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Our Daily Thread 6-30-15

Good Morning!

Here’s some more wood ducks and ducklings. And turtles. 🙂

6-28-15 0646-28-15 031

6-28-15 0486-28-15 037

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On this day in 1097 the Crusaders defeated the Turks at Dorylaeum.

In 1859 Charles Blondin became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

In 1936 the probably soon to be banned Margaret Mitchell book, “Gone with the Wind,” was published.

And in 1958 Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union.

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Quote of the Day

“What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.”

Thomas Sowell

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Today in 1966 The Supremes made the studio recording of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” It’s also the birthday of Florence Ballard, a member of the original Supremes. 

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Anyone have a QoD?

59 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-30-15”

  1. We’ll never get to the point of banning books. Lots of people won’t like it, but GWTW and Mark Twain’s books, like Huckleberry Finn will always be around somewhere. Maybe make them more popular.
    I can understand why people don’t like Huck Finn. But that’s the way it was done in those days.
    There is no hatred in Huck. Only each person accepting his status in life.
    That’s the way it was. Deal with it.

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  4. I honestly never thought it would come to this in the United States. I have an undergraduate degree in History. Our US History hasn’t always been pretty, but it was ours. I never thought would would try to erase it. I realize this has been building for some time, but now it seems it all happened in a whirlwind. It hurts my heart

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  5. Hi Chas. You’re right about Huck Finn. It wasn’t as good as Tom Sawyer. In fact, if there had been another writer doing the same kind of thing back then, I don’t think Mark Twain would have been as popular. He was a great story teller, but his endings tend to drag on and on, such as with Huck Finn and Connecticut Yankee.

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  6. Good morning. When I woke around 5:00 a.m. I saw the temp was 77°. It did not change much overnight.

    Mowing was easier yesterday because I think about all the new grass died. It did not take long. On one area of the slope I need to plant something so we won’t get a gully.

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  7. It was years ago that I read Connecticut Yankee. I remember some soldiers riding bicycles. It occurred to me that even with his knowledge, the technology to build a bicycle didn’t exist then. It’s simple to us. But think of the technology involved in such a simple thing.
    I read Huck Finn as a child. But it was a reading requirement for English 11 when I went to Carolina. Another requirement was to read either The Pilgrim’s Progress or the first five books of the Bible. I forgot the others.

    Kim is correct. They are erasing a large portion of our history. A lot of people will never know the damage the reconstruction period did to the South.
    Question: What do you tell your children when they ask what that thing on your stomach is? (your naval)
    My mother said, “That’s where the Yankee shot you.” I believe that until I was a teen ager.

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  8. Good morning all! Busy times here with grandchildren. I hope everyone is well. I haven,t even looked at the blog as I have been using my computer time to work on some online classes.

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  10. Chas, I do not recall what I told our son about his belly button. But I think as a child, I had a bit of confusion over it being my navel and the fact that my father was in the navy or serving on a navel ship. 🙂

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  11. If we are consistent, shouldn’t we also allow that today’s quote from Thomas Sowell – “What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.” – can apply to the matter of same-sex marriage? In fact, if someone against SSM were to post this quote on Facebook, their liberal friends would be all over them about it.

    How would you argue against that? This is an honest question, not merely a “challenge”. I try to look at these issues from different angles. In fact, that’s how I often “get in trouble” on Facebook, & even sometimes on here. 🙂 I try to offer my more partisan friends different perspectives, with the result being that some my liberal friends think of me as more conservative, & my conservative friends see a (gasp!) liberal streak in me.

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  12. Chas – Your comment about bicycles in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court reminded me that I had recently been surprised to read about how early bicycles came into being.

    Here’s the Wikipedia article on bicycles. The chain-driven bicycle was invented around 1885, a few years before Twain wrote the book. But earlier models of two-wheeled, human-powered transportation were around for quite a while before that. Interesting.

    There’s a photo of a bicycle-like things from 1820, along with some other photos of older bikes. I’ve always wondered how people got up on those old ones with the very high front wheels.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle

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  13. Polygamy should be OK, too, of course — that’s my issue with pure libertarianism. I don’t think it’s good government as God intended it to be. We are a fallen people and in that sense God established the civil authorities to provide some boundaries. That ss marriage — which is trying to change our very created nature — is now a norm goes beyond even common sense boundaries (and forcing the rest of our society and culture to conform to that). The civil government has become the rebel, encouraging people to toss virtually all sexual boundaries — and the very created order itself — aside.

    So I really don’t see where that ends at this point.

    I was asked if I had any ideas for a feature-type story for 4th of July and the only thing I could think of was how (seemingly) hopelessly we are now divided in this country. I, for one, feel little like celebrating — and I don’t think I’m alone. And want to guess how many rainbow fireworks displays we’ll be treated to?

    I see also where there’s a flag-burning (planned?) in NYC.

    And the more I think about the rainbow White House stunt, the more irritated I feel. Half the nation (or just barely under that) still disapproves of gay marriage, after all.

    This is very depressing in many ways.

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  15. Interesting, this article says that the rainbow profile pics so many of our FB friends adopted over the weekend was part of a FB program.

    http://conservativepost.com/everyone-who-changed-their-facebook-photos-to-rainbow-just-got-duped/

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    Over a million people changed their facebook profile pictures to a rainbow filter in support of gay marriage.

    New reports reveal that the “Celebrate Pride” tool may not have been the best idea…

    According to Daily Mail, this tool was actually Facebook’s way of performing psychological testing on their users.

    Cesar Hidalgo wrote on Facebook yesterday. “The question is, how long will it take for people to change their profile pictures back to normal.”

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  16. I recently watched ‘Gone With The Wind’ for the first time. The only character I had any sympathy with was Melanie. I found myself longing to wring Scarlett’s spoilt little neck the whole time, Ashley was pathetically weak, and Rhett was infuriatingly dense. I agree with Chas that they aren’t likely to ban either book. Some people are getting carried away in their enthusiasm, but it won’t last long. They’ll soon realize that the way to correct injustice is to remember that it happened. Wiping out the record wipes out the memory. The ancient Egyptians understood that – if there was a Pharaoh they wanted to forget, they scratched out all mention of him (or her, in one case) in their records and buried or destroyed their memorials.

    ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’ present an interesting picture of American culture in the early 1800’s. They correspond with what Dickens observed in both his fiction ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ and his non-fiction ‘American Notes’ both written after Dickens visit to America in the early 1840s. I recently read ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ to my parents, and my father pointed out that the characters of the American con men strongly resembled the King and the Duke in ‘Huck Finn’ – carpet baggers before the Reconstruction. Interestingly, O Henry also writes about traveling con man in many of his short stories, and he wrote in the early 1900s. It seems to have been a consistent cultural phenomenon.

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  18. Donna, I suspect a lot of those Facebook memes and trends, like the recent ‘Nazarene’ symbol, are a method of studying trends and gathering information, which is why I don’t do them.

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  19. Mumsee, psychology and sociology . Difficult fory brain to switch from 70yo female c/o, to reAL sentence structure. I am just used to spitting out facts.

    Phos, I agree with your assessment of “Gone with the Wind”. The book is a much better read, but emphasizes her selfishness even more. “Scarlett ” I enjoyed as it carried her to a point of repentance and selflessness.

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  20. roscuro brought back a memory of a book report (“Gone With the Wind”) I gave in high school on. I mentioned in my talk that the character I most admired was Melanie and was taken to task by a classmate (who went on to become a very successful Hollywood/entertainment industry attorney, so there you go) who said she was a pushover and Scarlet was the most admirable. 🙂

    But I’ve had some Scarlet moments in my life, too. 🙂 She was determined to overcome.

    Tear down those velvet drapes!

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  21. Amazon has proven themselves to be too stupid to give my money too, so I won’t.

    Amazon has banned the Confederate flag, calling it hateful and inappropriate. But don’t worry, some flags are more equal than others. You can still purchase the Hamas and Hezbollah flags there, and they’re still the go-to source for your Taliban action figure needs.

    http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/amazoncom-no-confederate-flags-hamas-and-hezbollah-flags-available

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  22. And don’t buy that nonsense about half the country supporting gay marriage. That’s propaganda spread by the WH, activists, and the media.

    Every time the issue has gone to the voters it’s been defeated, even in liberal Utopias like Cali. That’s why they needed the SC to do this, because they couldn’t do it without them.

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  23. Anonymous – In my own life, & what I see on Facebook, it seems the majority are in favor of same-sex marriage. Maybe they’re just more vocal about their views.

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  24. I suspect that many of those who say they ‘support’ gay marriage in the polls (and virtually all polls for the past few years have indicated a close-to-even split with the “pro” gay marriage side gaining steam) are part of the passive, “go along to get along” crowd.

    They have no reason they can cite to disagree (most are secular) and the entertainment media has been pushing the concept for years, if not decades, now. So, they go along with what seems to be the prevailing tide (even though they may be somehow bothered by it all).

    They’ve mostly succumbed to peer pressure at this stage.

    One thing is certain — younger people (30 and younger) support (more actively) gay marriage in much larger numbers. That probably will stay the case as they grow older, now that it’s gained such official sanction within the government and, more importantly, the popular culture.

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  25. And both Karen and I live in dark blue, liberal strongholds in the U.S., so we probably do see much more of the “pro” side being expressed publicly than some others who live in “flyover” states. 🙂

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  26. Donna – I thought of sharing that article on Facebook, but its info comes from the Daily Mail, which liberals view as the British version of our National Enquirer – a tabloid. Unless the article is on something non-political, I also hesitate to share things from Fox News, because of how it is viewed. If I want to make a point to certain people, I want them to be open to the point.

    Okay, playing “devil’s advocate” here, if we agree with Sowell’s quote as it applies to liberals, aren’t we being inconsistent to say it doesn’t apply to our more conservative preferences? As a secular nation, do we have the right to demand laws that we think are moral according to the Bible? (Yes, I realize that polygamy would most likely be the next step.) But on what to we base our laws in this day & age?

    Again, I’m not necessarily arguing for one way or the other, but questioning to try to refine my own views, as I did with my recent question about marijuana.

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  27. “soon to be banned book” 😀 Lol

    All communist, dictator type leaders erase the history or change it. George Orwell’s book had a lot of basis in fact. Only some of the actual statues and embedded pictures in the nation’s capitol and other such places has kept that from happening even more. That is now being advocated. Once a generation is gone and the memories are fuzzy, it is easier and easier to lead the foolish young.

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  29. Karen,

    Anon was me.

    That just shows how close minded your supposedly open minded liberal friends are. They don’t like the messenger so they ignore what they could learn from an alternate source.

    And do your so-called “friends” show you the same courtesy by not linking to the Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and other liberal Dem/MSM sources? No, they don’t. So why do you?

    Seriously, why do you let them dictate the rules of the argument?

    Close minded folks like these will never be “open” to your point if they won’t let you make it in your own way. No thanks, I don’t play the game that way, they certainly don’t, and neither should you.

    PS,

    While that may be true about support for ssm in liberal areas like you and Donna live in, it ain’t in the other 35 states. Those so-called polls are so manipulated as to be worthless. Question wording and the area you poll will get you results like those, which is why they do it. But when voters have a say, it doesn’t get near the support. That is changing because we’ve let liberals control education in this country, but it’s not there yet, as voters have shown every time they’ve been asked. Just one more reason to not let the state educate your children with values that don’t match yours. Too many of “us” let “them” get away with it and then act all shocked when our kids disregard the biblical worldview that we’ve taught them.

    They haven’t won yet, but they will in the end, mostly because we let them, by letting them control the conversation. I refuse to play their game. I could care less what the world thinks of me and my views, I only answer to God. Some may choose to be more passive and try to get along and have dialogue, but I see little point in that.

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  31. Good thoughts here: http://thecripplegate.com/a-gospel-reminder-about-homosexuality-and-other-demonic-worldviews/
    blockquote>I recently got to lead a small group through II Timothy chapter 2, and it’s fascinating to see how Paul ends the chapter. He says, “24 The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”

    It’s not only a great reminder to see that they are blind and need to come to their senses. It’s not only a great reminder that we need to be gentle, patient, able to teach and be kind. But, I think a reminder that we need today is that knowledge of the truth comes after God grants someone repentance. We always try to invert the two. God needs to grant repentance and then someone will be saved and start believing rightly about life matters–not the other way around.

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  32. Karen @1200, the answer would be in both your country and mine, the laws were based on English common law. Your founding fathers often looked to Blackstone’s Commentaries on English Common Law. The building of the English Common Law took over a thousand years, and has its root in the codes of Rome. Another fulfillment, I believe of the vision of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, where the “feet of iron mixed with clay” represented the kingdoms after Rome which would be partly strong and partly weak.

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  33. Roscuro – Thanks. I am aware of how our laws first were formed, but these days, sadly, we live in a much more secular world which has rejected much of anything even hinting of “religion”. It seems the clay is taking over.

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  34. This week, our Pastor’s words from Sunday keep rolling through my mind – “No matter what happens outside of these walls, it cannot touch the Gospel.”

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  35. AJ – I understand your point, & respect your stance. But for me, when I want to get something across to my liberal friends, I want to share something they will at least consider. When I see one of my particularly liberal friends sharing from Alternet or Addicting Info or other similar sites, I shake my head & roll my eyes. I may read, or at least skim, the article, but I am automatically skeptical of the accuracy of the information. And that’s how they look at certain conservative sources.

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  37. Google Chrome is not working for me today. I keep getting this message when I try to launch it: “Google Chrome has stopped working.”

    A couple suggestions I’ve seen for fixing the problem include uninstalling it &/or installing a new version of it. My question is – If I do either of those, will my bookmarks come back, or will they be lost?

    I have a bunch of articles bookmarked to save them for later reading. I’d hate to lose them. 😦

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  38. Karen, that was the point I was trying to make. Our laws are not based so much on religion, although it has influenced it for good or ill, but on tradition. There is no good reason that Western society took the benign turn it did towards freedom and human dignity, other than God chose to do it. There is nothing in the root of our laws which made us different than, say, Indian civilization (which has actually lasted longer in terms of uniformity of religion and tradition – now Indians increasingly view Christianity as threatening to their monolithic tradition, once again demonstrating that Christ brings not peace, but a sword when it comes to how people respond to the Gospel). Rome was a pagan Republic and the leaders who slowly added to what became Common Law included the polygamist Charlemagne (yes, he had more than one wife), the wise Alfred the Great, the weak and foolish tyrant King John and his alternately supportive and rebellious nobility, the loved and hated Edward I (depending on whether you were Welsh, English, Scottish or Irish), and many other people of good and bad intention. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; as the rivers of water, He turns it wherever He wills.” (Proverbs)

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  39. Scarlett was what they call a “Steel Magnolia”. There were lots of women like that after the Civil war when their men were either killed or crippled.

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  40. Well, whaddaya know! Google Chrome is working again. Yay!

    (But I’d still appreciate an answer to my question, if anyone knows, for possible future reference.)

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  41. Like Karen, on FB I always try to share only neutral/mainstream sources.

    I rarely tangle with liberals on FB, however, as I post also (primarily in many ways) as a local journalist.

    I’ll post my more personal thoughts that are shared only with a smaller list of friends who are either Christian (though some are liberal Christians who would disagree with me on issues like gay marriage) or people whom I sense are open to the gospel for one reason or another. So I’m also (somewhat) careful there with at least the tone of links that I choose to post and on how I engage in comments that may disagree.

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  44. It’s me!

    Some of the fallout — an overreaction?:

    http://abc7news.com/religion/san-jose-pastor-puts-all-weddings-on-hold-following-scotus-ruling/817009/

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    SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — One of the South Bay’s largest Christian churches has put all weddings on hold because of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling.

    Pastor Dick Bernal of Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose told ABC7 News on Friday he would never perform a gay wedding.

    No ceremonies have been cancelled so far, but Pastor Bernal plans to meet with other church leaders Tuesday.
    ____________________________

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  45. It’s me!

    http://abc7news.com/religion/san-jose-pastor-puts-all-weddings-on-hold-following-scotus-ruling/817009/

    SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — One of the South Bay’s largest Christian churches has put all weddings on hold because of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling.

    Pastor Dick Bernal of Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose told ABC7 News on Friday he would never perform a gay wedding.

    No ceremonies have been cancelled so far, but Pastor Bernal plans to meet with other church leaders Tuesday.

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  47. I did not find a whole lot of support for so-called Gay marriage on facebook. One argued (not very effectively) and lost a few fb friends. A few commented against it and answered some who made comments against them. Most people ignored it. That tells us a lot. I have been somewhat surprised at some of the people I do know who are more liberal, but are not for changing the definition of marriage.

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  52. Long, crazy day — scrambling to write about a star ballerina and lightning at the beach. Then remembered they told us if our cars weren’t out of the 4-story garage by 7, they’d be towed since they’re cleaning it tonight. Barely got it out in time …

    Then realized on the drive home I used the wrong word in a quote (phased instead of fazed) since I was working so fast. But that’s getting changed now, I think.

    Argh.

    The ballerina — I did one of the first interviews with her when she was only 12 and had just been taken under the wing of a local ballet company. I remember she showed up for the interview after school, skinny girl dressed in overalls. She was very shy. 🙂 Cool to see her so famous today 20 years later. 🙂

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  54. Well, I was gonna say happy July and welcome to the second half of the year, but it looks like some West Coaster beat me into July, if barely in.

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