if her body, teeth, claws and all, has been given a super dose of steroids. I hope the spaying with have some effect on her split personality. She at times seems to be the twin in spirit of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Just as I was typing Mr. Jekyll she stopped her grooming and gave the typing hand a little nip. She just stopped again when she heard a bird. Vet suggested she may have me confused with prey at times. I told her that twice I’ve heard Bosley chattering her teeth. Once it happened while viewing birds, and once again when it appeared she was trying to refrain from biting at me. I never knew before seeing it that cats can do that.

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  31. Cats are very weird. Dogs are a lot more predictable & polite.

    I think I tried misting the fern. She would not respond. I was heartened, though, after reading that indoor ferns are especially temperamental and prone to kicking the dust.

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  33. Our ferns stay green, and so does our ivy and all the other plants we have indoors.

    Green plastic. No, I wouldn’t choose fake plants (but I also don’t have a green thumb) but I married into a household that had them. Oh well, I hardly even notice them, and someday I’ll probably be able to throw some of them out. 🙂 So far I haven’t mentioned them, I just live with them.

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  34. Purple crocus, front yard, new camera. My honey bought me a bunch of lenses with the camera, including a set of close-up lenses, and I’m playing with them to learn how to use them. But it’s rather cool when the flower shows up larger in the viewing screen than it is in real life. (Not this one, but a tiny little yellowish one blooming alongside it.)

    I’ve wanted to have the ability to do macro photography, and I’ve not had much ability. With this camera, I can do some. Probably not as well as my husband’s camera (Last summer he photographed a tiny little insect, a couple millimeters long, so he could look at photos of insects online and identify it, and he was able to have success. Granted, he photographed a dead one so he wouldn’t have to keep track of movement and keep it in focus, but I was quite impressed anyway!)

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  36. From yesterday’s thread:

    Kare, I love the winter colors, too, and wished I was one. 😉 Oh, and about the Botox and migraines, it was ironic to read about that when I came to yesterday’s thread today to read the comments that had come in since going to bed last night. I had had a bad migraine yesterday (I don’t have them very often, and most of them haven’t caused nausea for me), but last night was probably the worst one, maybe not pain-wise, although it was definitely painful, but because I actually got so sick, I threw up. That’s never happened for me, and I hope it never does again. Yuck. Horrible.

    Now for today’s thread:

    Monn video: LOVED it!

    Green thumb: NOT! I think I’ve killed every indoor plant I’ve ever had. I have no idea how much water is too much or too little. I’m not much better with outdoor plants. We have poor soil outside, and poor light inside, and I never learned good gardening skills from anyone, so it’s kind of a lost cause with me.

    However, my husband bought an Easter lily for me last year, and that one did reasonably well (I think — I don’t know how long they typically stay alive). The petals are now dry and on display in a pretty little basket on my bathroom sink cabinet.

    End of the world: I had a dream several weeks ago (might be more like months ago now) that Jesus was coming back. It was quite vivid, and I still remember a lot of the details. I was in some large, unfamiliar building. It may have been a hotel of some sort. I remember a person behind a large desk.

    Anyway, it was pretty dark outside, except the night wasn’t black, but a deep blue. I saw through a large window a white, gleaming cross in the air and Jesus coming alongside. My eyes opened wide, my jaw dropped, and for a moment I stood in place, rooted to the spot, in awe, amazement, excitement that Jesus was coming! Then I ran to another room where some of my children were and exclaimed, “Jesus is coming back! Look!” Or something like that. They just continued on with what they were doing, and didn’t seem to know what was going on. (I think it was my two youngest children in that part.)

    Then…I realized I had to go to the bathroom 😉 and suddenly felt compelled to locate one before Jesus got here! Of course, I was in an unfamiliar building, and couldn’t find any restrooms, so I asked the man behind the desk where one was. He pointed out one around a corner and down a hall. I got to the end of the hall, and the “restroom” was a tiny, closet-like room, probably no bigger than twice the dimensions of your high school locker, with all sorts of things stacked in it that you had to climb on top of to get to “the facilities.” I stood there thinking, how am I ever going to get up there (and there was very little head space above all of that stuff, too).

    Then the dream ended. 😀

    Don’t ask me what that means, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry about going to the bathroom at a time like that. 🙂

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  37. If you look in the used books rack, you may find one titled 88 Reasons
    Christ has to Return in 1988

    My dream last night was that I was stuck in Denver and couldn’t find my plane ticket.
    Don’t know why. I’ve only been to Denver twice.

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  38. 6 Arrows, if you are like me I can tell you what the bathroom dream was about. I have some dreams about going into a grubby bathroom and every stall I walk into has a filthy toilet that I don’t want to use (they are clogged or maybe overflowing). Then I awaken and find I really need to get up and use the bathroom. My dreams make me hold it until I can wake up enough to make it to the bathroom. I figure it is a pretty clever trick my mind plays to get my body to stay in line!

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  41. Just got home from a dental cleaning. I saw a new person today who loves cats. Her cat is really old and almost died recently. 😦

    It was so pleasant to talk with her about kittens and cats. Her parents are in their eighties and will be getting sibling kittens that she will later take responsibility for. Isn’ t that sweet?

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  43. I try to plant a few perennials each year and most live, but they don’t thrive since I don’t give them special attention. So I guess that means I have either a blue or yellow thumb that never quite gets the color mix right to make it to green.

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  44. Janice 🙂

    I’ve had that dream before (your 3:57 one). I think I do usually find I have to go to the bathroom when I wake from that dream. I can’t remember if I really had to go when I woke up from the dream I described above (@2:25). Probably.

    I do remember waking from the above dream and thinking I didn’t hear any trumpet blast.

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  46. I’m not a cat person, but I have a cat. It doesn’t like me very much. Mumsee would be happy with it. It’s an outside cat now. My cat is a survivor. She hunts prey, but she also hunts down people who will feed her. She has 2 MK’s trained to put food in her dish in the evening and she begs Sarah who lives in the other half of my building to feed her every time she walks by. The funniest day was when I wasn’t giving her much food because she was going to run out before I got into town to buy some. She comes running up onto the porch where her food is kept and there’s one of our watchmen following behind her. She had gone to the other side of the compound, found the watchmen and convinced one of them to get up and follow her back to my house to feed her.

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  47. I actually have dreamed that I find a place to “go.” And when I dream that, I keep going and going and going, and I wake up and realize that basically my bladder is still full, so in my dream it isn’t yet emptied and I must still need to go some more. I wonder if we ever have such a dream without waking up to it?

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  50. Cheryl, I think I would have to be drugged not to wake up to that dream. In my dream I am in pain trying to hold it until I can find a decent place to go. The discomfort is real and finally awakens me. I think I must be in the middle of another dream when that dream scenario takes over. I work that feeling into my dream. Of course with Bosley in the house and awakening me at various times in the night I never get to that deep dreamy sleep so I don’t have those bathroom dreams lately.

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  51. Janice, when I have one of those dreams, I get up and go, but the need is usually “present, but not urgent.”

    Notice none of the men have been around for the last couple hours?

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  53. Well, I know my husband has to go in the middle of the night, too. It is a human thing. No big deal unless someone truly has bladder control issues. Most of us aren’t there yet, but if people live long enough they usually get a second chance to wear diapers.

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  58. I had a talk this morning with one of my bosses. I am going to be moving offices and I will be in charge of compliance and all the files. They want me to change my title, he told me to think about it and come up with something. I am moving more and more into a managerial position. I will still be taking care of the agents, but I will also be holding them more accountable. I will generate more reports and do more things. It is all a little overwhelming. Monday they wanted to add something else to my list of duties and I had to ask them if we could hold off on that a week or two and let me get a better grasp on what I am already doing. I guess all this gives me job security!

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  59. Tonight was the last of the Wednesday night Lenten services. The theme of the sermon series was “From Garden to Glory”. Tonight’s sermon, entitled “The Garden of Promise”, used the text from Revelation 22:1-6, which I love:

    1 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

    2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

    3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

    4 And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

    5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

    6 And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.

    We closed the service with the hymn “Jerusalem the Golden”, one of my absolute favorite hymns.

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  60. On Monday I went to a choir practice with older adults and I requested we sing Shall We Gather at the River and at first the Choir Director said that hymn is used a lot for baptisms but the pianist/organist said she had used it most for funerals. Then it was noticed that the Scripture reference was for that verse in Revelation about the River of Life. Nice to see that reading again for the second time in a week.

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  61. No internet this morning so couldn’t get on.
    I suppose you are all asleep, but I will share anyway.
    I live in a fourplex of very small flats. My neighbor just came to my back, indoor, door to share. In her hands she had her first copy from the printers in Korea of the Bible in the language she has been working on. This is actually a revision of the transltion she did years ago. She is from New Zealand and a few years older than me.
    They had all of the New Testament and portions of the old testament: Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Ruth, Jonah, and a few other small portions.
    A beautiful book, what a life’s work.
    Just wanted to let you all rejoice with me.
    The dedication is scheduled for July, but I think that it is the week school begins.

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  62. How precious, Jo!

    My parents met and married in Nigeria, and they spoke Hausa (one of three Nigerian languages). After Mom died and I had some money from her estate, I called Bible League to see if they had a Hausa Bible; they did. I sent several hundred dollars to get Hausa Bibles printed. It seemed such a fitting way to honor Mom, and both parents. (Mom was buried on what would have been their 51st anniversary, though Dad had been gone 19 years by that point and Mom had been married for a couple of those years to a second husband she had also outlived.)

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