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Our Daily Thread 2-6-15

Good Morning!

It’s Friday!!!

And I believe AnnMS has a birthday today.

Happy Birthday Ann! 🙂

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On this day in 1778 the United States gained official recognition from France as the two nations signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance in Paris.

In 1788 Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 

In 1933 the 20th Amendment to the Constitution was declared in effect. The amendment moved the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January. 

In 1987 – President Ronald Reagan turned 76 years old this day and became the oldest U.S. President in history.

And in 1998 Washington National Airport was renamed for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

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Quotes of the Day

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

Ronald Reagan

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 Today is Henry Charles Litolff’s birthday. So it’s Richard Bosworth playing Litolff’s “Scherzo” with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, from NineMuses  Very nice, and such a lively piece. 🙂

The Humor of Ronald Reagan, from ReaganClub 

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Anyone have a QoD?

51 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-6-15”

  1. Morning! It’s been a while since I was first. I’ll have to go back and catch yesterday’s threads.

    But first, Happy Birthday, Ann! Hope you have a great day! 🙂

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  2. Good morning, all.

    Kim, Yesterday (re FP) you said “Which is what this class says to do first—have a few months living expenses BEFORE you start working on the Debt Snowball.” Please check back with your facilitator because you’ve misunderstood this. The first baby step is a $1,000 emergency fund. The second is the debt snowball, and the third is an emergency fund of 3 – 6 month living expenses.
    I hope this doesn’t sound harsh or rude, but if you are going to succeed with this program, you are going to have to totally combine your income and assets with Mr. P. As Dave frequently says, when you stood in front of the Pastor, he said, “Now you two are one.” It sounds like Mr. P is going to FP at your request and as a favor to you (good for him!) – please don’t sabotage it by objecting to parts of the program that you don’t like. If you’re not going to totally follow the program, you may as well quit now because it’s not going to work if you try to pick and choose the parts you like. I SO want to see you have success with this, as it feels to me that it WILL give you financial peace in the long run. God bless your efforts.

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  6. Good morning and a most Blessed Birthday Ann!! You are a cherished friend and sister to us all and we are so blessed to celebrate our Lord’s precious creation of YOU!! ❤
    Headed up to Denver for a day out with the ladies from our Sunday School class…the temps for today….70! 🙂

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  7. Good morning, all.

    Kim, Linda is wise. That is how I remember it. FP does not work for us as we are not both on board with it. But it is definitely working for daughter and her husband.

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  8. Linda, I’m not going to question your advice, but just add a caveat: when a marriage is a second marriage for both parties, and both parties have children, sometimes they make different arrangements than combining households into one, by agreement, for inheritance reasons.

    For me, marriage combined the assets of two households into one. Not a lot of money, but we have a home with no mortgage and no debt at all, and we have something set aside for the kids. My stepchildren are my heirs. If my husband were to die before me and I were to remarry, my “net worth” should not simply be absorbed into a new household, leaving my husband’s children to wait to inherit whatever was left when all the marriages got sorted out. (In other words, if my second husband inherited everything, and I died before he did and he then remarried, his next wife and her children might end up inheriting what should go to my stepdaughters. My children need to be protected in my will, with that theoretical second husband’s care for me being somewhat separate from the assets I would have brought into the marriage.)

    We’ve had several second marriages in my family, all after the death of the first spouse, and I’m actually the first situation where only one party was marrying the second time and already had children. All those marriages, they talked before marriage about how to be fair to each spouse’s children in not having them wait till the death of the new spouse (and potentially that spouse’s remarriage as well) to inherit something.

    With a first marriage, or a second marriage with no children from the first marriage, I agree with you. But I think it gets more complicated with a second marriage with children from both first marriages.

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  9. Linda,
    That is how I have always understood FPU Step 1,2,3… just like you said. In this latest series of DVD’s and the CD’s I am listening to in the truck he says he is skipping over step 2 until you can get the security of a couple of months expenses in the bank and then go back to the snowball. It may have something to do with the new economy and no one having job security. If you get let go and you can afford to live you are only going to get deeper in debt.

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  12. Oh, fiddle-sticks, I’m way behind on comments again. But I had a couple questions I wanted to pass by you all, so I’m jumping in here to throw them out to you…

    1.) For those of you who were saved as teens or adults: Was it a crisis that brought you to Jesus, or was it thankfulness for something good in your life, or some other experience? (Yes, I know that it is actually the Holy Spirit who brings us to Jesus, but what did He use in your life to accomplish that?)

    2.) Did you have a real sense (IOW, not merely a mental agreement) of your sinfulness right before you repented & were saved, or did that reality come to you some time after you were saved? (I realize that our understanding & realization of just how sinful we are grows as the Holy Spirit works in us throughout the years, so I’m referring to your first personal feeling, if you will, of being a sinner.)

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  13. My first child, with no insurance, was about three hundred dollars total. The third, with insurance, was 1500 just for the doctor. That was thirty years ago. Admittedly, wages have increased but maybe not enough to keep up with emergency expenses. Being able to buy a large house with yard for 10,000 fifty years ago as opposed to the same size house for a couple hundred thousand now. Throw in the family connections of then and now and it makes sense to have a few months of payments available. I know how my dad did it and it was bit by bit, moving to Idaho with a wife and a quarter and then working hard for many years, he was able to retire when my mom got sick so he could care for her, at the age of forty nine. Doing the same thing now would be a lot more challenging if possible. He invested in tree property when it was cheap.

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  19. So I got into an online discussion earlier this week on Christians using alcohol. One woman was adamant in her opposition to all Christians drinking, no matter the amount, no matter the reason.

    Several of us tried telling her that all use of alcohol is not sinful, but she wouldn’t listen.

    She, a woman who has never met me, pronounced that I “obviously love wine more than truth.”

    I’d laugh out loud at that if her legalistic looking down her nose at all of us who countered her assertions weren’t so sad.

    6 arrows, commenting from the library.

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  21. Cheryl, I think you are confusing day-to-day spending (and spending plans) with wills and inheritance. They are really separate.

    Kim, I’d be curious to know exactly where you’ve heard that, as I never have. Just minutes ago, listening to a program from last week, he repeated the steps with the first being just the $1,000.

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  22. Linda, overall I do think that it’s best if spouses combine everything. I’d be uneasy with his-and-hers checking accounts, for example. But I was thinking more of a couple in such a situation having some separate savings, not just the will.

    I know a couple (sort of extended family) who married late in life–both in their seventies, who had had long-term marriages (50+ years) with other people, and families by those first spouses. Both of them were wealthy, with all sorts of investments, and I think they agreed to keep their finances totally separate. For a couple on their second marriage in their forties I wouldn’t recommend that at all, but in their case it probably made sense. But they were basically treating it as a marriage of companionship in old age, not a lifelong marriage, because most likely it would be a very short part of at least one of their lives, and both had plenty to live on.

    And I have a close friend who works just a few hours a week (six or eight), and her husband tells her he supports the family; what she earns is money she can spend however she chooses. His idea. I don’t think that’s usually “ideal,” either, but they have a happy marriage of more than thirty years (first marriage) and it works for them.

    If one of my girls was looking to marry someone who wanted separate checking accounts and a prenuptial agreement, or who expected her to work full-time and pay “her share of household expenses,” I would encourage her to rethink this. Very bad idea. But I do know some deviations from “typical” spending patterns that work for the couple, as long as they are both in full agreement.

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  23. Linda, I emailed the leader for clarification and you are correct. I thought so as well and was shocked at what I had heard.
    In the DVD’s he skipped over step 2 and will be covering it in week 3.

    I still am leaving what I have in a money market account in the account and having an extra cushion to the $1000. I know from experience that the first time you dip in and take out $100 it evaporates from there. The debt didn’t get there overnight and it won’t all go away by wiping out all but $1000 in a savings account and believe me what is there isn’t even a month’s worth of expenses…but it is the last amount of money I will ever inherit through my father.
    My original intention was to save it for BG’s wedding one day and be able to tell her that her Papa bought her wedding dress or whatever it was able to cover.

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  24. What we have is 3 connected accounts at one bank. We can each sign on all 3 but one is his, one is mine and one is “ours” which is wehre all of the bills aare paid.
    I have an account at another bank because I have had it for years and it is where child support goes.

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  25. My husband, first daughter, and I just got back from Paddington. I really wouldn’t want to take a child to see it (a young child might be scared or confused, and an older child would “get” some of the humor that’s at times a bit unwholesome), so I understand Michelle’s hesitations on it. And they did cram most of the best of the humor into the trailer, so if you’ve seen that you really have seen the best parts.

    But we all three liked it and thought it well worth seeing. Some of the plot devices were predictable. I’m not a real fan of slapstick, and my husband goaded me a little about that. (“You don’t like slapstick! Or do you mean you don’t like slapstick unless there’s a bear in it?”) But basically it was comic book action slapstick (you could suspend disbelief), it was clever, and it had a decent story line. (Not crazy about the man of the household needing to be talked into doing the right thing, but then the main villain was a woman, so it was hardly a feminist plot.) I didn’t like all the camera action. Especially after battling vertigo for two days, I didn’t like panning that was impossible to follow, but I just closed my eyes a couple of times and it was OK.

    I do think it’s kind of a shame when a child’s story can’t be left as a child’s story. (I would not have included the drinking or the light innuendo.) But then, so many children’s books end up being favorites of adults too. Should the Narnia books be filmed as children’s movies even though they’re probably mostly read by adults? It can be a tough call. I’d have left this one more child-friendly, but we did think it good.

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  26. Regarding Childres’s Stories. This went around FB the other day. The Velveteen Rabbit has long been a favorite and I guess this passage just about sums up life.

    “What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by
    side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does
    it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

    “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that
    happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just
    to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

    “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

    “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When
    you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

    “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit
    by bit?”

    “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It
    takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who
    break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.
    Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved
    off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very
    shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are
    Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

    “I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had
    not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the
    Skin Horse only smiled.

    The Skin Horse Tells His Story

    “The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years
    ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for
    always.”

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  27. You can become unreal.
    You become real when someone cares about you. Maybe because you care about them first.
    But someone cares abut you.
    Then, you remain real when someone needs you.
    Then, when that is past, you stay real when someone cares, but that doesn’t always happen.

    Eddie Arnold had a song that went
    “Rocking alone in an old rocking chair,
    I saw an old mother with silvery hair,
    She seemed so neglected by those who should care,
    rocking alone
    In an old rocking chair”.

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  28. I enjoyed that Scherzo, AJ. The crowd reaction was fun, too. 🙂

    I went grocery shopping this morning, and a little ways up one of the aisles I was in was an older gentleman sitting in a motorized shopping cart. After he finished picking out something on the shelf, he accidentally put the cart in reverse and smacked it square into a pillar behind him. Fortunately, he himself didn’t hit the pillar.

    I hurried toward him and asked if he was okay. He didn’t hear me, but there were other people closer to him when it happened, and one of them started talking to him, and he seemed to be alright.

    Still, it was a pretty loud, firm smack.

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  29. Typing off the top of my head here, but it seems to me that even when an “older” parent enters a second marriage and has grown children that a discussion about inheritance and so forth should take place, not to mention what to do with possessions related to the (I’d be hoping) late spouse’s family.

    I know of cases where a sizeable inheritance earned through the late parent’s hard work, was felt to be in jeopardy by the adult children because a surviving parent was making foolish decisions. It created excessive strain among everyone and could have been smoothed out with a prenup for that second marriage or at least a distribution of assets prior to the marriage. Or an agreement, possibly in writing, that the predeceased parent’s family jewelry would go to their children.

    Speaking as an adult in her right mind with adult children, I’d be pretty taken aback if my kids asked for that, except, it would make sense. Jewelry my husband gave me should go to my children, not the estate of the second husband. IMHO.

    (This is all conjecture. Hopefully I’ll never have to figure this out).

    I’m thinking about family silver, say, from a dad’s family that stayed with the widow after his death. She then decides to remarry. Should that silver go into the second marriage or be passed down to one of the children from the first?

    I’m sympathetic to Kim’s explanation of wanting to keep back a gift for her daughter from her father. I’ve got a few pieces of jewelry like that to pass down the same way. My mom’s pearls for my daughter and her diamond engagement ring.

    Old fashioned, but a connection with stories attached.

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  30. I’m nursing a wound right now. I cut my finger open a good one washing dishes and slicing the skin over the first joint of my right hand fourth finger. There was a new metal spatula with a sharp edge in the dish water that I moved my hand across the wrong way.

    Hurt something awful, and bled pretty hard for maybe 10, 15 minutes, but doesn’t look like it would need stitches or anything.

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  35. Mumsee, I think the main “purpose” of an inheritance via a will should be assets left over after a parent dies. In other words, a parent may need the resources for Alzheimer’s care or may choose to use them to travel the world. I dislike the idea of the children thinking that the parents’ money is “theirs” and should not be spent by the parents. Now, if the parent is investing in unwise schemes, then that’s a problem. But if Mom chooses to tour Italy rather than leave her money to her kids, that is her choice. (Now, if Mom chooses to tour Italy rather than help the daughter whose husband left her to raise six kids alone, that could be selfishness. But basically it’s Mom’s money; if she spends it or leaves it, it’s hers to do with what she will.)

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  37. So, in mid December I asked the school folk what they thought of ideas for thirteen year old girl. They had her in the school before. They said they would run some assessments on her and give us their thoughts. Should she go there all day? Half day? A couple of hours? Did they have some suggestions we could incorporate at home? We took her in for the assessments in early January. Yesterday they told us we could come in for a conference with them in early March. Now, if I had just dropped her off at the door, they would have been required to take her in and make some attempt.

    But, in the interim, she became very volatile and in one of her rages, proclaimed that I was evil because I would not respect her beliefs and she wanted to be a vegetarian and have no chemicals on her. Well, that was something concrete I could work with. She became a vegan about two weeks ago. And after having the explanation that a few chemicals were necessary, like H2O, she moved along with it. Her whole personality has changed back to her pleasant self. She worked hard at schoolwork the past two days. It is early to think she has changed but it certainly is a nice break.

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  38. Brian Williams apparently told people he had been in a helicopter in Iraq some time ago, that was nearly shot down. His life and that of others was saved by the heroism of the military personnel, in particular one who retired recently. Williams, to show his appreciate, took this newly retired “hero” to an ice hockey game at Madison Square Gardens the other night.

    He must have told them they were coming, because MSG during halftime, put their photos up on the big screen and told the story, then had them stand and accept applause and a standing ovation. Nice story.

    Except, it turns out it wasn’t true.

    (Michelle wondered why the military guy looked embarrassed by all the fuss–surely he knew the truth).

    That has now caused the Twitter world to go crazy with photo shopped pictures of Williams at key historical events, lots of jokes and absurdities. NBC is now launching an investigation not only into this event but Williams’ coverage of Katrina.

    The man really should resign. If not be fired.

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  42. Michelle,

    AJ here, to lazy to log in…

    It appears ol’ Brian’s “conflatings and miseremembering” may expand beyond Iraq….

    http://pagesix.com/2015/02/06/brian-williams-hurricane-katrina-experience-in-question-report/

    “More heroic tales of Brian Williams‘ adventures in journalism are being questioned.

    The NBC news anchor, who apologized Wednesday for telling a false story about taking fire in a helicopter while covering Iraq, is being called out for possibly lying about his experience covering Hurricane Katrina, according to a report.

    Williams claimed to have gotten dysentery from drinking floodwater and seeing dead bodies float past his hotel in the New Orleans French Quarter while covering Hurricane Katrina.

    However, the The New Orleans Advocate noted that the French Quarter was not flooded and quoted a local health expert who did not recall anyone getting such a stomach ailment.

    Williams recalled his bout with the bug in an interview with Tom Brokaw last year, when he said: “I accidentally ingested some of the floodwater. I became very sick with dysentery.”

    The Advocate said a public health official never heard of people getting things like dysentery after the storm.”

    DOH!!! 🙄

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  44. I wanted to pass along some information I got from a friend regarding the numerous health challenges faced by the young son of a friend of hers.

    The boy was developing normally until about 7 months old or so, when he contracted RSV. Since then (he is about four years old now, I think), it has been determined that he has profound hearing loss, is legally blind, and he has low tone, which makes him unable to cough out any germs he picks up. He has been hospitalized at least nine times for pneumonia, including recently, and medical bills are mounting.

    If you are able to contribute to help the family with their expenses, or are moved to pray for them, you can find more information here: http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/give-to-william-/295575

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  45. just drove through the storm to my house that I bought ten years ago and only lived in for six weeks. So nice to see it when it was empty and be able to look all around. Trying to imagine myself actually living there, it is a nice quiet spot.
    I did find that my simple phone actually has coverage there, so I called my kids.

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  48. Oh, thanks, Cheryl. I didn’t read much at the site, but I watched the video. I’m not sure if they mentioned his birth year or current age in that, as my kids were in and out of the room a fair amount, so I didn’t hear some of what was said.

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  51. I survived the school district candidates’ forum tonight. Had to park a few blocks away which was dicey as this was in one of the worst neighborhoods in our area.

    But I made it back to my car afterward — along a route with bars, pool halls and discoetecas — without getting whacked over the head and all my stuff stolen.

    The debate itself was tortured at times. 😉 Democracy in action.

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