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Our Daily Thread 7-11-15

Good Morning!

This weekend the pics are all from California. We have flowers, cats, and meet up pics. 🙂

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Thanks to Donna and Michelle for the pics. 

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On this day in 1798 The U.S. Marine Corps was formally re-established by “An Act for Establishing a Marine Corps” passed by the U.S. Congress. The act also created the U.S. Marine Band. The Marines were first commissioned by the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775.

In 1804 the United States’ first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was killed by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel.

In 1977 The Medal of Freedom was awarded posthumously to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a White House ceremony.

And in 1979 the abandoned U.S. space station Skylab returned to Earth. It burned up in the atmosphere and showered debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.

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Quote of the Day

“All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.”

John Quincy Adams

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 Readers choice for music today.

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Anyone have a QoD?

105 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-11-15”

  3. At times, like if the lady next door doesn’t have a light on, it can be totally dark on my deck.
    Last night, around nine, I was sitting out there contemplating and praying about things. The stars were out and they were bright. (Not like in Texas. The song is correct. In Texas, they sparkle.).
    Anyhow, I was out there, and a bright light passed across the way. Momentarily, I though it was a meteor. But it was a firefly.
    It occurred to me that as it crossed a star that was light years away, God is aware of the star and the firefly. Both at the same time.
    When you try to comprehend all that, your mind gets befuddled.
    David must have experienced that. But he was a poet.

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  4. Good morning. I always enjoy seeing the meet-up pics. 🙂

    My musical contribution is the same video I sent to my piano students this week. At 13 minutes, it’s longer than what I usually send (or post here), but it is a very exciting duet for two pianos by Anton Arensky. If you like classical music the tiniest bit, and have 13 minutes to watch — and it’s as much fun to watch as it is to listen to — I think you will love this! 🙂

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  5. If there’s a meet up next month, there probably won’t be any pictures posted per Mrs L’s preference. But it is nice to put a face to a name. I know which is Michelle, but who is the blond? Which one is Donna or Linda in the other picture?

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  7. Michelle is pictured with AnnMS, and in the other picture Donna is on the left and Linda the right.

    And Donna looks like one of my good local friends. 🙂

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  11. It was a rather dreary day at the beach when Linda and I were there — it’s a quick drive from the paper where we met up. We walked a ways and the sat on a bench and talked about all kinds of things, including what a blessing the blog has been to everyone.

    Annie Oakley does have very big eyes. Tess was giving her the business this morning, they both jumped up on the bed after I’d gotten up and Tess was giving Annie her I’m-gonna-herd-you intense border collie eye.

    Border collies can move the sheep just with their intense stare.

    But it doesn’t always work so well with cats. Annie just casually looked back at her and stayed curled up near my pillow.

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  13. I noticed one place, toward the end of the video, I think, where a strand of a few seemed to be stuck to her face, and, despite tossing her head around a couple times, the hair didn’t want to come unstuck. I hoped she wouldn’t get distracted by that and forget her music. 🙂

    Speaking from a little bit of experience with that. 😉

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  14. In Virginia, our minister of music had twin girls. He taught them the piano. Once as pre-teens, they were performing. Bothe on the same piano, one on the bass and the other on the tenor (if that’s what you call it,) keys. At one point, they got up and walked around the piano and switched sides. Everyone. was impressed. They are grown and gone now.

    When watching June on “Meeting in the Air” I wondered what Merle Travis would have done with the guitar break. So I went to YouTube to try to find something by Travis. I could only find “I Am A Pilgrim”, but not one I wanted to post.

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  16. Well, I have a piano master class to get ready for that I’m attending this afternoon. A contemporary composer of much music for piano students will be in our area. I’m excited to be able to attend his class this afternoon.

    Have a great day, all!

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  17. Interesting 6 Arrows, But I probably missed some of that. Because of Elvera’s complaints, I had a hearing test that revealed that I miss a lot of the high end. e.g. I might misunderstand some things that are pitched high.

    The twins were amazing. They were identical and you couldn’t tell them apart. The mother could. She would bring them to the nursery with different colored bows, but otherwise, dressed alike. Once, on a visit to Williamsburg, I talked to a guy who knew them in high school. He said they always dressed different. One day they came in dressed alike and everyone, including boy friends, couldn’t tell them apart.
    They live in different cities now.

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  18. Chas, I couldn’t understand all of what she sang, either — especially the part where she mostly covered her mouth with her hands. And I wasn’t sure of what exactly the page turner yelled out that one time. 😉

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  19. Did you talk about me?

    Today is eldest daughter’s 32nd birthday, we were in Baltimore at the time, husband working at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Interesting to live there, no desire to ever go back. But some good came out of it, obviously.

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  21. Donna, I will be at LAX for about six hours on Monday evening if you want to come keep me company, or, better yet, pray with me for my flights! Flying in on Southwest and then go wait at the Virgin Australia counter for my standby flight.

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  23. Haha — when I was a teenager, we sometimes would go to the airport to see our favorite rock stars coming and going. 🙂

    I have a port meeting I’m covering that night unfortunately. I feel bad we never connected. 😦 Will you be coming home for Christmas though?

    I dreamed about Christmas last night — I was going into a store and there were carolers outside. I remember thinking “wow, it’s Christmas already?”

    It will be here before we know it.

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  24. LAX was my favorite for people watching. My aunt lived quite close to it and was adamant we were to call any time we were at the airport and she would come get us or stay for a visit.

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  27. From one extreme to the other. Looks like California may get its rain. Lots and lots of it.

    From the LA Times:
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    Californians should brace themselves for one of the strongest El Niño events to hit the Pacific Ocean in years.

    Unusually warmer temperatures of equatorial water in the Pacific and shifting winds continued through July, indicating that El Niño will be strong through the fall and into next spring, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.

    In fact, scientists say the likelihood that a significant El Niño will happen is more than 90%, and some models suggest there is a nearly 100% chance it will be strong this fall.

    Meteorologist Scott Sukup of the National Weather Service in Oxnard says the region could see above-normal rainfall with more strong storms like those of past El Niños.

    He said it is too early to tell what the strong El Niño will actually bring, but the odds for a wet winter are looking good.

    Past El Niños have brought in excess of a dozen inches of rain to downtown L.A.: more than 20 inches in 1957-58 and 1972-73, more than 15 inches in 1965-66, and more than 25 inches in 1997-98.
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  28. My giant bougainvillea bush in the front yard (the raspberry colored flowers pictured) is one of the things that is doing OK even in this drought. But it needs trimming, as do all my gigantic trees in the back …

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  29. Very enjoyable master class today. Seven students of four area piano teachers played for critique. They did quite well overall, and the composer/teacher doing the class had excellent comments for the students, drawing even more out of them pianistically as he worked with them. I was inspired. 🙂

    The youngest student was a little boy who was just 5 1/2, and has been playing for 10 months. And you should have heard him play! Playing in different areas of the keyboard, crossing hands, all sorts of things. His focus was impeccable, he almost looked startled when everyone applauded loudly at the end of his first piece. 🙂 His short little legs barely hung halfway down from the piano bench to the floor, and his bow at the end of his session was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. 🙂

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  30. Today is Prairie Day, the annual celebration of the town. Many of those raised here return for the big event. They had a Fireman’s Challenge and the four older boys all signed up, competed, and finished. It was a rugged course and I am very proud of them. They were exhausted and they are hard working guys. They did well.

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  32. I’m going to give you the first part of a popular childhood ditty, & ask you to finish it. I suspect there may be slightly different versions, but I’m not sure…

    “John & Mary, sitting in a tree,
    K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”

    Also, there’s something my MIL used to say, from her childhood, that I had never heard myself. I don’t remember all of it, but it started like this…

    “One-two-three,
    Mother caught a flea.”

    And there was something about “Flea died, Mother cried,” but I don’t know if that came right after the first part, or if there were more lines in between. Anyone else familiar with this little ditty?

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  33. There was a five hundred dollar cash prize for the winner of the men and another for the winner of the women. They already had their eyes on how they were going to waste it. “Unfortunately”, they persuaded one of their friends to enter at the last minute, convinced him to get some gloves, and he proceeded to take the first place. He is putting the money toward his college fund. I am glad, my boys work hard and make too much money that they waste to get any “easy” money like that.

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  37. Okay, Mumsee used the name “Tommy”. Would that mean throwing in a name different from John in my version, or would it still have been John in the baby carriage?

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  38. I always heard it as the boy’s name “in the baby carriage”, which I didn’t think made sense. But then not too long ago, I heard it said as Boy’s name “with the baby carriage, which does make sense. Then I wonder if I’d been hearing it wrong all those years ago, or if there was a different version.

    (I should have used “Johnny” instead of “John”, to keep the cadence of the verse.)

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  39. The way I heard it would be mocking two kids, teasing them about having a crush on each other, and then throwing in another child’s name as the baby (which no school-age child wants to be, either).

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  41. Cheryl – That’s interesting. I never heard it that way. It is interesting how our little childhood ditties & games vary by region or family or generation.

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  43. I think for us it was sometimes “baby” and sometimes someone’s name, but not the same name as the “husband” ever, as far as I know.

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  48. This reminded me of the dozens of these things I once knew.
    Draw circles in a baby’s hand then “step” up their arm and tickle them under the chin while you sing, “Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. One step, two step, get you under there!”

    The time honored, “Amen Brother Ben, shot a rooster and killed a hen. Round the house and through the hall. Hope to God I get it all”. (that last part I can’t find anywhere, but it is how my father’s family said it. With 12 children, I am sure one chicken wasn’t enough – they only cut into 8 or 9 pieces depending on if you cut out the wish bone piece separately which would be the most choice piece in my opinion) That reminds me that my child probably doesn’t know how many pieces you can cut from a chicken. I admit that despite instruction in the fine art of chicken butchery I cannot cut one up either. Something about the knife going through the joint makes me willing to pay the butcher to do it for me.

    I know that I have told you many times about my father telling me about he Birds and the Bees but it still makes me laugh at the memory: ” Never stand under a bird, and never sit on a bee”.

    Oh, and another of my favorites that I remembered yesterday as one of the grandmother’s was holding the Birthday Girl singing Little Bunny Foo Foo, is to hold an older baby on you knee, bounce them and sign “Ride little pony. Go to town. Ride little pony. Don’t fall down”. At the fall down part you slide your foot out so it seems the pony is falling.

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  51. Getting some housework done before church today, I’m still struggling with what to do with Sundays now that church is at the end of the day … Laundry, dishes, sock-sorting finished or in progress. Plus a work call to deal with. Maybe some time to read ahead on the sermon before leaving for church in 3 hours. Maybe I’ll take the dogs to the park at the cliffs, although I think there might be a free concert (rock) there today so, maybe not. Parking will be impossible.

    I’m looking forward to when we’ll be back in our own place for 10 a.m. services again …

    Next week we’re meeting at 3 p.m. again but at a different location, the PCUSA church at the beach (our pastor once served on staff there and it’s always been a more evangelical congregation — now, apparently, they’re finally looking to leave the denomination to join a new one that has been taking in many of the disaffected Presby churches — it’s more conservative than the mainline, but not as conservative as say Cheryl’s or my Presbyterian denominations).

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  52. We had a time, in the middle of the singing portion of the service, for the sick to come forward to be anointed with oil & prayed for, & also for those facing very difficult, seemingly-impossible situations. (The song we had just been singing had something in it about God being our healer & doing the impossible.) Of course, Lee & I went forward.

    Do your churches anoint people with oil at the altar? (This is not a weekly thing for us, but we do it periodically.)

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  55. Donna’s animals are observing the Sabbath, Karen.
    I have never been in a Baptist church that anointed with oil.
    My parent’s church occasionally had special prayer meetings.

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  60. Our church has a Wednesday healing service with lunch provided afterwards. It isn’t oil so much as it is a solid oil in a small container and the priest marks the sign of the cross on your forehead, but there are special prayers for healing

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  61. Off to work on the Sabbath — working on our budget, that is. I usually do that on hubby’s paydays every other Thursday, but the last few days since he was paid have been so busy with other things, I haven’t had time to divide the cash into envelopes, and have just been pulling money out of the bank envelope when we need it. Time to get down to business!

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  63. I attended a Charismatic church that used olive oil to pray fro the sick. Our current church uses oil to anoint new pastors at ordination.

    Donna- if your upcoming rains are like ours have been, you won’t be in a drought for long. You’ll just have to deal with floods.

    And our summer heat has arrived. Along with the high humidity. There is a reason we say this state is called “Misery”.

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  64. Our birds have been thoroughly enjoying the ability to eat for free, even though there is lots of food available elsewhere. Birds with young in the nest, or fledglings that need to learn to find their own food, especially like the ease of a feeder.

    Anyway, we have three feeders full of sunflower seed (one is very small), one of nyger, and one of sugar water. Two of the three sunflower feeders have been emptying particularly quickly, leaving them only the one right outside the kitchen window. This morning during the six or eight minutes I was eating breakfast, I watched the following:

    -a feeder with about four species of birds at the same time
    -in a few minutes, I saw house sparrows, house finches, downy woodpeckers, nuthatches, goldfinches, a young cardinal, a red-bellied woodpecker (I think we got one this morning . . . male and female both came within minutes yesterday), and there might have been another one or two.
    -the young cardinal has finally learned that he is bigger than the other feeder birds and doesn’t have to wait timidly till they let him land; further, he has learned that he can move his head just a little bit toward another bird and they’ll give him more space; I also watched him move 180 degrees on the feeder, edging around the outside with his feet until he found a spot he liked better. I’ve never seen a bird that big do that instead of flying around the feeder, but young birds just learning their bodies can do funny things.
    -a male house finch landed on the top of the pole that holds up the feeder, on the horizontal support, with a young bird on each side of him. Almost immediately they flew off, and a minute or so later they flew back. This time the male flew straight onto the feeder (where he proceeded to chase off young house finches that weren’t his progeny), while his youngsters waited at the top.
    -eventually one of the young house finches got tired of waiting for Dad, and tried to land on the feeder, but it was full and the baby just went right past the feeder and presumably onto the ground or the bush below. A minute or so later its sibling tried the same thing. Though by that time there was room to land, its landing skills aren’t very good yet, and it too went right past the feeder and down. Then one of them flew back up, landed on the roof of the feeder, and from there flew successfully onto the feeder, where its father fed it. The other one also succeeded with its second try.
    -a young male downy found the feeder too full to land on, but rather than wait on the horizontal support as most birds do, he decided to do a woodpecker landing and land on the “tree” (the pole itself). That worked well for a few seconds, but poles are much more slippery than trees, and after a moment he slid a couple inches, then recovered, then slid several inches, and when he found himself sliding quickly he took to his wings to find a safer place to land. My husband saw one do that last summer, but I didn’t see it.

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  65. I enjoyed that view of the activity at the feeders, Cheryl.

    Sixth Arrow got her first professional haircut today. Her hair had been to her waist; now she has a cute bob. She had enough hair to donate, so the cut was free.

    Hubby took her, and reported to me after they’d gotten home (with daughter out of earshot) that when the stylist called her name and summoned her over to the chair, daughter galloped on all fours to the seat. 😀 Hubby said there were all kinds of people there (including himself, I suspect), looking like they were holding back snickers.

    Oh, what fun to be seven. 😉

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  66. So glad to be at the office where I got to see the meetup pictures and get the full effect of Annie’s big eyes! Lovely pictures!

    My phone is having some charging difficulties ever since Miss Bosley chewed on the really good charger. Guess I need to “bite the bullet” and buy another new charger.

    I went to a healing service at the Methodist church and everyone who went in line for prayer got annointed. I felt an unexpected sensation as I was annointed. I can’t really say what it was. It was not a big feeling, but just a little something. I believe recently a member at my Baptist church who recently got a difficult diagnosis asked for prayer and annointing with the elders. So they will do it if asked.

    I came down to the office to do book reviews so I guess I better get along to that while it’s still today.But since y’all were talking ditty songs, my father used to sing one about Ole Dan Tucker…Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man, washed his face in the frying pan, combed his hair with a wagon wheel, died with a toothache in his heel.
    Another one I remember was Down by the river, glimmer, glimmer, stood a fair maiden slimmer, slimmer, teeth knocked out and her hair lop-sided, tell by the moonlight she was cross-eye-ded…or something like that. I probably mangled her worse than the ditty did! 🙂

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  67. Seven year old made such a delicious cherry pie the other day, we had to ask her to make another. He who is faithful in little things…. She gathered all of the cherries, pitted them, made the crust, the whole shebang. She does a much better job on the crust than I ever did.

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  68. Some of you may be surprised to learn that the Charlie Daniels Band played in my little Connecticut town today. It was a benefit concert for MDA. (No, we didn’t go.)

    In other news, our home has the “aroma” of a dead mouse in the wall.

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  85. Eau de Dead Mouse, nice.

    I’ve been doing contortions on a “live chat” troubleshooting call (TV connection went out — so many cords back there behind the big cabinet that had to be pushed out!) and they finally just said they’d send me a new DVR box.

    Weird time at the dog park late today — a couple of the guys, 70-ish, started telling very racist “stories” so I finally got up and left (though with a good-natured wave — I know them both and they sometimes do this and know it bugs me; I was even called a liberal by one of them 🙂 ).

    Always a good reminder that racism really does remain among the things that linger in our fallen natures. 😦

    So now I have no TV for a few days. Sigh.

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  87. My computer sounds like it’s going to explode, so I’m calling it a night on this thing.

    New day tomorrow. You all have a good night tonight.

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  89. Shower/tub drain now appears to be in worsening, critical condition.

    Don’t want to do it, but it may be time to call in a plumber.

    From the looks of it tonight, I may not be able to take a shower in the morning.

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  95. So why didn’t you go all the way to 100? This should be #95, which is supposed to be our high temperature today. But I won’t post all the way to the predicted “feels like” temp of 107°F!

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  102. Yeah, I don’t really think it counts to find an old thread no one is on and make as many posts as necessary to get to 100.

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