39 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-7-16”

  2. Good morning from Atlanta! It’s suppose to be a lovely week with temps going up to the seventies. The Birthday Tree is starting to bloom and should be looking at prime by the 11th♡

    Miss Bosley tried to get a Kleenex from the box, but she could not get the hank of it.♡

    She has declared this to be Birdwatching Monday. She loves this weather and all the tasty friends it brings out.

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  3. I just heard from my brother who invited me to travel with him to see a relative who is in Hospice. I had to decline. 😦 I already have a funeral to attend this week. I can only do so much.

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  4. We sat outside most of yesterday afternoon. We planted a gardenia bush and then did potted plants for the patio. The song birds in the trees behind us were chirping their little hearts out. One kept singing chirpity, chirpity, chirpity, chirp. Mr P raised the hook for the bird feeder on the back fence. A cardinal came and sat in the tree next to it; then Lulabelle barked. Maybe it will go out through the “bird grapevine” that there is food to be had at our house.
    After a very good women’s retreat it is back to the coal mine for me today. Something interesting did come up over the weekend. There is a local grocery store that has quite the wine and craft beer selection. The woman who has been running it is quitting to take care of her mother. The owner wants someone friendly and somewhat knowledgeable about wine. I have taken a couple of wine appreciation courses and can read labels. Sadly it pays more than Guy is paying me and has benefits.

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  5. Also, at the Women’s Retreat was my contact for JH Ranch. She used to be in my Monday night Bible study before she went to work for them full time. She will be there all summer so she will be the ones to check us in when we arrive! While I am obviously good going across country by myself to be with strangers (Idaho). It will be nice having a familiar face. She told me that I definitely want to fly in to Sacramento and do the 5 hour drive up to the ranch. She said it is a beautiful drive and there is sparse cell coverage. BG would have to talk to me! I told her my plan for flying in the day before and driving halfway, she thought that was a good idea and suggested we stay in Redding over-night. She also said there is a Wal-Mart near the ranch so I won’t have to worry about backing sunscreen, bug repellent, etc to get through the airport. Anything we don’t want to bring back we can leave at the ranch for the next guests to use if they forget anything.

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  6. We’ve had a downpour here early this morning, complete with crashing thunder and lightening that have both dogs trying to push their way on, under or behind me for protection.

    Messy Monday morning commute for L.A.

    Kim’s remark about the store salary reminded me of a younger co-worker — who makes significantly less, I’m sure, than I do after all my years, which is scary enough — saying the hamburger join down the street was hiring and she could make pretty much the same salary there (and with tips on top of it). Sad.

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  7. Yeah, I have been battling feelings of inferiority and worthlessness for a while. It all came to a head on February 18th when we had our company awards. Guy and Junior were recognized in the CEO’s Circle. They got awards with their name on it. Guy offered me his when I made my own award and sent to him. All the Admins of the company were recognized for their hard work, but I am not an admin of the company. I was told years ago by a sales manager that if I wanted a pat on the back to check my bank balance. That isn’t in line with the education I have either.

    I wrote in my journal recently that I am cut off from all the ways that makes a person feel good about themselves. I have felt like I don’t matter. I could take Prozac for the depression or sit in the sun. I am going to be leathery when I am old –even with all the sunscreen

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  10. Kim, you aren’t cut off from all the ways a person feels good about themselves, or a stay-at-home mom could never feel good about herself and her contribution to society. You have an affirming husband, and you have friends, but you happen to have a bad boss. Many of us have been there (did I ever tell you about my time at McDonald’s? top management at that one could go head to head with Guy, I’m sure). You can’t find your fulfillment at that job, and you are going to beat your head against a wall if you try to find it there. But your identity is in Christ, and then it’s in being a wife, mom, friend, etc. You make some income from Guy, and if circumstances were different you might find some job satisfaction there, too. But there are many other ways that people find contentment outside the job, and you have those open to you.

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  11. Two more kids arrived. Since the first doe is refusing to care for her offspring, we decided to bottle raise the kid. Then we noticed another had also given birth yesterday and she wants to take the little one so we are giving that a go.

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  18. No! Don’t do it. At least that is what I told myself last time I stopped with goats…

    The babies: one is dark brown with black trim: Oberhasli
    One is gray on top with a light brown lower half.
    Another is white with brown and black spots.
    We are so muttley around here.

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  21. Roscuro, getting back to you about the perfect pitch article you linked this weekend:

    Fascinating article, and very interesting, the discussion on the terms perfect pitch, absolute pitch, relative pitch, and how they can mean different things to different people.

    What I see most often referred to as perfect pitch, like with the opening example in the article where someone was calling out the exact name of a sounded pitch within the 12-tone scale, is what my high school piano teacher had called absolute pitch. (A sort of multiple-choice answer, where you had a 1 in 12 chance of correctly naming the pitch.)

    My teacher told me that, conversely, having perfect pitch meant being able to vocally produce an exact pitch without a prior pitch cue. (For example, being told to sing a C#, instead of, say, being told to sing up a major third after having been given an A.)

    Much, much harder to pull a pitch out of thin air and reproduce it “perfectly”! If I try to sing a Middle C, for example, and then check it with a piano, I find my pitch tends to be somewhere between a B and a B-flat. But if I’m looking at a piece of music written in C Major, and the organist at church is playing in B-flat major, I can tell.

    I used to have mild fits 😉 in my graduate-level Kodaly music studies when my professor would transpose the music we were singing with solfege syllables into a different key signature than the one written. Say the music was written in D Major, and he was transposing to E Major. If I would see a D on the staff, I should sing “do“, but, instead, he would read D as E, and since I would then hear E, I would want to sing “re“, even though I was looking at “do”!

    My professor had mercy on me in my individual exams and allowed me to sing my solfege syllables in the key they were written it. Which meant he himself didn’t have to transpose, then, either. 🙂

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  22. The section of that article on babies’ “perfect absolute pitch” reminded me of hearing babies crying in church. I’ve noted with interest that they often (maybe always or almost always?) seem to cry “on pitch” with the music’s key when the musicians are playing and/or congregation is singing. I was thinking of that yesterday, listening for babies to cry yesterday, but none did. 🙂

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  23. Kim, I will also be flying into Sacramento in June. Send me your dates. I have been to Etna and have friends there. Quite the drive. Not much to see in the valley except the mountains on each side. Redding can be very hot, but the mountains after that are beautiful.

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  24. I had to LOL at the part of the article where they talked about A440 conspiracy theories!

    I don’t know if I’ve told this story here before, but a friend of mine in college (he was the first violinist in our student string quartet and the concert master of our school/community orchestra) had quite the subtle sense of humor.

    We were warming up in the orchestra room before a symphony concert one time, and he was strolling around the room with a sly look on his face, playing Boccherini’s “Celebrated Minuet” in the slightest bit out-of-tune way, saying something like, “Aren’t I so good?”

    Another violinist, a member of the community (and my viola instructor from my high school years), with her own sly expression, said to him very slowly, “Wow…you must have really practiced a lot to be able to play like that.” 😀

    Oh, we had fun in those days. :-)..

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  25. Third Arrow and I went to a concert at our church yesterday afternoon, where a traveling college concert choir and chamber choir performed yesterday. This was one of the pieces they performed (though the video has a different ensemble performing it). Hearing the piece live was an incredible experience, and no recording can do justice to the work, but if you’ve not heard the piece live, there still are wonderful aspects of the music that come through here.

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  27. One more, then I’m off to other things. Roscuro, that 9-beat rhythm pattern video you linked over the weekend was really cool. I like hearing music from different cultures. Anyway, that video happened to remind me of a young friend of mine — a former piano student who has finished up her master’s in clarinet performance, and is working on a second master’s in ethnomusicology. She has an interest in klezmer music, and performed with a klezmer band for a few months when she was still doing her undergraduate studies in the Midwest. I looked up some klezmer-type music on YouTube this weekend, and this video (I don’t know who these people are) was kind of cool.

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  30. Kim- Go for the wine job. You need to get away from Guy.

    Chas- As a person who doesn’t like Manning’s ego, I am glad he’s finally retiring.

    Mumsee- Payton Manning was most recently the QB for the Broncos. That’s the NFL team from Denver, not the college team from Boise. He has a lot of records in 18 years playing for the Colts and Broncos.

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  31. 6 Arrows, the Klezmer was fun, as it usually is. Klezmer and Gypsy bands developed throughout Europe due to the fact that musical entertainment was one of the few professions allowed to both Jews and Gypsies (Roma). Both of them indelibly left their mark on European folk music as a result. Romanian and Hungarian folk music have become inextricably tangled up with the musical styles of their Roma entertainers; one of the most famous of Russian folksongs, Two Guitars, is actually a Roma song; the Spanish Flamenco was developed by the Gitanos (Roma of Spain); and Polish folk music is difficult to distinguish from Klezmer. A similar thing happened with the European Roma’s relatives, the Banjara in India, and the Ghawazi in Egypt. The so-called Arabian Belly Dance is really a Ghawazi folk dance. I had a great grandmother from the English upper class who would insult her daughter-in-law (my maternal grandmother) by saying that she had Gypsy blood. It was entirely possible, since my grandmother’s family was low class, and beyond her parents’ professions – her mother had been a domestic servant and her father was a watchmaker and also a talented musician – and the fact that her grandfather was a shepherd, little is known about her ancestry. I think my great grandmother would be horrified to know that her descendants were intrigued and excited by the idea that they could be part Gypsy 😉

    This scene is from a film made about the Roma people and their relatives, the Banjara and the Ghawazi, called Latcho Drom (meaning Safe Journey) – this is a dance of the Banjara:

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  32. Peter L, I know. I have a seventeen year old son and a sixty two year old husband who discuss this guy on a regular basis. And a hundred others.

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  33. Chas, that also incidentally answers your question about why allowances were never made for the Jews (on the News Thread). The Jews were always treated as second, even third, class citizens in Europe and denied most professions, except disrespected ones like musician* and money lender. Of course there was no effort made to accommodate their diet. That Europe is even considering other people’s religious customs is a big change from their past. They might not be going about it the right way (it is possible to make individual dietary adjustments without banning pork for everyone, but I, for one, am glad they aren’t treating the new arrivals the way they treated the Jews.
    *Musicians were never very well respected historically in most cultures. For instance, they formed the second lowest caste in the traditional West African culture.

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  34. Hey….Hey…that’ll do about Peyton….he is a nice guy…he really really is and we kind of like him around these parts…….and we are kind of sad to see him retire…..but it’s time…..

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  36. Kim, I cut the rest of that pork off the bone, steamed some more asparagus (I aked the last batch, since I was already using the oven for the roast and the potatoes) and reheated the potatoes, and served it all again tonight. And there was way more than enough meat for one meal for the three of us who were here–I didn’t serve more than a third of it, maybe less. So I ended up freezing some after all. There’s enough in the fridge for two or three servings, enough in the freezer for maybe five or six. So that was a very good “grab it and throw it in the cart” purchase, and I’ll get another if I ever see one like it.

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  38. Roscuro, 6:46, I enjoyed that video. Such joyful music-making and dancing!

    And now for something very different in character — a lovely, peaceful song my daughter and I heard performed yesterday in the concert we attended. Beautiful at any time of day, but especially, I think, at the end of the day.

    Goodnight, fellow wanderers.

    Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.
    Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
    Suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris.
    Hear our prayer. You who sits at the right hand of the Father.
    Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis. Dona nobis pacem.
    Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Grant us peace.

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  39. Sorry, Michelle, the last day of school is the 11th and I leave here the 14th. Our planes only fly to Port Moresby, the capital, MWF, but Monday is a holiday, the Queen’s birthday, so they are flying on Tuesday. I should arrive on the 15th and then leave on July 16th. That only leaves me one day here before school begins. So… I am planning on preparing for Term 1 over this school break.

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