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Our Daily Thread 11-11-14

Good Morning!

 Today is Veterans Day, or if you’re in Canada, Remembrance Day.

So if you come across any veterans today, remember to thank them for their service.

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On this day in 1620 the Mayflower Compact was signed by the 41 men on the Mayflower when they landed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. The compact called for “just and equal laws.” 

In 1918 World War I came to an end when the Allies and Germany signed an armistice. This day became recognized as Veteran’s Day in the United States. 

In 1920 the body of an unknown British soldier was buried in Westminster Abbey.

In 1921 the Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia by President Harding. 

And in 1984 President Ronald Reagan accepted the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a gift to the nation from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. 

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Quote of the Day

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

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“We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”

George S. Patton

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 Flash mob, Air Force Band style.

And the US Army Band.

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Anyone have a QoD?

61 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-11-14”

  1. You’re welcome. I was the one who ultimately benefited by my tour in the AF.
    1. I was just a dumb kid, just out of high school, unemployed with no visible future.
    2. I was also a poor kid. I made more money than I imagined that I could after a couple of promotions.
    3. I had never been out of SC but once. I saw things I never knew about.
    4. I had a bad inferiority complex. I was regarded as a “hot operator”, and made S/Sgt. before I got out. I would have made it a career except for the GI Bill.
    5. I got out and went to school on the GI Bill.
    6. I got a GI loan to buy my first house. The only difference there was that it qualified me for a loan. I didn’t have a credit record.
    7. I got five points when I took the FSEE exam.
    That’s quite a payoff for the 3.5 years the Air Force had me.

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  4. Everyone must be at the parade!

    Good morning, evening, and all day and night!

    We have beautiful yellow leaves on display in our yard. How could anyone see that and think there is no God? All creation shouts, “Glory to God.” He is so good as He supplies such delights through the colors He created.

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  6. Kim, I keep forgetting to say thank you on the advice about using Epsom salts for the MRSA. Because this is involving psoriasis we are now only using the prescription creams through the dermatologist. At some point we might get to use the salts, but we aren’t there yet.

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  7. There were a few comments at the end of yesterday’s thread about the missing Buster and I wanted to say that yes, we’ve put posters up all around. Hubby also visited the few farms around us and asked to look in their barns and sheds. There’s also a Southern York county website where you post all kinds of things, including lost animals, where we shared his picture and our contact info.

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  8. Michelle, thank your husband for serving. Even though we are in different countries, I appreciate his service. Thank you, Chas, for serving. Thank you to all other vets on here for your service.

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  10. I’m off to cover a Veterans Day ceremony on the Battleship Iowa this morning — another reporter is covering the ceremony in one of the other beach cities, so I’ll just give her quotes and copy from mine to use as she’s the main writer on this one.

    Then it’s on to other stories, including finishing up Zamperini and getting a handle on the cold case story I’m doing. Since Janice asked yesterday and I didn’t circle back to answer, this is part of a newspaper-wide, yearlong project several of us have been pulled in on — my initial assignment is about some 16 (?) people over 80 who were killed in unsolved homicides throughout our coverage areas.

    Tomorrow is another late afternoon meeting to cover. I feel like I’m on overload lately.

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  12. Thanks to all the veterans here, my dad also was one of them (WWII, Navy). And my uncle as well who died a number of years ago now but was a Pearl Harbor survivor. Another uncle served in the medical corps in Europe during WWII. Going into war is a fearful thing.

    So the cat was insufferable this morning, pestering, pestering, pestering me to let her out (I’m determined to keep her in until after the sun goes up due to coyote reports that are too close for comfort). We actually don’t have much sun a all today, though, it’s overcast and cool (low 60s). It’s finally fall.

    Oh, for all you birders — I just remembered the other story I need to finish today. One of the bald eagles that hatched on Catalina Island in 2007 has been seen flying around our town and perching in a local park over the past couple days. Local birders are ecstatic. Our photographer went out yesterday with one of them to try to get a shot but the eagle was a no-show. We have some nice submitted photos from over the weekend, however, that we can run with outside credit.

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  13. From michelle’s link (though I just scanned the first portion of it, not a lot of time this morning): “Scripture says our wills are in bondage because we have inherited sin natures going back to Adam. I am not free, for instance, to make choices that earn my way to heaven!”

    God’s sovereignty and ‘free’ will are both true — but our wills are fallen without the Holy Spirit’s intervention. There is, indeed, much mystery involved in all of this that we cannot fully comprehend this side of heaven.

    But there are many excellent books, contemporary and otherwise, that have been written on this topic. It was Sproul who made the issues so clear for me.

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  14. There are few veterans in my family, since my grandparents were in Puerto Rico until the 1920s, and were too young for WWI or too old for WWII. But my dad was in the Pacific for most of WWII, my brother-in-law was in Vietnam. I turned 18 the year Vietnam ended, so did not go into the military. On my wife’s side my FIL was in Korea in the mid-’50s and a BIL was in the Army in the early ’80s, but didn’t see combat.

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  15. So, QoD for Remembrance/Veteran’s Day:
    Last year, of course, I was in West Africa. I happened to be in the city just before November 11, and I was in a store run by a British ex-pat. There was a box of poppy lapel pins there, so I made the requisite donation and pinned on a poppy. My American teammates asked me what the significance was. Apparently, they had never heard of the poppy symbolizing the remembrance of WWI and WWII. The British and Canadians use poppies, inspired by this poem by a Canadian John McCrae who fought in WWI:

    In Flanders fields the poppies grow,
    Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

    We are the Dead. Short days ago
    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie
    In Flanders fields.

    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
    To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
    In Flanders fields.

    So, besides Michelle, had any of you heard of the poem or the use of poppies for Remembrance Day?

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  16. How to make your blog numbers soar? Inadvertently post two blogs about Veterans Day on the same day!

    Ridiculous.

    In Flanders Field is the iconic poem of WWI; poppies, usually red, grow quickly in soil churned by war and watered by blood. Hence, the name of my WWI novel, A Poppy in Remembrance.

    Off to teach Bible study.

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  17. Roscuro, I remember the poem from grammar school days. We also received the pin-on poppies in our classrooms.

    My dad was in the Navy during WWII. I don’t think he had to fight. He was wire the Sea Bees and involved with building. I hope that was right for the spelling of the Bees. Maybe some one knows the origin of that name? I think they built living quarters, quanset huts, cabinets, etc. so maybe it was like bees building hives?

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  22. Did I ever mention our pet mouse? He lives in the house but does not have a litter box. He likes to hang out on the wood box by the stove. The other day, he was there off and on for most of the day when sixteen year old daughter decided to catch him. She would reach out, he would run away. I suggested she feed him some bread crumbs and hold still. She put out a small selection of crumbs and waited quietly close by. He crept out and over to her, removed the larger piece of bread from her hand, and disappeared. I suggested giving him enough to feed him for a week was not going to help her catch him. He then took off to the boy’s buffet.

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  25. Feeling a bit mind-blown this morning.

    My dear 96-year old friend Jo–the one who met President Calvin Coolidge as a child in Virginia AND who worked for Naval Intelligence during WWII and briefed JFK before he took command of PT109– just told me her great-uncle, whom she knew, served in the Civil War!

    The USA is such a very young nation!

    I finally get a free afternoon to write about a more recent war: WWI!

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  26. When I was reading the poem, I remember how it affected me in school. It made me feel very sad about war. I don’t know if it was partly because my father was in the Navy, or if it was more a general sadness.

    Mumsee, is the boy’s buffet a piece of funiture or is it a lot of dishes of food? I can see the mouse would take to the furniture to go into hiding, or more likely, it could be found feasting on their lovely food creations.

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  27. Janice, the proper name was “Construction Battalion”, often shortened to CB and they were called Seabees (pronounced as one word). Construction Battalion disappeared somewhere along the line.
    They had their own song and there was a movie about them.

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  30. Nov. 11th is the Wycliffe World Day of Prayer. It marks the day that Cameron Townsend was able to enter Mexico as he prayed. So inspiring to hear testimony and to sing together “Faith, Mighty Faith”

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  32. Janice, just various types of junk food they buy and keep in their rooms.

    Michelle, I just finished reading Under the Shadow of the Mountains or some such thing, a history of Idaho and am currently reading the Last Indian War about the Nezperce War. It has struck me repeatedly how new this state is and what it was like just one hundred years ago. I was walking home with Jake the other day, surrounded by grain fields with forests beyond and mountains in the distance and jets overhead. According to local lore and the book, the Nezperce used to come up here to my home site every year. The trail is still down below the house. Arrowheads are still found. That was only one hundred thirty years ago. My grandparents were the age of my daughter then and greatgrandparents were parents. There were no houses like we have, no roads, no jets, no power or phone lines, no satellite dishes. People washed their laundry in a tub. What changes in just a few years. Back when I was a child, it seemed like thousands of years had gone by since the Indians were wild and free. Same with Flanders Field. It was a drudgery poem, now it has meaning and depth.

    When we first entered the military and headed East, I was amazed to see cobblestone streets in Baltimore. Then east some more and the old ruins of the Roman Way in Germany. Then to Greece and the Acropolis. And Egypt and the Pyramids. Back to Idaho and what? One hundred years ago the biggest town in Idaho was two thousand three hundred eleven people?

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  33. I’m familiar with the poppies (I read a lot of British books and when we married I found my husband owned several British TV series), and I’ve heard the poem. But it isn’t part of my own cultural “memory” otherwise. And all my veteran relatives are distant enough to feel unfamiliar, so I didn’t grow up with any war stories. (There are veterans on my mom’s side, her father and at least one of her brothers. But I never met her father and barely remember her brother who was a military lifer.) One of my brothers was in the military for a while, but he never went out of the States and my sense of him as a veteran is quite limited. (He lost a leg in the Army, but not in combat.)

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  34. The Wicopedia description of the movie is essentially as I remember it.
    I don’t remember a woman in the movie.
    (But I wouldn’t have paid much attention in those days.)

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  35. The reason you didn’t hear any war stories is because the guys came back to do more important things. As I said before, I didn’t think of being a veteran until after I retired. Except, of course, when I took advantage, as I mentioned. I was always dealing with more important things.
    They just wanted to come home and get on with life. But they did remember their buddies for a while. I communicated with three of them for a while, but eventually lost contact with all.

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  36. My Dad never mentioned WWII. We finally got him to record some memories. He parachuted in the night before D Day. He was also a prisoner for six months to a year.

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  37. We are at the office, and husband was out in the parking lot talking with a client. My husband’s leg went to sleep, and when he went to walk, he fell. His jeans ripped at the knee, and his knee is bloody. I discovered we have NO medical supplies here at the office, except I had a small tube of Neosporin at my desk. I washed his wound with paper towels and made a paper towel bandage taped on with Scotch tape. This happened as I was writing my article, “The Joy of the Lord.” I will try for it again tomorrow (dare I?). We are headed home since husband said he has lost his momentum. I have not had a chance to read the other posts above, but hope to at home. I wish I had that movie to watch tonight. I may have to see if there is some way to get it on my phone or something. Husband has just taken his last dose of the antibiotic. 😦

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  38. I’ve found that to be true, too, it was a part of life, they shrugged and went on. My husband is getting a little tired of being thanked for winning the Cold War–maybe Idaho Mike and others are, too. 🙂

    Wonderful insight, Mumsee. We really are a young nation–so much has changed, and yet people themselves remain the same. We feel the same emotions, want the same things and react to our different situations, often much like our ancestors.

    I guess there really isn’t anything new under the sun. 🙂

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  39. Question for anyone with medical experience, from either side of the equation: If a doctor finds out through a blood test that a woman is probably pregnant (not a high-risk pregnancy in any way), would he “confirm” the pregnancy with a vaginal ultrasound? To me it seems that if home pregnancy tests are pretty reliable, then a test in a doctor’s office wouldn’t need such confirmation, but I don’t really know these things. (It’s for a book, not anyone I know.)

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  40. Jo, my great-grandfather who was a POW in WWI told some interesting stories that have been passed down. He told how as he was lying wounded in the leg on the battlefield, the Germans were going and killing the Allied wounded. The German soldier who came up to him searched in his pockets and found a picture he had of his family (we still have the picture). Apparently, the sight of his family and his obvious youth – he wasn’t even 18 – inspired the Germans to spare his life.

    He told stories of how he had to work in the POW camp and his efforts at sabotage. One time, he was rolling a coal cart along a rail that was on a bank above some greenhouses. My great-grandfather faked an epileptic attack and dump the coal onto the greenhouses, breaking the glass. He was quite the character by all accounts.

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  41. Roscuro – I’m hoping you saw my reply to you on the News/Politics thread from a couple days ago, initially regarding transgender people.

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  52. Well, his mud room is bigger than ours but I prefer my wood stove to all of those gas fireplaces. And we have more bedrooms and bathrooms so we probably won’t offer to trade. nice view and the pool is interesting.

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  53. I liked the kitchen island-table with built-in drawers and cabinet space. Very nice.

    The bedroom was cool. And the shiny (gleaming!) wood (or faux wood?) floors.

    But you’d have to have a lot of furniture to fill a house like that up.

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