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Our Daily Thread 3-3-15

Good Morning!

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On this day in 1803 the first impeachment trial of a U.S. Judge, John Pickering, began.  

In 1817 the first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans was opened. 

In 1931 The “Star Spangled Banner,” written by Francis Scott Key, was adopted as the American national anthem. The song was originally a poem known as “Defense of Fort McHenry.”  

In 1945 Superman encountered Batman and Robin for the first time on the Mutual Broadcasting System. 

And in 1980 the submarine Nautilus was decommissioned. The vessels final voyage had ended on May 26, 1979. 

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Quote of the Day

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

Alexander Graham Bell

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 Today is Doc Watson’s birthday. Here’s Doc, with some help. From ricgrass, who has tons of similar stuff.

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Anyone have a QoD?

46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-3-15”

  1. I’ve been up almost an hour now.
    No. that’s not good. It’s too early to be up on a Tuesday. I don’t have anything I need to do, no Y, no trash out, nothing. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. So. Here I am.
    But I get to listen to Bill Monroe and Doc Watson while I’m doing this.
    You all know that Doc Watson has been blind since childhood.

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  2. When I hit “post” it goes back to the beginning.
    I have always been amazed and somewhat irritated at the amateurishness of the professional radio announcers in these small towns. They play songs and between them, a voice says “1450 WHKP” and that’s all. We know all that!
    There used to be a radio program out of WMAL in Washington, “Harden and Weaver”. Almost everyone in the DC area listened to them. They didn’t play much music, but bantered back and forth most of the time. But they would announce the time and weather al least once every two minutes. They had an awareness of what the audience was doing. And time, weather and pertinent local news was what they wanted.
    Back before TV, there was a national morning radio program by Arthur Godfrey. He would say, “Twenty five minutes before the hour.” You had to supply the hour.

    Someone driving past and listening to radio 145o will never know whether he’s listening to Hendersonville, Asheville, Spartanburg or Greenville. It usually doesn’t matter, but I have often wondered if I was listening to a station I was approaching or leaving.

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  5. Chas- Local radio is dying. Too many small market stations cannot afford to stay on the air because of competition form the Internet, and a lack of businesses for advertising revenue. That is part of why we hear so many national ads with four repetitions of a toll free number. Also, a lot of the small stations get purchased by bigger companies that own several stations, so the local one is just a simulcast of a larger network. Sad.

    What gets me is one of our stations has weather “updates” every 20 minutes or so. But the “updates” are recorded earlier and played all day or night. And they don’t give the current conditions! “You’re up to date on the weather,” is what they say, but they haven’t told me what the current temp is or how much longer they think the snow is going to fall. It’s pretty obvious on weekends that the “update” is old, as sometimes on Saturday night they are still telling us what Friday night’s forecast is.

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  6. What burns me is the local news. They give you a teaser of some information and then direct you to their Facebook or web page to find out more. Dag nab it! I am on a computer all day! If I wanted to get the news from a computer I would! Don’t give part of the story and then direct me to go online. Do that enough and I won’t even turn to your broadcast—I will just go online

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  7. Now that I have had a rant I will tell you about something that has me jazzed up. There is a lady in my Monday night Bible Study. She is a weaver. We are having our annual women’s retreat for my church this weekend. She will be teaching a weaving class. I have no artistic abilities whatsoever, but she was telling me last night that we will be weaving a wall hanging to go in our church’s prayer room. She told me she has some special paper that can be rolled up and woven into the tapestry. So not only will it be a prayerful tapestry to hang in the prayer room, it will contain prayers. My mind has been working all night on what I can write, roll up, and roll into the weaving. Of course a prayer for BG tops the list, but then I remember I now have 3 boys, a daughter in law and two grandchildren who will need prayer throughout their lives.
    I can’t wait! (Do you think I can commission Janice to write a prayer for me?) 😉

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  9. My pet rock is a loner. He doesn’t associate with other pets well.

    Peter. Same thing here. At two p.m. we get the “Latest weather” that says, “When the fog burns off this morning we’ll have …” Yes, it really said that.

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  10. It goes on.

    Today, Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu speaks to Congress. This, in the face of everything Obama could do to prevent it. And reduce the effectiveness of his appearance. In fact, it’s Obama’s boycott that has made the speech newsworthy. We’ll see how significant this becomes. It is a strange coincidence.

    And coincidence I believe it is, that:

    Today 91 years ago, On March 3, 1924, “The last Caliphate –The Ottoman Caliphate – was officially abolished by the first President of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The abolition of the Caliphate is profoundly significant… For it was on this day that the Islamic Empire, led by a sitting Caliph for over fourteen hundred years suffered a fatal head wound. The position of “head of state” of the Islamic Empire was severed.

    The magnitude of the fall of the Caliphate is as if the office of the pope was forcefully abolished by anti-Catholic forces and it remained unfilled for nearly a hundred years.”

    Walid Shoebat, God’s War on Terror, p. 81.

    Shoebat is trying to prove that the wounded head “unto death” of Revelation 13 is the Caliphate that is reborn. His publication date is 2008, so Shoebat doesn’t know about ISIS. So his point bears consideration. However, I have not come around to his theory because the further reading, Rev. 13:5f is surely the actions of a man. I am convinced that the wounded head is that of a man. But this is a weird situation that bears watching.

    I mentioned on the Politics thread earlier that Israel is a bone in the throat of the Islamic nations surrounding her. I keep wondering how the battle of Zechariah 12 fits into this. We need to be careful not to be on the wrong side
    But Bibi appears to be a “blowtorch in a woodpile”. (12:6).
    We live in interesting times.

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  11. My mom listened to Arthur Godfrey every morning. She would go ballistic if we touched her radio. She would wander in and out of the kitchen doing chores and we would like to turn to the rock station. I was amused when the show would feature a Beatles song, which was redone in a more big band sound.

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  12. Bosley!

    I had a blog dream last night. We were at mumsee’s and I was in the house with Cheryl at one point, noticing a bunch of dog food bowls on the floor. I said, hey, I didn’t think you let dogs in the house — when several dogs appeared, including one mumsee named Cowboy who looked kind of like my cowboy. Later we were all sitting in a circle outside to pray, I think, and there was a TV crew that showed up to interview Mike.

    Then we were all heading out for home, all in our own separate cars, but somehow Cheryl wound up in mine for a California detour, I guess, and suddenly we were in my home town which looked really awesome, with all the old 1800s buildings back in place and the street thronging with people who had come to the port to celebrate the Fishermen’s Fiesta (the traditional blessing of the fishing fleet which doesn’t happen anymore, alas — not since most of the fleet headed for Mexico because of all the rising costs and regulations on the fishing industry in the U.S.; besides, you couldn’t have a blessing anymore anyway, it would offend too many people).

    Anyway, the dream ended with Cheryl & me seated at a long table waiting for a fish dinner to be served, it was all very festive and colorful.

    I have no idea how she got home from there. But she was shopping before dinner for a book she was going to take home as a gift for her husband (I remember telling her it would probably be cheaper on Amazon) so she hadn’t completely forgotten about him. 🙂

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  13. Should be an interesting day with the big speech. I just can’t believe what a mess we’re in, but here we are. Discouraging.

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  16. Cool dream, Donna. My husband didn’t come along since fish isn’t his favorite.

    Hey, you know how we were all saying, “You don’t pass up a free trip to Hawaii”? How about one to the Bahamas?

    Trips to the Bahamas have always been things other people do (and cruises of any sort). I’ve been to a decent number of the 48 contiguous states, and also over the border into Mexico (overnight, two times) and over the border into Canada (to see Niagara Falls from that side, when I was 10 or 12) and that’s it on international travel.

    My sister-in-law and her husband recently went on a cruise, including a day or two in the Bahamas. And they bought a week in the Bahamas, and invited us to come along, no cost except our airfare. 🙂 We don’t know when it will be (and I don’t tell online when I’ll be traveling, so I won’t tell you when I do know), but the Bahamas never even made it onto my “dream trips” list. It was just something I never thought I would do.

    (Not that all my dream trips are places I think I’d actually go. But if money and other factors were no object, I’d take an African safari, a trip to England and maybe a short side trip to Scotland since that’s my ancestral home, a tour of Israel, and wildlife-seeing expeditions in Costa Rica. I’d also like to see Yellowstone and possibly the Everglades. My husband wants to take me to Florida–I’ve never been, but he has lived there–and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan–he has also lived in Michigan, though not in the U.P.–and I’d like to take him to visit Arizona. Phoenix where I grew up, the Grand Canyon since that’s basic to an Arizona trip if it’s your first time, Sedona since it’s the prettiest part of the state, and the Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson since that’s way cool and I haven’t been since I was about 12.)

    It looks like the Bahamas may have leap-frogged over all those others, though. 🙂

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  20. Worth reading: http://www.jdgreear.com/my_weblog/2015/03/three-misconceptions-muslims-have-about-christians.html:
    “Many obstacles stand in the way of Muslims coming to faith in Jesus—theological confusion and the cost of conversion being two of the most daunting. And of course the most common reason why Muslims are not coming to Christ is that most have simply never heard the gospel.
    That said, there is a set of misconceptions that most Muslims have about Christians that keep them from even considering the gospel”

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  21. It is snowing heavily here. Last week, the temperatures were bitter cold, but the sun was usually shining. The small relatives went outside to sled and skate, and tramp with me along the forest trails which the surrounding farmers have made for snowmobiles. They have gone home now. The ice was a bit treacherous, as deep cold makes the ice brittle, causing chunks to break off if one’s skate blades go over any fissures in the ice (the ice is frozen solid to the bed of the swamp in most places, but the ground underneath shifts, creating fissures). It is much warmer this week, but warmer weather means more moisture in the air – going for a walk yesterday, the damp wind made me feel colder than anytime last week – and more snow…

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  22. Oh, don’t worry, I think the Bahamas question is whether my husband is going with me or without me. (Not really; I don’t think he would want to go alone and leave me here. But he didn’t present it as “Would you like to do this?” It’s “We have this opportunity.” Of course we will, assuming the logistics all work out.)

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  25. You really don’t have to take much to a tropical island. A few swimsuits, matching sarongs, a couple of sundresses, and a hat.
    Of course you will have to buy sunscreen there what with NSA and all but you will need
    SPF 50 or higher for your face,
    SPF 45 for your torso
    SPF 15 for your legs
    SPF 4 for your feet
    You should probably find someone to share with.
    You will want to set a timer and re-apply every 45 minutes to an hour. Take a few good books and some flip flops and you are good.
    You will probably want one of the dresses to be a little dressier and a regular pair of shoes in case you go somewhere extra nice. Oh and BUY an outfit while you are there! It’s an outfit AND it’s a souvenier

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  26. wow, the travel diva has spoken.
    I like the advice on the outfit. Best souvenir of all. My one special jacket, I love telling folks that I picked it up in Thailand.
    oh, and then there is the robe from the Philippines that a friend bought for me and then took it to another friend in Korea, who brought it back to PNG for me.

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  27. Hahaha, Kim, you’re the travel diva, alright. 🙂

    I bought some sandals (real tire-tread soles) & a cute, fringed suede shoulder bag in Mexico City as a college student. They were wardrobe staples for the next couple years.

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  28. I am a late arrival on here today. We had another Religious Freedom Rally at the Georgia state capitol today. It was opened and closed with the singing of hymns. How beautiful is the sound of many Christians singing in the rotunda of our capitol building. I think there were 8 speakers, mostly pastors, but the lawyer of the fired Fire Chief spoke. I feel so blessed to be able to attend these events. One of the speakers told about a military man who was going to Afghanistan I believe he said. He was getting a cross tattoo on his back directly under his neck so if his head got chopped off, the last thing his executioner would see would be the cross.

    It was a rainy day again, but better than the last time I was there. I took some pictures, but a man with a hat was in front of me and I would focus on the speaker, but by the time the phone camera clicked the man’s head would change position so I have several close shots of his hat. 🙂

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  29. Local TV news today, in a story about being careful when driving ATVs on ice, or going ice fishing: “…make there sure is enough frozen ice”. Is there any other kind?

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  30. Yesterday I moved the flat screen tv to the floor in front of the black platform it was on. The platform Miss Bosley is on is her new bed. The tv is black like the platform so it is in the picture, too. Bosley drives such a hard bargain that I am beginning to think she is part of the Cat Mafia.

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  32. And in “national” news: reports out of Ferguson, MO on the “racist” emails and the fact that blacks get pulled over and ticketed more than whites- If I am not mistaken, Ferguson is a primarily black suburb of St. Louis, so of course blacks are going to get stopped more often than whites.

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  33. Hat pictures coming! 🙂

    Janice, are you also now sitting on the floor so Bosley can have the furniture seats? Better viewing for your TV now, anyway, I guess.

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  35. Peter, I’m assuming they mean proportionately more likely. And the incidence of “driving while black” stops is fairly well substantiated. One of my brothers (white, but you can’t tell it from the back since his hair is very dark brown and wavy) said that when he was living in a black neighborhood, he got pulled over a lot, and the police would make some trivial comment about why they pulled him over, and then let him go.

    I did find it silly, though, that they said people got citations for “petty offenses” like walking in the middle of the street. New York City found that the murder rate went down when they stopped ignoring “petty” stuff. And if you recall, the Ferguson shooting story started with the officer noticing two men walking down the middle of the street (instead of the sidewalk) and cars having to slow down and look for an opportunity to go around them. After he spoke to them and asked them to get onto the sidewalk, he pulled away, but then he realized that one man fit the description of the man who had just robbed a convenience store, so he went back. The man was indeed the robber, and the men had ignored the instruction to move onto the sidewalk. The “trivial” decision to walk down the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk seems to be part of a pattern of “I’ll do what I want to do, no matter what it does to other people.” Referring to him as “an unarmed black man” or “unarmed teenager” is disingenuous. They could more honestly refer to him as a thug; he was in a lifestyle that was likely to end in his death, and it did. Don’t make him a victim or a hero; he was neither.

    I do think that officers actually are sometimes harder on black people than on white, the “driving while black” issue being one example of that. At the same time, it’s a vicious circle, because a young black man has a much, much higher likelihood to be engaging in criminal activity. Should the police pretend otherwise?

    Police brutality and other racial disparities don’t help my “case” any . . . but I do think that focusing on police as the bad guys is counterproductive. Having an attitude of “the cops are bad guys, and we don’t want to listen to them” and “it’s none of their business if we want to walk down the middle of the street” inevitably leads to more confrontations, not fewer. If police become hesitant to deal with “small” issues like people walking wherever they want, using graffiti, public urination, etc., then the neighborhood becomes unpoliced and all the more dangerous.

    Black parents routinely tell their children (especially their sons) something like the following: “If you get pulled over by the police, keep your moves slow and careful, don’t reach for your wallet until he tells you to, use terms like “yes sir, no sir” . . . I once told one of my friends that, and he said, “That’s how we all treat police officers!” And I thought, Oh yeah, you’re right! Teaching respect for the law is wisdom–especially in a neighborhood where the lack of police presence (because it’s too dangerous for the police!) means that you have an ongoing cycle of more and more crime and more and more danger to the community.

    I do think that police departments need to make sure that all citizens get treated with respect. But to have an assumption of racial bias and “the cop is our enemy” is dangerous. (And if nothing else, even if he is a racist cop, don’t give him any “reason” to mistreat you. I am NOT saying no police officer is bad enough to hurt someone without good reason; I know otherwise. But treating him like a bad cop isn’t wise either way.)

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  36. I ended up doing my last assignment on investigative reporting on the subject of the bias against homeschoolers experienced at college application time. It’s not at all schools, but we noticed it at some. I want to see if it has changed since my son was applying. Back then, the Georgia HOPE scholarship, funded by the lottery, was not given to homeschoolers until after they made the grade for their first semester. Other students got it up front. That would limit those homeschoolers who did not have up front money to get started in college.

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  37. This time I did not have to write the article. I had to explain the idea and think up interview questions and write a query letter, like a proposal, for the article.

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  38. I got the rest of the blackberries planted, the rocks picked up out of the garden, the goats fed, the guineas fed, the laundry done. Time to go read the newspaper for a bit.

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  39. I wish I’d gotten that much done. I am almost always low-energy on Tuesdays. Not quite as bad if it’s sunny, but today was gloomy all day.

    If I had been an adviser to The Carpenters, I would have told them to sing, “Rainy days and Tuesdays always get me down.” 😉

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  40. 6 Arrows, Mondays don’t “get me down,” but I do find that I’m usually less productive on Monday. I decided some time ago to do laundry on Monday, since that way I can make sure I get something accomplished! If I get through a big long list on Monday (which is rare), then I’m usually unproductive on Tuesday. But these days I just allow for an unproductive Monday, and if it is instead productive, that’s a bonus. And at least we usually have clean clothes and towels!

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  41. Had a malware attack on my laptop this afternoon, after clicking a link on Facebook (but it was a site I’d gone to before, & the friend who shared it hadn’t had a problem). It wouldn’t let me close the tab, nor click on another tab, nor close the browser. And it wouldn’t let Malware Bytes do its thing. So Lee will be taking my laptop to the computer fix-it place tomorrow.

    Not sure if or when I’ll have opportunity to catch up with you all in the next few days. It would be great if the guy can fix it right away. (I’m on Lee’s computer right now, as he’s sleeping, but he’ll need it tomorrow for orders.)

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  42. Cheryl, looks like our low-energy days are reversed. I tend to have more energy on Mondays. Maybe it’s psychological. Monday seems like the start of the week to me, even though Sunday is, technically, but only on paper (the calendar). New beginnings, like the start of the week, motivate me to put my best foot forward.

    I am like you, though, that if I get a lot done on one day, then I tend to be unproductive the next. I think we women wear ourselves out. 🙂

    I fight guilt at not being productive every day (well, I don’t feel guilty about taking it relatively easy on Sundays), and guilt like that tends to be counterproductive and energy-draining, I think.

    I like your idea of just allowing for an unproductive day, and seeing it as a bonus if I happen to have the energy to accomplish a lot. I just have a hard time giving myself that grace, because I feel like I should at least be productive every day Monday through Friday, as that is the typical school schedule.

    Even though we’re a family, and not a school.

    You see the trouble I cause myself? 🙂

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  45. Good luck with the computer, Karen.

    I’m not fond of Mondays, it’s hard for me to get going. If there’s a day in the week I’m more likely not to have a daily story than to have one, it’s a Monday (although yesterday worked out as we had a hail storm I was asked to write about). But usually it’s hard to crank it all back up again.

    By Tuesday, I’m usually rolling.

    We had a municipal election today, glad I wasn’t one of those who had to stay to cover it.

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