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Our Daily Thread 7-23-14

Good Morning!

Today’s header photo is from Peter.

On this day in 1715 the first lighthouse in America was authorized for construction at Little Brewster Island, Massachusetts. 

In 1914 Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a Serb assassin.

In 1958 the submarine Nautilus departed from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, under orders to conduct “Operation Sunshine.” The mission was to be the first vessel to cross the north pole by ship. The Nautilus achieved the goal on August 3, 1958. 

And in 1998 U.S. scientists at the University of Hawaii turned out more than 50 “carbon-copy” mice, with a cloning technique. 

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Quote of the Day

“To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.”

Coventry Patmore

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Today is Francesco Cilea’s birthday. Don’t understand a word, but I don’t care because it’s got Pavarotti!

 Today is also Alison Krauss’ birthday. I’ve played this once before. It’s the song I think of when she’s mentioned, and I like Plant better minus the Zeppelin. Always have. There, I said it. 🙂

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Anyone have a QoD?

58 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-23-14”

  6. Good Morning Everyone. More good news from me. (these are my attempts at optimism).
    At Monday night’s vestry meeting our priest shared with us that he has had the opportunity to buy a church. We have discussed many times that there are people in our own backyard overlooked who need to be missioned to. This church is in the heart of downtown -that city across the bay from me. It was built in 1896 and is beautiful, but as happens white flight and an older membership finally took it’s toll.
    For a number of years part of the facilities were used as a homeless shelter but they have combined with another homeless shelter. The only thing that had been supporting the church was the rent from the homeless shelter and the rent from the parking lot.
    There is an urban minister in the nation’s capitol who wants to move home to Alabama. He and his wife had looked at Mobile and New Orleans. There are a lot of people in need in the downtown area as it backs up to what has been for about 50 years the “hood”.
    This would not be something my church would buy. My priest signed the purchase agreement and paid the earnest money. He has assembled a number of people to help pay for the church and eventually the building would be given over to the ministry.
    What he asked us, the vestry, to do is tell everyone we know and ask them to pray that God’s will be done and the right decisions made. He made it very clear to us that he is not the one God has called to do the day to day mission of it, only to clear the path to allow it to happen.
    If I could ask all of you to pray for the St. Francis project, I would appreciate it.

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  9. My 9:01 comment probably makes no sense to any of you right now who can’t see my 9:00 comment. Kim ended her comment with “If I could ask all of you to pray for the St. Francis project, I would appreciate it.” And then the next comment that appears at the moment is mine, starting with the word “Nope.” 😯 AJ, can you get my 9:00 comment out of the spam filter? Thanks!

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  10. From the Times-News In a “Mountains to Molehills” column. You’ve probably heard this before. I have, but thought it was cute.

    A Sunday school teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages of the bible – Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the chapter. Little Richard was excited about the task, but he just couldn’t remember the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line. On the day the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Richard was so nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped to the microphone and said proudly, “The Lord is my Shepherd, and that’s all I need to know.”

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  11. Good Morning All.

    The picture is one I took last week on the way to the cave. It looks like a begging dog to me, and last week seemed to be the animal picture week.

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  12. I just took a deposit for the business to the bank. While there I wanted to check my account balance in our personal account. Along with my driver’s license I handed the drive-thru teller a blank check from which to get my account number. She handed back the business receipt and the transaction slip where she had printed the balance on the personal account and my driver’s license. I was driving away when I thought, I didn’t get the blank check back so I backed up to the window and asked for the check. It could not be found. Really fishy. Someone came out to see if it had fallen to the ground. No. I was told if it was not found by later they would do a stop pay. When I got back to the office I was told to go back to the bank and see the manager which I did. She did a stop pay on the check. I still think something is fishy in the pool. The manager was very kind. She is suppose to refund the charge for the stop pay.

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  14. Operation Sunshine was a top secret project because they weren’t sure if the boat would return. They went to the North Pole.

    When I get to a real computer, I’ll tell a couple stories of visits to the North Pole by friends.

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  15. Second Arrow is moving again — tomorrow. She’s in a large city currently, but will move to a suburb, a nicer area than where she is now. In her current apartment building, there are no English-speaking residents. People often congregate at night just outside the building near her apartment, a corner apartment on the ground floor, speaking, of course, in languages she doesn’t understand. It’s a little unnerving, especially as she lives alone.

    She will have a roommate at the new apartment building, a new friend of hers who is her same age and a lot like her. They work together at one of my daughter’s workplaces and get along quite well.

    I am glad she will have a roommate, although their hours are not always the same, with my daughter having two jobs, including the one at the vet hospital where she often works overnight, and her roommate has one job and goes to school.

    Last month, there were tornadoes in 2nd Arrow’s area, and in the one nearest to her, she slept right through it! She woke up the next morning and saw that an alert had come over her cell phone in the middle of the night, but she never heard any sirens or the storm itself. When she went to work later that day, she saw that there were trees down two blocks from her, and roofs were torn off about 10 minutes away. That girl works such long hours that when she comes home, she just crashes and hears nothing.

    I am praying that when she moves to her new city that if a tornado ever comes while she is sleeping, she will hear it, or her roommate or someone in her building will wake her up and get her down to the basement! Especially since she will now be living on the second floor.

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  16. A dog lying flat, his hind legs out to each side, with his head turned back to look at something. Probably an Old English sheepdog judging by the big white-floofy head.

    #picturesintheclouds 🙂

    So Kim, you already own the church where you meet and the purchase of this inner city church would be on behalf of the ministry that wants to come in to use it?

    I got my schedule completely mixed up this week, it’s tomorrow that I go visit my friend an hour away — so I spent much of yesterday shredding old bills, clearing out the magazine rack/box that contained nothing but old magazines (best find: a special-issue magazine titled “Get Organized!” From 2012).

    Meanwhile, I’ve thought of moving around some of the furniture in a way I think will work better for me. I’m always doing that. Will get to it later today, but first have to pick up a gift for my friend and do some more sorting and clearing out and “organizing.”

    Now that I found the handy-dandy ‘organizing’ magazine. 😉

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  20. AJ, I see the comment here now, and it no longer has the Your comment is awaiting moderation note in italics above it. I’m not sure why it said that for a while, and now it does not. Is my 9:00 comment visible to all of you? Because I was thinking it was not for a while, but I’m pretty sure it should be now, as the “moderation” part of it is gone now.

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  25. I see my 9:00 comment on my daughter’s tablet, which was not what I originally typed the comment on, so I’m guessing it is visible to everyone then. I don’t know how it wound up in moderation, then got out, apparently on its own. Technology is strange. 🙂

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  28. LOL, Chas! And I am also dying laughing at the pomos and promos and leeing going on today. 😉

    This could be really disastrous if we keep getting caught in moderation. I’ve had two comments there already (but they’re both here now). Imagine if a bunch of comments get stuck and then suddenly come back and take us over 100. Chaos and anarchy!

    AJ had no idea when he signed on to do this blog what we would put him through. 🙂

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  30. 6 Arrows, for what it’s worth I saw your “moderated” comment a few hours ago, as soon as I saw the one after it. I figured it must have gotten kicked out really quickly, and I didn’t think anything more of it.

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  32. Mr. P got new tires today. It was supposed to take a couple of hours so I went to pick him up. They were finished so I was able to leave my truck for an oil change and tire rotation while we went to lunch. I bought the tires there so rotating and balancing is free. I was Ladies Wednesday so I got a discount on the oil change. A very productive lunch hour and I got to go to Sugar Kettle for lunch

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  33. Kim,
    If I understand correctly, your priest has purchased this building in his own name with somewhat of a down payment and a handshake from others that they will “help” pay for it. I don’t mean to be a party-pooper, but that sounds foolish to me. I don’t think God intends for us to make those kinds of rash moves under the guise of “faith.” I hope I’ve got the facts wrong or there’s more to the story.

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  34. Rotating your tires makes a huge difference. I bought mine where they do it free, too — it’s a hassle to make the appointment, of course, but these tires have lasted (I think) about 4-5 years now. I’ll need to get new ones by the end of the year, but they’ve held up very well, I think because I’ve been pretty good about rotating them regularly.

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  36. Hahaha. Yeah, that’s probably a big factor.

    But seriously, when I first bought my Jeep, the tires on it were fairly new but I failed to rotate them and they were shot within a pretty short time.

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  37. Linda, he only made an offer and since it is commercial property he has a 90 day due dilligence time to bring it all together. There are inspections and many other steps until it becomes a “contract to purchase”. That is why he was asking for prayers. If the money that people have promised him comes together in this time frame then he will know the path has been cleared. There is no loan in the purchase. (The way he became aware of the property was through his brother who had already made an offer on the church to have the apartment in the back for he and his wife to live in during the work week and go back to their bay house on the weekends. So I am sure the brother will make a substantial donation to the purchase–Have I mentioned that my priest is the baby of his family and his mother died when he was quite young. His older brothers and sister have supported his ministry either in time or money no matter where the Episcopal diocese sent him). The $1,000 was an earnest money deposit Not a down payment. If it all comes together it will be a cash sale.

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  38. Kim – Regarding your story about the woman admitting she had an abortion. First of all, God bless her! I hope she finds much healing & wholeness now that she is not weighed down by her secret.

    Donna mentioned wondering what kind of reaction her story would get from people she knows. I have some friends who would probably tell her she only felt guilty because those awful pro-life people have made her feel guilty.

    Not long ago, YF posted another anti-pro-lifer rant on Facebook. She wrote that pro-lifers think that women are merely baby-making machines, that their only worth is in giving birth (hey, that rhymes!), & that pro-lifers think women should be the property & sex slaves of men. That was in all caps, which she well knows is considered yelling on the internet.

    So…since my discussions with her on her posts have gone nowhere, I decided to ask my own pro-life friends on Facebook about their thoughts & experiences, so she could see for herself the love & concern pro-lifers have for the woman as well as for the baby.

    Michelle & NancyJill each commented about their decades of hands-on experience (counseling women, helping them find practical help, fostering babies, adopting), in very compassionate terms. YF did not want to comment on that thread because one person said that the comment from YF that I’d paraphrased was mean & nasty (or similar words), which YF interpreted as saying that she was mean & nasty. (She also doesn’t like to comment when my conservative or Libertarian friends comment, because I think she doesn’t like being challenged by people with more knowledge & experience than she has. But of course, she seems to believe that she’s the one who knows better, or more, on any given subject.)

    Back over on her own post, where my friends can’t see, she wrote about having accompanied a couple young women going for abortions, & encountering the kind of protesters who yell terrible things at the women. (On my post, when I asked about that kind of protesting, my friends said those kind are the exception, & are not necessarily appreciated by other pro-lifers.)

    She also mentioned once taking a call at on a suicide hotline (I think when she was in college) from a 15-year old girl who was pregnant by an abusive family member. The girl had gone to an abortion clinic, where those kind of protesters yelled horrible things at her. She was planning on killing herself, saying maybe those protesters & the abusive family member were right, maybe she was worthless. YF doesn’t know what happened to the girl.

    So, YF said that when the ladies commenting on my post had had her experience, then maybe they could talk to her. I just shook my head at the arrogance, her belief that her limited experience (she’s only 26, & hasn’t had a job since graduating college four years ago) was somehow more involved & more real than women involved with helping women in crisis for decades.

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  39. While reading yesterday’s discussion about rock music, I thought of something I heard years ago. According to someone who once spoke at my church, Pokemon characters are based on Japanese versions of demons, or some such things. Anyone else ever heard that? Did you (or do you) let your kids play with the Pokemon cards or watch the TV show?

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  41. Karen, I heard that too, but don’t know anything beyond that. I did hear enough about tge excesses Pokemon trading brought out that, had I had kids at the time, I would have wanted to keep them out of it. But I don’t remember the details.

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  43. okay, I will put this here as I already put it on the prayer thread.
    It is the first day of school.
    I think that I have pink eye!!
    Still going to school, but will look for meds and wash hands a lot.
    Prayers appreciated.

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  44. S9 sorry, Jo, to hear about the awful pink eye.

    My blood work was good from my physical, but my blood pressure is high so I am having to monitor it for a month. I always had low blood pressure for all my life. I am trying to have lower salt foods, more oatmeal, and hope for more exercise. Does anyone here have a special remedy other than meds for high blood pressure?

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  50. Weird with my comments getting “kicked out” of moderation so quickly, or that they even landed in moderation in the first place. I haven’t been on the computer much this afternoon or evening, but I see there have been other issues, too. When I checked email tonight, three had come in in the six- and seven-o’clock p.m. hours, when they had been sent between 8:18 a.m. and 2:37 p.m. Our email provider does seem to struggle sometimes, though; that’s not the first time emails have arrived much later than they were sent.

    I have gotten a lot of my piano lesson policy written today, and don’t have as much left to do as what I’ve already done on it. I determined my fees and payment procedure, set up my yearly calendar, and my attendance/cancellation/make-up lesson policy,

    A couple new things I plan to do is to offer lessons of three different lengths. In the past, I had only done 30-minute lessons, but those can be too short for students who are playing rather advanced music, which is longer and obviously more complex. It’s difficult to really delve deep into music of that caliber with the student when there is only 30 minutes to work.

    Some children love composing, too, or playing frequently for church, school talent shows, and the like, so it is nice to have some extra time to work with them on those things without having to cut back on their regular lesson material.

    So I am offering 45- and 60-minute lessons, in addition to half-hour lessons, so there is a wider variety of choices to best accommodate students’ needs.

    The other new thing I plan to do is a new student and parent interview, where they can come to my house and we can get acquainted (if we don’t already know each other) before the first lesson. The parents will have an opportunity to ask about my lesson policy, which I plan to go over with them; the child can get accustomed to being in the environment where s/he will receive the lessons, and I can get a good idea of the best way to tailor-make a plan for the child, in the way of study materials, lesson length, and other considerations, that will hopefully be a good fit.

    I still plan to write out some general practice guidelines suitable for most children, and I’m thinking of summarizing my policy with a few pages at the end containing “Teacher Responsibilities”, “Student Responsibilities” and “Parent Responsibilities.” Maybe. Or that might be overkill, as I will have probably already covered that elsewhere in the policy, and I don’t want to scare people off with an overly long policy. I’ll have to see how it comes out in the end, and will most likely do so tweaking before I print it up.

    I’m really enjoying doing this, but am even more excited to get past the business end of it and onto the music and people aspect of it. 🙂

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  55. I needed one of those with the first student I ever had — my sister. 😉 Don’t ask me about what a disaster that turned out to be!

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  57. Except it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to give a lesson policy to my first student’s parents with a section heading entitled, “Parent Responsibilities”. 😉

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