53 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-15-16”

  1. “Morning everyone.
    I decided not to go to the YMCA today. Nothing really falling but the schools are on a 2 hr delay and we have to cross Echo Mountain to get there. So I decided it isn’t worth the risk.
    It’s 24 degrees and nasty out there.
    It’s 71 and cozy here. 🙂

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  2. Good morning, Chas.
    I think you were wise to stay home.

    It’s a balmy 64 here this morning, with a high of 75 this afternoon. Even for Houston,
    It’s been an extremely mild winter. Only negative to that is te mosquitos are generally worse when we don’t freeze…

    I had a great time with my girlfriend…my tummy muscles are sore from laughing!

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  3. Both my girls are off of school today (President’s Day). Scott’s left for work…
    Becca has a friend coming over at 12:30 and Lindsey has to finish her chemistry project. I need to deal with online defensive driving for a speeding ticket…yuck!

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  4. I remember when Presidents’ Day was established it was for Washington and Lincoln only, since their birthdays are both in February. Federal offices only had to close once instead of twice with a single day. But now it’s used to honor all the President s, whether they deserve honor or not. Most do, but I can think of two recently who do not, as well as Andrew Johnson who was impeached.

    What say the historians among us?

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  5. Peter, not a historian, but I’d put Lincoln among those who don’t deserve honor. I’d be inclined to have a holiday that honors Washington, as the father of our country, and leave it at that. And I don’t care one way or another whether we have Martin Luther King Jr. day–but I don’t think that it makes sense that he is the only person honored with his own holiday.

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  6. I was thinking more about Cheryl’s question on in-laws. I think all of you can read the high regard I have for my ex-mother-in-law. I drop by her house and visit with her. She came here to stay with BG while we were in Maryland. I have always said that she never interfered but if you ever asked her opinion she would ask if you REALLY wanted it and then she would tell you in plain English exactly what she thought. When I told her I was divorcing her son, all she said was I had put up with him longer than anyone else would have. She told him it was a mistake from the beginning and he didn’t need to be married to anyone. 😉

    Looking back, she took sister-in-law and me shopping once. She took me shopping by myself once to buy what I hadn’t received as shower gifts before BG was born. She did meet me sometimes to shop at Wal-Mart so she could put BG in her cart and I could shop. We have rarely been out to lunch and never just the two of us. I still feel like I can go to house, walk in the back door, pour myself a glass of tea, and talk to her.

    I think trying to force someone to have a relationship with someone else is doomed to failure. Friendships and relationships occur naturally or they just don’t happen.

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  7. Neither Elvera nor I had in-law problems.
    My parents loved her as much as I did.
    Elvera’s parents wanted her to marry someone with a job. But I belonged to her. That made me part of the family. We all got along great.

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  8. Peter, not all presidents have been good nor bad. If we continued to honor them on individual days we would have petitions for 40+ holidays. It makes more sense to honor ALL of them on one day. Can you imagine the outrage if/when Obama comes up for his own holiday as the first Afro-American president if we don’t vote for it. Let him be honored with Washington and Lincoln, not individually. As far as Marin Luther King Day. I would think it would make more sense to have Civil Rights Remembrance Day and move it to February which is once again a whole month set aside for the history of ONE group of people.

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  13. Amazing. Research serendipity continues. I’ve had two in the last 11 hours. Which do you want first? The guy from Australia or the genealogy surprise?

    Ah, too bad. I have to dance Zumba . . . maybe later. 🙂

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  14. A sitting president?

    Not really. Covered a local appearance by Reagan when he was president and gave an outdoor speech somewhere near the port — a couple of us from the paper did the honors but were nowhere near him, of course, it was a mob scene with every media outlet imaginable along with throngs of other people.

    I met Jeb Bush in the early 1990s. So if he’s elected (highly unlikely of course) I can lay claim to that maybe.

    I helped cover a Trump speech here in September.

    Jimmy Carter has been here for Habitat projects, but I can’t remember meeting him when he was here, though I did do Habitat stories.

    When I was little we went to the airport for Nixon once.

    And we snapped a nice home-style “brownie” type pic of Reagan, close up, when he was running for governor and made a local appearance (my mom was a volunteer on that campaign). He wasn’t famous yet, other than as an actor I suppose, and my girlfriend and I were probably about 12 (?) when we went with my mom to see him give a speech at a small local shopping center. We took the picture of him sitting in the back seat of the car, he smiled at us for the shot. 🙂 I have no idea where that faded picture is now, of course …

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  15. Morning ya’ll….it is supposed to be a beautifully warm week here in our neck of the woods in CO….the snow is melting but we still have deep drifts out in the meadow area….
    I’ve never met a president….I would have loved to have met Reagan….
    My Dad had his picture taken with Carter…of all the Presidents why did it have to be him?!! 🙂

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  16. If President Obama came to my house, I would serve him a cup of tea and sit and chat on the deck or in the living room, but I would not go to his house to see him. Or go to Boise to see him. Or go to the neighbor’s to see him. But that is true of a lot of the President’s.

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  17. It’s a work day for us today — but with everything else pretty much closed for a long weekend, it’ll be the usual challenge to find something to write about.

    We’re still in our winter heat wave but they were saying (as of a couple days ago, I haven’t checked the weather forecast since) that we may get rain Thursday. Promises, promises.

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  21. I cannot imagine, in my wildest imaginings, what it must be like to be at that dog park in a heat wave. Would people be wearing swim suits under their parkas? Do they put up giant fans so the dogs are not too warm? Do they have pools to step into? Do they break the ice for them so they can step into them? It is so terrifying.

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  23. The flicker was sticking out his tongue at anyone who doesn’t like woodpeckers.

    The northern flicker has the longest tongue of any North American bird; most of its food is ants licked up off the ground, though in winter it comes to suet feeders. But I’ve noticed that periodically when it’s eating, it puts up its head and flicks its tongue in and out, maybe to clean its beak or its tongue. So I watched for a posture that seemed likely to be a tongue-flicking moment, and it took several pictures to get the shot, but I got it.

    Yes, Donna, that is its tongue and not a worm, and when you consider the tongue has to extend the full length of its beak and into its head, it’s easy to see how it has the honor of “longest tongue.”

    This one is a male (see his mustache?) and he has been coming to the suet a lot this winter; usually we only see him every week or two in winter, but this mild winter he has been coming several times a week, sometimes two or three times in a day (and probably sometimes when I don’t see him). It may be more than one male flicker that’s coming, I don’t know, but females haven’t been coming and we have another local male that has a heart instead of a crescent on his chest, and I haven’t seen him on the suet, either, so as far as I know it’s just this one that’s visiting.

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  27. Great photo, Cheryl. I know a few people who have severe eye issues. I cannot imagine it being good to try to not remember what people or places look like, though. Seems like trying to make another party of your body have pain to forget the severe pain on another part.

    I agree, mumsee, with your terror. 😀

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  28. Up here in Northern California, I’m putting on capris and a short sleeve shirt and going barefoot. Mentally, however, I’m in 1916 Egypt. During a war.

    So, KI, I should go slower in Zumba, hmmmmm? I’ve been dancing 12 hours before I go to bed, that should not affect me, should it?

    Of course the book I started at 9 and didn’t finish until 12:30 wasn’t helpful . . . 🙂

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  29. No, I’ve never met a president, but my parents helped campaign for Goldwater, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they met him or if I did. One of my brothers worked on a Habitat for Humanity house with Bush Junior. (My brother volunteered with them for several years, and volunteers were told they had to get security checks but weren’t told why. When they showed up for work that day, he showed up, too. My brother really liked him, but said he obviously hadn’t had a lot of experience with the hammer he was using. But it wasn’t a photo op–there was no media coverage–but just a chance to meet and work with some volunteers.)

    Now, one day when I was a teenager I dreamed that for some reason I was assigned to introduce the speakers at some big-time event. Reagan was there, and I believe so was George Washington. But when I got up to introduce one of those men, someone else stepped up ahead of me and told me that I didn’t get to introduce the famous ones, or something along that line. I was quite disappointed, but then I woke up. So, if dreams count, I’ve met some of them that the rest of you probably haven’t.

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  30. Random stuff on twitter today:

    White Horse Inn

    The default human experience is to see the overwhelming grace of God & go straight to “Have you brought us out to die in the wilderness?”

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  31. I just told the lengthy research serendipity story, clicked post, and it told me my comment could not be posted and then the comment disappeared.

    That’s never happened to me before.

    So, I guess you’ll never know . . .

    Great photo, Cheryl! Thank your husband, for us, for buying you that camera!

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  33. I was in Washington D.C. with my parents back in the day when you could still drive down Pennsylvania Ave. Just at the White House gate we were stopped for a car pulling out. I looked in the back seat of the car and there was President Ford. That’s as close as I’ve come to meeting a president.

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  34. Michelle, sometimes you can hit the back arrow or control-z and get it back. Probably too late now, but for next time it’s worth a try. (I’ve lost quite a few posts myself, and try to write long ones in Word or to remember those tricks . . . )

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  35. Presidents
    Gerald Ford’s motorcade drove down the street beside my house. It was quite the to do because it was the first time they allowed a President to be outside the “bubble” since Kennedy was shot or some such thing.
    I saw and spoke to Jimmy Carter at the World Fair in New Orleans.
    I saw Reagan get out of his car in DC and walk into a building once day
    I saw George H W Bush at the Grand Hotel when he was Vice President
    I saw Bill Clinton at the Atlanta Olympics. I also saw him at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock Arkansas when he was the Governor.

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  37. I’m surprised everyone hasn’t met Clinton. He followed our family all the way across the US the summer of 1997–just kept turning up where we were! 🙂

    I’ve never met him, but I’ve seen him speak several times from places I was staying that summer–speech on the beach, on the deck of an aircraft carrier parked not far from my backyard, flying in on Air Force One as we left Denver . . . he seemed to play golf with all sorts of folks in Hawai’i while were there, too!

    People say he makes a great conversationalist! 🙂

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  38. I have heard and read that Clinton is the Adult Child of an Alcoholic and is a chameleon. That happens to some. When they are talking to you, you feel like the most important person in the world. When you are out of their sight you cease to exist. It is a coping mechanism.
    I don’t know how true that is nor can I remember where I heard/read it.

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  39. Well, yeah, there were alcoholics in his family and from reading his mother’s biography all those years ago, I remember thinking how odd it was no one in his family ever seemed to think they needed to obey the law. He did as a kid, but, obviously out grew that. 😦

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  40. I saw Hillary and Bill drive by once in Independence MO when they were trying to get their version of health care passed. I met several presidential candidates over the years. I also met John Ashcroft twice while he was Governor of MO. But I have never met a sitting (or standing, or even prone) president. I have a friend who was the personal physician of Alexander Haig when he was in Reagan’s Cabinet, and traveled with Pres. Reagan to Europe. The friend was in the Air Force and assigned to the Pentagon at that time.

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  41. For the past few mornings, including this morning, we had temps several degrees below zero (F), with wind chills around –30 or colder. Tomorrow, it is supposed to get up to 53. From deep winter to early spring in one day.

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  42. When we were in Boston in 2003, we saw then-governor & future presidential candidate Mitt Romney getting into his limousine, from across the street.

    When Chrissy was in third or fourth grade (still in public school), the class sent a letter to President George W. Bush, & he sent a letter to the class, as well as autographed (probably copied) photos to all the children.

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  43. I recently read a brief thing about a man visiting an Assemblies of God church, & being impressed by the fact that the church took time to have people come to the altar to be prayed for. We have some kind of altar call for prayer at the end of every service. Is that unusual, or do your churches do that, or something similar, too?

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  44. We offer prayer for individuals after the service, the elders are all available.

    No altar calls. But always a call to call on the name of the Lord and believe in Jesus — and if you do but haven’t publicly professed it before, come talk to us after the service.

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  45. I believe the Clintons use to be at Hilton Head around the time of our vacation each year, maybe for an annual conference. As far as I know, we never saw them. You know, when you are on vacation you sorta want to get away from the news 😉

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  47. We hardly ever have an altar call, but we have a card attached to the bulletin and it is called a response card. People are encouraged to put any decision on the card for later contact. The cards are put in the offering plate.

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  49. Our church has that. Several people are purposely tasked with going to the front to be available to pray with anyone who comes forward. I found out just how tough that can be this last Sunday (see my prayer request from last night). I had difficulty sleeping last night – I think it was partly because of that.

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  50. We don’t have that specific thing in our church, but I’d say neither do we need it. Some of the elders (including my husband) are great about talking to everyone in the church over the course of a few weeks. When we had a pastor, he called every family in the church every single week, and met with families in their homes periodically. (Once we get another pastor, one of the elders will go with him on each of those calls.) No “system” is foolproof, but I think it is harder to fall between the cracks in a small church.

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  51. Looks like we’ll have our February heat wave hanging around for another week (though there will be a 2-3-day respite late this week before it surges back again).

    We broke several heat records again today, some of them before noon.

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  52. cheryl’s comment reminded me of two buttoned-up elders sitting primly in my living room some years back (this was when I was my former church). Not my favorite thing, to be honest. But the way it was set up there was really no saying “no.” 🙂

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  53. Don’t worry, Donna. It isn’t done that way here. 🙂 Rather, under our previous pastor, he called every family every week, and every week the bulletin lists a prayer request for each family (or individual). Usually those requests don’t change for weeks at a time: “Pray for us in the children’s schooling and as we make decisions about Bob’s mom.” That sort of thing. But two families get longer, more detailed requests, and so they are asked to tell what specific needs they may have right now. On the weeks that the family is due for a more detailed prayer request, that also have the option to receive a pastoral call (which we usually declined, because we felt no particular need of a pastoral visit). But I suspect the older people in the church, and people who don’t get many visitors, and people who may have some kind of family situation for which they want prayer, would be happy to have that option without having to specifically request a pastoral visit. And in a small church, where you sense that your pastor knows you, it doesn’t feel like a stranger coming into your home.

    I personally think the ideal church is small, and members live close enough to one another to easily visit in one another’s homes, and a regular pastoral call could easily feel comfortable in that setting. (In fact, in Chicago I lived within easy walking distance of two of my church’s pastors, and visited in their homes, as well.)

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