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Our Daily Thread 4-23-15

Good Morning!

 Today’s header photo is from Cheryl.

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On this day in 1789 President George Washington moved into Franklin House, New York. It was the first executive mansion.

In 1900 the word “hillbilly” was first used in print in an article in the “New York Journal.” It was spelled “Hill-Billie”.

In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an act creating the U.S. Army Reserve.

In 1964 Ken Johnson (Houston Astros) threw the first no-hitter for a loss. The game was lost 1-0 to the Cincinnati Reds due to two errors.

And in 2005 the first video was uploaded to YouTube.com.

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Quote of the Day

“The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men.”

James Buchanan

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 Today is Roy Orbison’s birthday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=banXBD7x5mI

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Anyone have a QoD?

50 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-23-15”

  2. I didn’t know where “Hillbilly” came from.]
    I reckoned it was from the song that went:
    “I like mountain music,
    Good ol’ mountain music,’
    Played by a Bill Hillbilly band”

    Good morning Ann, and everyone else.

    I couldn’t get to sleep for a while last night.
    I was watching Mangy Kelly on fox and got too agitated. They were talking about the police raiding homes in Wisconsin. The people did nothing but support Scott Walker.
    Rush had mentioned it earlier, but I was busy with something and not paying full attention.

    They said, “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
    I thought, “Shure, it happened all the time in Russia and Germany.”

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  5. The header shot: chickadees are hard to photograph, since they’re so tiny (you have to zoom in close) and they move around so much and so erratically. Just when you’re almost zoomed in, he’s on a branch on the other side of the tree. But they are so cute that they are worth the challenge. This one was in the area near the pair of bluebirds in yesterday’s shot, the first good chickadee photo I’ve managed to get in that area, though I’ve tried many times. (I have gotten good shots of them in my yard.) But that one could be a black-and-white photo; with a colorless sky, there’s just no color at all in the picture, and nothing distracting from the bird.

    This one became the “portrait” photo for the black-capped chickadee in the big bird book I made, bumping out the shot I had in that location previously. I mentioned on the blog yesterday that anyone who wants to see the e-book version can e-mail me at my main e-mail account or, if you don’t have that one, at extra dot extra at juno dot com, and I’ll send you the link. It has photos of about 70 species in all, with more than 50 of them being birds I have enough photos that the species got its own two-page spread with a mini essay about the bird, a portrait photo that shows the bird well enough to see detail of what it looks like, and several more photos on the facing page (and sometimes a few more pages of photos after that page). Not all of the photos are actually “publishable” quality; some are simply the best I had of that species–for example my photos of wood ducks don’t even approach the ones AJ has gotten, since I haven’t even seen the species since I had this camera and they were too far away for my previous camera to get a good shot–but I’m quite pleased with the majority of the photos. (Before the section looking at individual birds in detail, there are sections of birds in flight, courtship and young, birds in funny poses or windblown feathers, birds in snow, birds fighting, and more.)

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  6. Good morning! Good quote about the ballot box, unless someone has managed to rig an election in one form or another. I will always believe Obama won by fraud. I am a born birther…do I care if he and his buddies call me stupid? At least my college records and birth certificate are real and available.

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  7. Good to see you, virtually, again, Annms.♡

    I posted late yesterday that Crossway has an app, one for iphone&ipad, and another for Android that allows you to get the ESV Global Study Bible free. Great deal I saw on Twitter.

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  8. Good Morning…sun is shining and the air feeling downright springlike…the snow is almost gone…for now 😉
    The photo is truly special Cheryl…we are blessed by your gifting….

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  9. Cheryl’s book is terrific, BTW.

    National Review had a lengthy article on the Wisconsin story and it’s really hard to believe when it’s not downright chilling. Don’t tell anyone, don’t call your lawyer.

    I think I would have left town and called a lawyer immediately. But when it’s the police . . . . scary.

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  10. Crossway is a good publisher.

    Loved the (almost) black-and-white effect on that photo, that popped out at me right away.

    I heard part of that Megan Kelly story on the car radio coming home (I have the cable news stations on satellite radio), pretty stunning. I wanted to read more about it, but couldn’t find another straight news source, even on Fox (although maybe I didn’t poke around enough.

    Al Jazeera is coming to our newsroom today I think … And the Washington Post is doing a longer piece for the weekend on the issue of the plight of print journalists. Our Pulitzer-winning colleague’s story of having to leave journalism to make ends meet has really touched a nerve, he’s become something of the poster boy for struggling journalists and newspapers everywhere.

    (“Newspaper reporter” also finally bottomed out and made it into last place on this year’s list of best and worst jobs — stress and declining pay, it all put us below even “lumberjack,” the job that has traditionally been in last place, one space below us, on the list).

    Management had to do a bit of damage control over some of the stories that went out, but the fact is things have been bad at our papers for years now, worse than any of us ever thought it would get when things started going south a decade ago. Some of us are hoping it could shake loose at least a small cost-of-living raise (which we haven’t had in 8 years, compounded by a pay cut 4 years ago & the cutoff of any 401k match way before that). But we’ll see.

    A sale reportedly is being finalized this month. But the national chain we’re part of is being sold from one one hedge fund to another (“meet the new boss, same as the old boss”) and hedge funds typically aren’t known for generously investing — rather, they usually like to scale back, consolidate, minimize potential losses, maximize profits so they can sell it off and make $$ … Sad times for newspapers, to be sure.

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  11. michelle, thanks, I remember now that it was from National Review originally and I hadn’t checked that site for a more thorough story.

    Well, Annie seems better after she worried me sick for a couple days (I actually was going to get her up to the vet early this morning, but she seems to be back to her almost-normal self suddenly). She had a painful spot on her back near the base of her tail (I could feel a scab) but she also seemed to be walking so gingerly that I began to worry that she’d gotten hit by a car or something. And she wasn’t eating.

    But early this morning she surprised me by jumping up on the bed and lying on top of me, purring, as is her old habit. And she ate well and drank water from the bathroom sink. She’s holding her tail up again the scab feels smaller & doesn’t seem to be painful to the touch.

    So I’m skipping the very long drive up to the vet in rush hour traffic, I’ll keep a close eye on her though. But I think she’s OK. Whew. I tossed and turned last night, envisioning potential surgery and all kinds of procedures …

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  13. So is that a lumberjack joke? 🙂

    This is an interesting read:

    http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/unlikely-convert/

    “Reformed Christians know that God’s elect people are everywhere, but one big misconception evangelicals have is the wholesale writing off of all people who identify as gay as God-hating reprobates. Another misconception is that a person’s homosexuality is the biggest and most life-defining sin of her life. When Ken Smith, the pastor the Lord used in my conversion, first met me, he knew that being a lesbian was not my biggest sin. My biggest sin was that I was an unbeliever.”

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  16. My pet peeve today: What ever happened to something being between a doctor and the patient? Our clinic receptionists always asks for specifics when we call to talk to someone in a doctor’s office. I must admit that I sounded impatient this morning when, once again, I had to explain why I was calling the doctor’s office to renew a prescription. Ahhhhh–because that was what I was told to do by those in the office. I know this is not the receptionist’s fault, necessarily, but what ever happened to confidentiality?

    My issue was not a big one, but I know others who really did not want to tell the receptionist of the clinic what was not her business. This is a large clinic; not a small office.

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  18. enjoying having my son and his family here. I can hear the children playing. I realized at the end of last week that I had lost a credit card. I searched everywhere, went online and found it hadn’t been used, but the last time I used it was the day I took his kids back to Portland. Last night they told me that they had just found it in their daughter’s passport. I know, I know, I should have cancelled it, but God gave me peace to wait and it would be found. My son couldn’t believe it hadn’t been cancelled.

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  19. Last night Chas mentioned not being appreciated. He couldn’t be more wrong.

    And I got a letter from the community college where I moonlight that I got the “Adjunct Instructor Excellence in Teaching Award” this year. I didn’t even know I was nominated. I guess I get to go to the main campus for dinner in two weeks. It’s a 90 minute drive, but I guess I’ll go. 🎓

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  20. Here’s the link to the National Review article about the Wisconsin home raids — chilling

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisconsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french
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    “I was so afraid,” she says. “I did not know what to do.” She grabbed some clothes, opened the door, and dressed right in front of the police. The dogs were still frantic.

    “I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix.”

    She got the dogs safely out of the house, just as multiple armed agents rushed inside. Some even barged into the bathroom, where her partner was in the shower. The officer or agent in charge demanded that Cindy sit on the couch, but she wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee.

    “I told him this was my house and I could do what I wanted.” Wrong thing to say. “This made the agent in charge furious. He towered over me with his finger in my face and yelled like a drill sergeant that I either do it his way or he would handcuff me.”

    …………..

    “I used to support the police, to believe they were here to protect us. Now, when I see an officer, I’ll cross the street. I’m afraid of them. I know what they’re capable of.”

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  23. So did anybody take their crumb snatcher to work today? 😆

    My wife did. 🙂

    So I’ve been out all morning since there was no school today. 🙂

    Went to the reservoir and took some pics, got the car inspected, and now I’m going to have lunch. Then, I’m watching the Yankee game at 1:00 and maybe even catchin’ a nap. It’s shapin’ up to be a pretty nice day, although I dd drive thru a snow squall that lasted about 10 minutes earlier. 🙂

    Cheryl,

    I got some pics of a couple of flickers either doing a mating dance or posturing, but I don’t know how good they’ll be because they kept bouncing around. 🙂

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  27. How does the saying go? Success has many fathers and failure has no bedfellows?

    Way back in the early dark ages, I did my newspaper internship at Donna’s original paper, The New Pilot. This was pre-computers.

    The News Pilot folded into the Daily Breeze many years ago.

    I was telling the Pulitzer story to a high school pal of mine who has a journalism degree from San Francisco State and has worked as an editor for a Berkeley NGO for years.

    She rejoiced with our “hometown” paper made good and then laughed. “So, does this mean you can say you worked for a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper?”

    !!!!!

    Of course not. But I did remind her I’m a NY Times best seller . . . so I can claim some minor glory.

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  31. A few days ago my favorite brother (the one I lived two hours and fifteen minutes from when I lived in Nashville, the one who walked me down the aisle) e-mailed to ask how close a particular town in Indiana is from where we live. He’s been speaking in that town this week.

    I invited him and his wife to come for lunch, and when that invitation was tentatively accepted, knowing that he gets restaurant food far too often when they are on the road, I gave a choice of three entrees. He eagerly chose the chicken and dumplings (saying that it has been 20 years since he has had the ones Mom used to make), and I paired it with a tossed salad.

    Misten was oh so happy to see a man who has long been one of her very favorite people (he was in her top three when we lived in Nashville, though I couldn’t rank them one, two, three within those top three, and I have no idea what her ranking would be now with different “favorite people” added since our move). She has only seen him twice in the last three-and-a-half years. (We’ve seen him several additional times, but not at our home.) His wife gets lost in there (his late first wife did too), and we get ignored; she whines as if her heart is coming out of her chest when she sees him.

    Will we be so renewed in heaven that we’ll have the ability to show that intense, palpable delight that a dog can show? I imagine the only human equivalent is bowing in wordless awe.

    It was good to see them. Very good.

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  32. Well, Donna can still speak to us, since she didn’t win the Pulitzer, she only had to pull extra duty making up the slack of those who won it, while they were working on that assignment. But if she herself ever wins it, she won’t be associating with the likes of us. (I’ve edited a New York Times #1 best-seller, two Christy award winners, and two winners and a couple of finalists of what was then called the Gold Medallion . . . do I get any credit for that?)

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  33. I just happen to have an old letter written and signed by Donna, long before the Pulitzer Prize incident. Just in case. If anybody is looking to invest in something. Big time.

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  36. “…If regional news outlets die, who will dig up corruption by their local lawmakers? Start-up news organizations across the country are trying, but they’re largely struggling to find a for-profit model that works.

    “It’s fair to ask, in the midst of this, how smaller newsrooms still do so much valuable journalism – and whether they should. As newsrooms shrink, the sort of deep project reporting that often wins Pulitzers has become “harder to justify economically,” Bhatia said….

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/23/why-the-pr-industry-is-sucking-up-pulitzer-winners/

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  40. AJ, I wondered if Chas had suddenly decided to go to that site we were using yesterday. It occurred to me it might be the 75,000th comment, but I wondered how he would possibly know!

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  43. Peter, once you have officially reached 75,000, you have it forever.
    Nobody can take that away from me.

    Deleted comments don’t affect the official count.
    We may have to take that to court.
    Our new DOJ won’t tolerate that.

    ;-).

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  44. It’s OK Chas.

    If someone needs a post deleted, I’ll just edit and remove the text, but leave the post up so it doesn’t affect the count.

    Problem solved, and you keep 75,000! 😉

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  45. What’s the prize for the 75,000th comment? Perhaps equally important, how long are you allowing the speech to be, and what celebrities will be coming to hear Chas’s words of wisdom?

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