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Our Daily Thread 4-23-14

Good Morning!

Today’s header photo is from Cheryl.

On this day in 1635 the Boston Public Latin School was established. It was the first public school building in the United States.

In 1861 Arkansas troops seized Fort Smith.  

In 1908 U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signed an act creating the U.S. Army Reserve. 

In 1954 Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit his first major-league home run on this day. 

And in 1968 the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church. 

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Quote of the Day

“A pitcher needs two pitches, one they’re looking for and one to cross them up.”

Warren Spahn

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Today is Roy Orbison’s birthday.

From RoyOrbison

Here’s another with some help.

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Anyone have a QoD?

44 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-23-14”

  1. Morning all. I’m praying about another vehicle possibility. I will go look at it and drive it and wait to see if God gives me peace to proceed.

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  5. Evening, Jo. Good morning, Linda and Janice. It’s another beautiful day here in Houston–we’ll have a high of 85 this afternoon. Older daughter, L., has state testing today and yesterday. Today is science, yesterday was history. She tends to do very well on standardized tests and has no homework until Thursday, which is a nice break. She rode for a long time last night since she had no homework.

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  6. Horses are good for children. I understand that the rocking motion is especially good for those on the autistic spectrum, as is swinging and bouncing, etc. Somehow, it lines things up in their minds. I suspect it is good for all of us…. Animals are good for people. Thanks to God for working that whole thing out. And even for allowing some people to consider animals to be inside creatures, even though we all know they are not. Imagine, a horse in the house…wait, didn’t Donna show us a video of that? Never mind…

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  7. Great picture. Is it an egret? And is the twin of an egret a regret?

    Linda- I think it was the sea gulls saying “Mine, Mine” in Nemo.

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  9. The other morning I caught a segment on a news show about a man who has a buffalo that comes in his house. I have Lulabelle. She only weighs about 50# I can’t imagine anything larger, although Marlowe the Wonder Dog weighed 110#…but he was a good dog. The worst he ever did was take all the bows off my Christmas presents and put them at the front door and climb into my bed if there was a thunderstorm. Lou-Lee is BAD. My next bonus will be sending her and her daddy-dog to obedience school.

    I think it is about time for me to send AJ another photo from the Nest.

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  10. I have about six months to decide if Bosley will remain an indoor cat. Outdoors is so much easier in many ways, but here she is safer indoors. I do like having her company. I will have to see after spaying if she can be an office cat at least part-time. She will have to adjust to a 35 minute drive twice daily. And of course, it would mean two litter boxes, one at home and one at the office.

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  11. What a stunning shot of a blue heron. The moment of lifting off is something you only see in a blur in real time – the camera must be really high-tech to catch it. We have blue herons around here, but they are elusive and we just catch a glimpse of them, standing like statues in the water before they take flight.

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  12. We used to have an independent book store near the beach that always had a resident cat. Unfortunately, it went the way of most all other bookstores in recent years and is no more. 😦

    But I’ll admit I’m one of those who feels keeping cats indoors only seems unnatural (although if I lived on a highway or near a super busy street — my residential street gets low to moderate cut-through traffic) I’d consider it I suppose. But even my vet said he and his veterinarian wife have never had a cat that’s been ‘happy’ being 100% confined indoors. He said it is safer, of course, but one also has to consider quality of life.

    I always figured Annie would have access to the outdoors since I have a doggie door and never liked the idea of locking the dogs in the kitchen all day to keep the cat separated (though it comes in handy to do that during recovery times when needed for a sick animal). My sense is that she’s sticking much closer to home (she’s about 5 years old) than she did at 2 and 3. She can usually be found either in the backyard or on my front porch. But I suspect she spends the majority of her time indoors now by choice.

    I do lock her and the dogs in at night, though. (Annie’s lying on the top of the sofa behind my shoulders right now, purring up a storm.)

    mumsee, I think that video showed cute little goats in the house. 🙂 Hardwood floors would take a beating, though. There’s a horse riding nonprofit charity on the peninsula near me called Ride to Fly that brings special needs kids (and adults) in for horseback riding.

    http://www.ridetofly.com

    Back to the arson story today, I’m trying to get enough solid information to write another story but it’s been tough going as the investigation is still ongoing. Spent all day yesterday on it but we held the story, there just isn’t enough first-hand info. Tedious work, poking around all day trying to find someone who really knows something (not just 2nd hand hearsay) to talk. Seems like investigators may be getting close anyway to announcing an arrest, so then it’ll all go very public. But we’re always trying to stay ahead of it if we can. May not be possible with this one, though, everyone’s really clamped down & being mum.

    Nice photo, Cheryl.

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  16. Donna is poking around in the ashes after the fire. Sometimes there are live coals in those ashes. Careful! Sounds interesting. Hope you get to talk to a source with unzipped lips real soon.

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  17. We currently have two cats. One, Snowball, used to be a little girl’s indoor cat, so you can imagine what he is like. He is neutered. When we took him, we told them he would have to be outdoors but they had been unable to find another home, had to move, and did not find a home that allowed pets. He is adored and loved, gets lots of attention, especially from the fifteen year old boy. When he used to sleep outside, the cat slept with him. He has been known to sneak the cat into his room at night, but that came to a stop when the cat started destroying his screen to get in.

    The other was born of a semi wild cat who died and left six four week olds. We got four and the children bottle raised them about four plus years ago. He is intact and, though very willing to be petted by family, is rather wild. He roams a lot and has avoided the owls and coyotes for several years. But he constantly beats up the other, older cat when the wild one is around. Now and then they are cordial, but generally it is not.

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  20. A pebble, Mumsee. a pebble.

    I am reading in The American Spectator, a book review of What Should We Be Worried About?” . The most interesting observation in the review is a statement by “cognitive scientist” Gary Klein: “I worry that the number of things we need to worry about keeps growing.

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  22. My dad brought a colt into the house once. My mom pretended not to be amused. We children were quite delighted. The colt was removed before any messes resulted.

    As children, we once brought rabbits in to try to have a race with them. I don’t recall it working well. The floor during both these escapades was good old linoleum, so there was not a worry about damaging it.

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  23. Does anyone here remember – or did you have – melmac dishes? The plates & such my mom had while I was growing up were melmac, Watertown Lifetime Ware, to be exact.

    The reason I know the exact name is because Emily inherited Mom’s Corelle plates & other kitchen stuff, & among it all is one, single, solitary saucer left over from the melmac collection.

    (Melmac was made from melamine resin, so it is a very hard plastic, but it doesn’t feel like plastic. Mom hated plastic plates & cups, so she must not have realized what they were made of.)

    Mom’s set consisted of turquoise plates & bowls, black coffee cups, & white saucers. I don’t know if the set came that way, or if she picked them out separately that way.

    Here is a page that shows some Watertown Lifetime Ware…

    http://www.etsy.com/search?q=watertown+lifetime+ware&ex=adwords&gclid=CKyg3a7l9r0CFZOCfgode0oAzw&utm_source=google&utm_medium=sem&utm_geo=US&utm_term=watertown+lifetime+ware_Exact&utm_campaign=adobe_vintage&utm_ag=housewares-cup&ef_id=DrRO0vnFFUwAAAIY%3A20140423141323%3As

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  24. Janice – You may find that after Bosley’s surgery, & as she grows out of kittenhood, she may be more contented to stay inside. That’s how it has been with our cats.

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  25. I have a set of Gladding McBean table ware (ceramic) that looks like the old Fiesta ware, multi-colored. Cute little tumbler glasses in turquoise, burnt orange-brown, white, cobalt blue — along with plates and little bowls, a serving bowl or two as well. The sizes are very different (smaller) from what we are used to now (these would have been manufactured probably in the 1930s or so in California).

    I think my mom inherited them from a friend — or maybe she bought them from her — I can’t remember. My mom passed them on to me when I moved into my own apartment.

    I go through phases of using them and then forgetting about them. I was once tempted once to sell them (made the mistake of telling my mom who gasped, so I backed off from that idea quickly). And I’m glad now that I still have them. They’re really unique.

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  26. My journalism teacher from college days (she was actually an investigative reporter who taught our reporting class on the side) brought a horse into her house once. She bought a house that came with a broken down, very old horse that she said the former owner suggested just be put down but she didn’t have the heart, wound up spending lots of money on him and brought him into the house one night when it rained. She’s written a book about him, I don’t think it’s been published yet.

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  27. I remember those turquoise plates but not the other colors. I just don’t know who had them. It had to be a relative because that is where we went on vacation.

    I really like Corelle. That is what my mother had and now my brother has it. I got the International Heartland design everyday dishes when we got married because a friend said I had to put something on the registry and that was what she liked. I couldn’t really decide. I love all the different designs.

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  29. Yep, I love that shot of the great blue with a fish. I was just taking shots, didn’t know “what I had” with that one until later when I looked through the pictures. My husband wanted me to get one with a fish, and so I was zooming in on birds that were going into the water. But I told him I didn’t know whether or not I got any with a fish. Then I looked through my pictures and found this one, and was quite happy.

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  31. I like the heron picture, too.

    My husband came in from getting the paper this morning and told me to put on my shoes and follow him outside. He promised I would be happy I did. I did as told and followed him back to the end of our driveway. Just down the dirt road was a bald eagle eating on a dead deer. He left and we have not seen him since, although we are not always watching, of course. Later we walked by the deer and saw it had some of the flesh exposed and a piece of bone pulled off. There was a small wound started. I am not sure if it was frozen too much to continue or if the eagle was leery of the few vehicles that happened by. I doubt it will last long.

    When I was first married I had a set of melamine. Later my mom gave me a set of Corelle. It was a plain white set. I liked it a lot, but divided it in two for my daughters when they moved out.

    Some of the old Fiesta ware, turquoise especially, has lead in it.

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  33. As a small child, I ate off a little red melamine plate. There were two of them, with a bowl and mug to match, but I don’t remember using the bowl or mug much. They were passed down from my elder siblings, who were considered big enough to use the Corelle dishes. I remember considering myself to have passed a milestone in life when I was given a Corelle plate for dinner instead of the old red melamine one.

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  34. my dad used a spray water bottle to teach his cat not to meow to come inside. The cat learned to sit quietly at the screen door when he wanted to come in.

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  35. Someone at church suggested using a water spray to keep Bosley from misbehaving. It sounded good until I realized the whole house would be wet. But using it outside at the door makes more sense.

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  36. Donna – At the top of the page you linked to, there is a photo of a couple Franciscan Ware Desert Rose tea cups & saucers. We have a couple of those, along with a platter & several plates from that collection, inherited from my mother-in-law.

    The website I looked at yesterday said that Watertown Lifetime Ware (melmac) were manufactured in the 40’s & 50’s.

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  38. The dishes link brings back memories of the dishes at camp 🙂

    We had melamine dishes until mom received a set of stoneware dishes when I was about 13. I have the divided vegetable bowl, but don’t use it much.

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  39. I’ve used spray bottles for dogs and it’s pretty effective. I kept one around the house with my last dog, Pilgrim, an Australian Shepherd, and before long all I had to do was reach for it and he’d stop barking (or I’d say “SPRAY” or “Spr” or “SSSS” — he was a fast learner; the water was probably a couple years old).

    Yes, Franciscan ware was highly regarded by my mom (we didn’t have any).

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  40. She had been buying some heavy, Rowe pottery pieces, though, at the time of her death which I inherited and eventually I decided it would be nice to have a couple bowls & dishes to go with that. But I bought them individually on ebay used as they’re pretty expensive — and I only have a couple pieces, but plenty for me and 1 guest.

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  41. Arrgh. I’ve gotta rant even though it’s not Saturday.

    I spent all day yesterday interviewing people who had run-ins with the person who appears to be the sole suspect being investigated in the arson. I wrote the story and turned it in. But it got held by an editor (who was being overly cautious and thought we needed more solid sources).

    So today the alternative rag paper posts the same story (they’d talked to same people after I did yesterday) on their website. So we were ‘beaten’ even though we actually “had” the story first.

    Newspaper people are overly competitive, you understand. Just irks me to see everyone passing the alternative paper’s link around tonight on FB and Twitter with “Look at this!!” comments.

    grumble. grumble. grumble.

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  42. Squirt guns worked well with Misten, too. It got to where she only needed to see it, but she stopped misbehavior immediately with a quick squirt. I used it selectively–I decided there were two things that were intolerable and would receive squirts: teeth on wood (I had a lot of wood in that house) and teeth on books (same thing). She never left toothmarks on wood, since teeth on wood make a very discintive sound and she got an immediate reprimand the moment she touched furniture or cabinets. One book received a few toothmarks, but since she went back to the same book repeatedly, I left it within her reach (so that she wouldn’t chew other books instead) and learned to watch her when she was near that bookcase. The moment she touched that book, she got a quick squirt. When she got to where it was enough for me to touch the squirt gun, I then moved the book out of her reach. One time she reached for another book instead (since that one was no longer there), and an immediate reprimand was enough. The habit was broken, and never again did she touch a book.

    She was an easy dog to train, but I really think the squirt gun is what got me through puppy days with no toothmarks on any of my possessions except one book. As I recall it was a few weeks, maybe even two or three months, until she was completely broken of her interest in the books, but again, most homes with puppies end up with several chewed items (shoes, clothes, newspapers), and I had the spine of one book receive toothmarks two or three times, and that was it. She also chewed on her own crate, but I don’t count that since it was hers, and it was plastic and not the forbidden wood. (And she chewed on her bed and I decided not to give her one, and of course on her toys, and even on the bedding I put under her pen to keep her from chewing the carpet. Some of those things were a nuisance and took some creativity to fix–I had to put her pen in the kitchen for a time since she couldn’t chew linoleum that was attached to the floor. But she only chewed only one thing that wasn’t hers.)

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  43. I have a hard-cover Bible (Reformation Study Bible) that has a dog’s tooth mark that goes all the way through it. I can’t even remember what dog did it now. But it’s kind of sweet. Every time I use that Bible and look at the single tooth puncture right in the middle of the front cover, I smile.

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  44. There is a Warren Spahn Parkway in South Buffalo. I recently found out that one of my co-workers is Warren’s (great?)-nephew

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