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Our Daily Thread 12-3-14

Good Morning!

22 Days Until Christmas!

On this day in 1818 Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the union. 

In 1833 Oberlin College in Ohio opened as the first truly coeducational school of higher education in the United States. 

In 1917 the Quebec Bridge opened for traffic after almost 20 years of planning and construction. The bridge suffered partial collapses in 1907 (August 29) and 1916 (September 11). 

In 1947 the Tennessee Williams play “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater. 

And in 1973 Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter. The first outer-planetary probe had been launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on March 2, 1972. 

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Quote of the Day

“Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when – and who did it first.”

Henry Grunwald

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Anyone have a QoD?

56 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-3-14”

  4. Good morning, Aj & Nancyjill. I’ve been awake since 5:30 central time, but Becca got up five minutes after I did, so I’ve been otherwise engaged. I’m feeling very nostalgic this morning. Sent my dad an email a little bit ago, thanking him for always being there for me and reminiscing about special memories we’ve shared. I included a link to Steven Curtis Chapman’s Cinderella–every time I hear the song, I remember learning to dance by standing on top of my dad’s feet while he swirled me around the dance floor. My dad is 83 now–but in very good health. His dad didn’t die until age 97 and his mom was 94, so genetics are on his side.

    Anyway–it’s almost time to drive Becca to school and I’m still in my pajamas. Hope to check back in later….

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  8. Speaking of hornet’s nests…Just like several years ago when men everywhere were claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, women are coming out in droves to say that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted them. One who came forward yesterday says she was assaulted when she was 15 in the Playboy Mansion. What on God’s green earth was a 15 year old doing in the Playboy Mansion?????
    I have always liked Bill Cosby and if these accusations are true, I have lost a beautiful memory from my childhood of watching Fat Albert and the Gang and the Cosby Show. I am a firm believer that is a child ever tells you that someone is being sexually inappropriate to them you come down on their side until it is proven false, so I can’t be hypocritical and say these women weren’t assaulted, but my. he was a busy man!

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  9. Good morning, all. I finally have a chance to check in here in the morning. I usually don’t make it on here until after work, since I started working full time.

    I think that’s a cocoon – you can sort of see where it’s attached to the branch. Interesting.

    The baby shower was a success yesterday afternoon – even though I had to host it in the dining room of the camp lodge, we still had fun and it looked quite pretty and very pink 🙂

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  11. Good morning all. Sad about all these accusations coming out. It seems like they come in droves. What were all these women doing all this time? Why wait years before dragging out the dirty laundry? I don’t know what it’s like to be assaulted, so maybe there is such trauma that women would rather not bring up horrible memories. It seems like they would want their assaulter to be punished right away, instead of years after the fact.

    And I, too, no longer have a good impression of Cosby. I had heard that his shows were relatively clean, but a co-worker said she saw him in the 70s at a state fair and his show was R rated, in her opinion.

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  12. Oh, and even though only two people responded (Chas and Tychicus), I decided to do a pigskin pick. I’ll send it to AJ later today. But the first game will be a Friday night game, so don’t delay.

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  13. I woke up around 1 this morning and could not go back to sleep so I watched Oak Island Mystery. Are any of you familiar with the legend? People have been searching the island for over 200 years for buried treasure. Some of the theories are a little far fetched. The latest episode said the Knights Templar brought over treasures from King Solomon’s Temple and that Francis Bacon was involved.

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  15. Good morning, all, except for those in far away places. Well, maybe good morning to you, also, when morning rolls around again for you.

    It was almost up to the record high of 74 degrees here yesterday (73). It hardly feels seasonal. But is is quite pleasant. Now, if only, those leaves that are all over the front yard would re-attach themselves to the trees.

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  16. Musical Advent Calendar – Day 3: The Huron Carol is usually sung to a rather fanciful Victorian English translation, for example, it uses Gitche Manitou, an Algonquian word for Supreme Being, while the Huron speak an Iroquoian language. This version is closer to Jean de Brebeuf’s original words. An literal English translation follows:

    http://youtu.be/U0FW6f7I4d4

    Have courage, you who are humans; Jesus, he is born
    Behold, the spirit who had us as prisoners has fled
    Do not listen to it, as it corrupts the spirits of our minds
    Jesus, he is born
    They are spirits, sky people, coming with a message for us
    They are coming to say, “Rejoice (Be on top of life)”
    Marie, she has just given birth. Rejoice”
    Jesus, he is born
    Three have left for such, those who are elders
    Tichion, a star that has just appeared on the horizon leads them there
    He will seize the path, he who leads them there
    Jesus, he is born
    As they arrived there, where he was born, Jesus
    the star was at the point of stopping, not far past it
    Having found someone for them, he says, “Come here!”
    Jesus, he is born
    Behold, they have arrived there and have seen Jesus,
    They praised (made a name) many times, saying “Hurray, he is good in nature”
    They greeted him with reverence (greased his scalp many times), saying ‘Hurray’
    Jesus, he is born
    “We will give to him praise for his name,
    Let us show reverence for him as he comes to be compassionate to us.
    It is providential that you love us and wish, ‘I should adopt them.'”
    Jesus, he is born.

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  19. A magic butterfly house, NancyJill. 🙂

    I am reading In Focus, a brochure put out monthly by USC-Columbia to members of the Alumni association. In an article about experiments on brain functions, the following comments are made. I thought they might be of interest.

    *People who exercise their brains more tend to show symptoms of dementia much later in life than those who don’t.

    *Physical exercise also, because it provides more oxygen to the brain.

    *Scientists can usually tell if a brain scan is that of a man or woman by how much connection between the left and right lobes. Women have more.

    *“The brain can be a con artist. i.e. if the brain does not have enough information about something, it makes up a story to fill the gaps”.

    The last one caught my attention. We all knew the first two, and suspected the third. But the implications of the last are interesting. A person does not have to be lying for his recollection or assumptions to be false. And I have suspected this phenomenon from time to time.

    (The last quote is the only verbatim of the articles, they were too long to post.)

    A current implication is the Bill Cosby thing. There is certainly something there, but it may not all be as recited.

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  22. I’ve always liked Bill Cosby so the latest spate of news is distressing, if true. I suspect at least some of it is not, it’s getting to look too much like a “bandwagon” effect now.

    But the 1970s were a crazy, anything-goes decade (when what started in the ’60s came to bear fruit and spread in a fairly broad way throughout the mainstream culture).

    So it isn’t much of a surprise that there were some “goings-on” among the more popular celebrities in that era — and I can see where a woman might not report an incident either out of intimidation (he’s famous, who would believe me?) or out of the possibility that it perhaps began as somewhat of a blurred, even consensual situation that just quickly went too far. She may have even been flattered by the attention of someone so famous. … Just thinking out loud, but I also wondered why no came forward with charges at the time.

    But it’s also possible that he was at fault, taking advantage of his celebrity status & the women who were enamored by a celebrity’s attention.

    I’m still very sorry to hear about all of it, though, and I can only hope that none of it is true.

    My mom was a big fan of I Spy back in the day, as a kid I remember she watched it every week — it was an important breakout show for African Americans in the mid 1960s. Then in the ’80s, of course, the Cosby Show was legendary. I didn’t watch it regularly, my life was too busy for much TV in those days — but my mom did and I caught up with it later in reruns.

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  23. I read this in The Washington Times concerning the 1960 Wisconsin primary between Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.

    “Three weeks before the election, virtually every Catholic voter in the state received a letter posted in Minneapolis urging them to vote for Humphrey because Kennedy was “an agent of the pope””. It was later learned that the letter was sent by Kennedy operatives.

    Can the same sort of thing be happening now, about the race thing?

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  25. It’s raining still/again this morning — I managed to walk the dogs briefly last night when it let up for a while, but they still like being out in the backyard when it rains.

    So now their beautiful, freshly-groomed coats from Monday? Never mind.

    Interesting debate on FB going on about indoor vs. outdoor cats (and dogs). The growing consensus in LA is that all pets should be indoors ALL the time. Dogs should go out only on leash or when closely supervised. Cats, never, ever. Weird (to me).

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  26. Chas, my sister and I have quite different recollections of our childhood, and I think we have both determined my memory is more reliable than hers. (She doesn’t remember a lot of things that happened, and I knew she was there, and eight or older and thus old enough to remember.) Neither of us is “lying,” we just have different memories.

    Sometimes I have a hard time remembering whether I saw something or just heard about it from others. My sister and I will ask each other, for example, “Were you with Dad that time he killed the snake, or was I?” (Made-up example since I can’t think of any real ones.) Over time the memory has turned into a story, not an actual memory, and it has become words.

    But I know something of the unreliability of memory simply because I kept a journal for several years after college, and I also had my letters to and from my husband while we were courting printed up in book form. I’ll read through those recollections, recorded at the time, and realize I’ve either completely forgotten something that seemed very important at the time or that my memory of it is quite wrong.

    I once had a friend who bore a grudge against me for something I said, and she had misheard what I said. I couldn’t apologize, because I hadn’t said what she accused me of saying. (I had said something else, but even if I had said what she thought she heard me saying it was hardly something outrageous and unforgiveable.) Someone else told me she “never felt close to me again” after something I said, and once again I knew I didn’t say what she accused me of saying, because in fact I had felt totally the opposite, and even what she “thought” she had heard wouldn’t have been unpardonable. (She thought I had expressed disappointment that we didn’t talk to each other by phone as much after she got married, and in fact I was surprised that we DID still have long phone conversations. But even if I had been disappointed, wouldn’t missing her have been a natural and not a rude response?)

    Memory is really a treacherous thing.

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  30. Donna,

    I’ve a bone to pick with you……

    I’ve seen all of these lovely pics of Cowboy and Tess all over Facebook, yet I can’t seem to locate any in my email to share with the group. 😦

    A minor oversight on your part I’m sure, or perhaps your memory is questionable? 😆

    Please see what you can do to rectify this situation. 🙂

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  32. My Canon printer takes lots of ink. I just replaced all the cartridges I thought were out … Only to discover I need a gray also (which didn’t come in the combo pack I bought). Sheesh.

    Luckily, it’s now printing anyway, I think the gray is just low, though the light is blinking on it. I didn’t realize how many cartridges this thing takes (7! — my old printer just took 4-5) (I don’t print a lot and this is the first time I’ve replaced the ink in this particular printer which already is probably 2 years old).

    And going to the Office Depot to find it is a mess, there have been multiple generations of printer models of every kind produced just in the past couple years — and they all apparently take their own specific ink.

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  37. Oh, yeah…

    Cheryl, AJ, and others interested in birds: I saw a hawk today that I had never seen before. I happened to be walking into my living room, and when I looked out the big picture window, I saw a bird with a huge wingspan flying over the field across the road and headed straight toward our house. As it approached, then flew over our home, I could see very interesting markings underneath the bird that reminded me of camouflage clothing.

    I checked this site: http://www.birds-of-north-america.net/hawks.html and am almost positive the bird was a rough-legged hawk. I’d never even heard of that type of hawk, but if you go to the link, scroll down to the bottom half of the page, and click on the image of that particular hawk, you’ll see a spectacular picture of the bird in flight, which is just how I saw it.

    It’s an arctic/sub-arctic raptor, but the range map shows it winters in the U.S. I’m hoping to see it again sometime, but I’m not sure how long it will be around. I suspect it will settle somewhere farther south by the time winter sets in. It sure was impressive seeing it today, though.

    My husband got home from an errand a few minutes after we saw the hawk, and he said he could see it sitting in a tree in our woods. Two squirrels that had been eating out of our bird feeders just before the hawk came suddenly became perfectly still. The chickadees took advantage of the opportunity to feed unimpeded by the squirrels and kept flying to and from the nearby pine tree and the bird feeder. But no other birds were in sight, and those squirrels were more still than I had ever seen, not surprisingly.

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  38. I have a cousin who compiled a notebook with family memories from one side of my extended family. Every paragraphed is numbered and the pages are in a loose leaf notebook. That way additional memories can be added. She states who remembers what if there was more than one account. It is a normal thing for families to have differences in those memories.

    I have had my sister make several statements of things that happened that I know are not quite true. She is five years younger than I am. Some of those things can still be corroborated by others. One was which bone my brother broke when he jumped from a roof onto a rock. It is nice when you can clear those things up before it is too late. Most things do not matter, but some can ruin relationships.

    I know some who are angry with things I supposedly think or believe and there is no basis in fact. I suppose they ‘hear’ through their own issues. We all do that at various times. It is good when we can actually talk those things through, instead of just walking away or remaining angry.

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  39. Roscuro, I’ve been enjoying the music you’ve been posting here the last few days. Today’s was my favorite. I think I’ve got that piece somewhere in my piano collections. I will have to find it and sing it with the kids. We’ve got a nice drum (that we’d given 5th Arrow some years back) and other smaller rhythm instruments that would make a nice accompaniment to the song, as well. Thanks for the post.

    AJ, you’ve also been posting some great Christmas music. Like Roscuro, I also liked today’s selection. But I’ll have to be contrary for a moment. (Not at you.) 😉

    The way they sang “comfort” made me cringe just a little. 🙂 “Com-FURt” rather than “Com-FORt”. Yikes — I think my voice professor from my college days is probably rolling in his grave at that pronunciation! 😀

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  40. Interesting hawk, 6. We watched a northern goshawk grab a squirrel. Two other squirrels clung to the tree perfectly still for at least a half hour. It took the hawk at least 45 minutes to eat the squirrel. Not pretty, but awesome to see.

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  41. Watching life in the wild is pretty amazing, isn’t it, Kathaleena?

    Peter, I don’t usually do the pigskin picks, but seeing the team logos did put a smile on my face — very definitely an aesthetically pleasing addition to this week’s competition — that I might just join in this time for that very reason. 🙂

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  42. I got my wittle ol’ fweelings hurt. The receptionist has been out sick so I went ahead and put up the tree. The ornaments the office had are hideous but I did what I could. The tree she brought has colored lights. I got down the smaller tree for her children to completely decorate. Three people so far have commented on how awful the tree is and how ugly the wreath on the door is. I am just before dismantling it all. I don’t want anyone to think this is the best I can do on a tree…I already have enough failures. This is the one area of my life I have always felt secure. That failed perfectionist again.

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  43. Kim, you confirmed for me something that I suspected for some time now.
    It isn’t you, it’s them.
    The clue?
    Nobody criticizes a Christmas tree. Or a wreath. They may not like it, in which case civilized people don’t comment on it.
    I may be the oddball here. But in all my life, I’ve never heard anyone say a Christmas tree is ugly. Even the ones the kindergarten children make.

    The Christmas in front of the Historic Court house in Hendersonville has colored lights strung in a straight line from top to bottom. All the same color per string. I could have thought of a better arrangement. But nobody said it is ugly. The choir sang some beautiful Christmas carols. They still do that here.

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  45. Yes, Kim, I have come to the conclusion that some people are simply unpleasable. I no longer let them bother me. (Or rather, I try not to let them bother me.)

    Our family still laughs at the Charlie Brown tree we got out of the woods one year. Then when we were driving home, it flew out of the back of the truck. Fortunately, it hit no one. Unfortunately, several vehicles ran over it before we could double back and get it. There was not much left, but the laugh we all had was worth it all. The tree was a Charlie Brown BEFORE it was driven over several times. We had a lovely tree anyway, that year. An acquaintance was thinning out a line of perfect pine trees and offered us one.

    Kim–tell anyone who complains they can do the decorating next time. 😉

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  46. Sad to hear about the tree situation, Kim. If it is what has been used in the past, then it may be a joke about the previous tree decorator ‘ s taste in colors and ornaments rather than against you. Could it be the office mates traditional gripe? If that is slightly possible then I would hold on to that thought and laugh with them. I think you are feeling on the defensive and humor can go a long way in getting things back to a tolerable balance.

    Try to get everyone involved by stringing popcorn or adding their own ornament so they all can feel responsible for the resulting unique look of the tree.

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  48. kathaleena, that’s hilarious.

    And I agree with Chas, there’s no such thing as an ugly Christmas tree. Some are gorgeous, but even the Charlie Browns among them are so sweet and genuine, who could find fault?

    I go back and forth between multi-colored and white-only lights on trees. They’re both such a pretty look in their own way. All-white is maybe a bit more sophisticated, but the multi- are very traditional and familiar to those of us who grew up when that’s all there was. And they’re making lights very tiny now, so it’s better than our gigantic bulbs from the 1960s that had to be clipped on (and had those reflector “skirts” on them!).

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  49. I do remember some debates between my mom and dad over the proper way to achieve a “snow” effect on the branches.

    A co-worker of my dad’s discovered putting pieces of cotton on the branches which he thought was keen. My mom, not so much, she insisted on sticking with a spray flocking.

    They were both from Iowa so christmas trees, even in Southern California, HAD to have *snow* 🙂

    Our favorite “ornament” was a real bird’s nest my mom had collected from one of our backyard trees. It was carefully preserved, wrapped & put away each year. We loved reopening it each Christmas, trying to decide where it should go. It saw a number of Christmases in our trees.

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  53. And we had a little blue bird ornament that we sat inside the nest every year. 🙂

    It’s been raining again all day today — not as hard as yesterday, but a steady, light-to-moderate rainfall. So refreshing. Hope we get more of the same in the coming months.

    I’m beginning to go through my books to see how many I can trade in back to Amazon — have already sent one off to them today. You only get an Amazon gift card, not cash, but it’s still handy.

    I want to start giving away/selling more things (probably mostly giving away just for the simplicity of it, though it’s nice to see that Amazon is buying back books now on trade-in). I just don’t seem to ever have the time to tackle sorting through boxes, bookshelves & closets when i’m working.

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  54. That Charlie Brown Christmas story reminded me of mine.

    It was my first Christmas on my own. My sister and I and a friend from work had gotten an apartment together. My sister said she had always wanted one of those “flocked” Christmas trees. I didn’t care either way, but we paid extra to get it flocked.

    At some point, we decided that we would take the Christmas tree, after Christmas, to our youth pastor’s house, dump it on his front lawn, and TP his pickup truck.

    Our little brother went with us, driving his small pickup with the tree in the back. Oh, did I mention we had a hard time finding a date that would work for all of us, so it was early February by this time and we had a very brittle tree on our hands?

    Well, the tree flew out of the back of his pickup, and a van ran over it and gave it a very good trim. We picked up our half a tree, put it in the truck more securely, and continued on our way.

    We put the tree on the lawn and decorated the pickup. Then we left. But somebody (I won’t give her name, but she had the initials CD) took a photo of our artwork.

    We hadn’t been home ten minutes before there was a thump at our front door. Now, we were at the top of the stairs with a tiny little landing, but there was our half a tree, with wads of toilet paper thrown all over it.

    It turns out that taking a flash photo with your camera aimed toward someone’s house, even if you are taking a photo of something other than the house, is a bad idea after dark. It just might get the residents to look out their window and see you well enough to identify you. And if they know where you live, then watch out.

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  55. Morning all. This is about as late as I am willing to stay up this week.
    Please continue to pray for a teacher for my class. Someone was praying about it today, but I haven’t heard anything. I don’t want the job to be a burden on a family, but a blessing.

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