65 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-11-16”

  1. Good morning. Today is Becca’s dance recital. She’s quite excited.
    Yesterday’s party went well–even though I’d had ten rsvps, only five girls showed up….no boys–which was a blessing in many ways. The rain held off until about 3:30, then the girls came in and played hide and seek and other fun games. There were no fights and lots of hot dogs consumed!

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  2. Good morning, Ann. Sounds like a fun day yesterday, and another one today!

    Our power was out last night from 8:05 p.m. until about 4:50 this morning. A tree farther up our road fell onto a power line and cut power to everyone on our road. A big storm had rolled through an area about an hour north of us, though, prior to our outage, and there were widespread power outages up there, so crews couldn’t get to us until a long time later.

    Does anyone know if refrigerated/frozen food is still OK to eat after 8 3/4 hours without power? (No one opened the refrigerator or freezer doors during that time span.)

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  3. Good and lovely way to begin the day with the flowers and those they host, AJ! Pretty flowers and peaceful images showing the order God put in the world.

    Glad to hear things went well, Annms! We always had good birthday parties for our son when he was younger, before he started going to Boy Scout camp every year during the week of his birthday.

    I asked about what it means to walk or live in the Spirit because there are denominational differences, and I sometimes have discussions with son about theological things, and I am interested to know more about the PCA view on that snice that is son’s current denomination. If anyone has the time to share, that would be great. I appreciated the views given yesterday.

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  4. Working away on a newsletter. Two of the three pages are done and just need a paragraph about my class for the first page. God will probably give me those words as I sleep, so no worries. Worked in my classroom today. I am mostly done, though I may think of other things to include in the schoolwork for the orientation course. I saw the teacher at a women’s event this morning at school and she was happy to come to my room to talk for a while. Turns out that 7th grade is the lowest she has taught before.

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  5. I’ve just been reading in the devotional, Living Well, which I got a late start in this year. The April 1st entry uses this verse: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Cor. 3:17 Then in the text by Carole Lewis “The most wonderful part of being a Christian is having the Holy Spirit living inside of us. The apostle Paul explained what this really means a few chapters later: ” In truthful speech, and in the power of God, with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor; bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as imposters; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, yet possessing everything 2 Cor. 6:7-10

    So this entry is pointing to the fact that living in the Spirit means living in freedom. That is one aspect.

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  7. Good Morning…the air is fresh and a tad bit humid after our rain yesterday…but this forest is so beautifully green and lush right now..I will enjoy it more tomorrow as I must head into town to work today!
    What a lovely time it seems Becca had with her friends Ann….she is blessed for the memories she will have for a lifetime ❤
    I would think if the fridge kept cold during that time, the food would not have spoiled 6….certainly the frozen foods…but when in doubt…throw it out! 🙂
    I will be thinking on that question Janice….I do have my view of walking in the Spirit…I just cannot articulate it this early in the morning and operating on one cup of coffee! It is a very important question worth pondering…we are once again attending a PCA church and have been incredibly blessed with in depth focused Bible study…
    Prayers for your time with the new teacher Jo…we had a not so great experience with a teacher who had never taught younger students when Hannah was in the 5th grade…the teacher had only taught 12th grade seniors and expected 5th graders to have the skill level of taking notes, and motivations of a high school student…it was not pretty….
    Beautiful photos of butterflies and bumble bees! I'm not seeing quite so many bees and have seen no butterflies as of yet….we need pollinators around here…..

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  8. As I had my prayer/devotional time this morning, Janice, your question came to me as I was reading. I was reading a short devotional at the time about the sermon on the mount. It was talking about the impossibility of doing all Jesus speaks of in his sermon. In one respect that is true and why we have redemption through Christ. In another sense, it is what should drive us to rely on The Holy Spirit and thus, walk in the Spirit.

    I simply cannot love my enemies without The Holy Spirit’s help. I can with the help of the Spirit. “I can do all things through Christ…” What seems impossible for man, becomes possible because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. That resurrection power is available to us. The Holy Spirit indwells us and enables us. Just following the law on our own power will never achieve for us what we want or glory for God.

    The stories we share about The Holy Spirit enabling and working through us are a great help and reminder for us. That is one of the good things about ‘meeting together.’ If we are only puffing ourselves or one another up, we nullify much of that.

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  9. Six, everything should be fine.

    Janice, I have been enjoying your question. What is it to walk in the Spirit. I have been thinking on it off and on as I go about my business. I need to rush off now though.

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  10. Good Morning Everyone. Some time back I dropped my middle name from my driver’s license. I have flown for 3 years with it reading Kimberley Black White Smith. My name on my ticket home read Kimberley Smith instead of Kimberley White Smith. TSA thought it should have been hyphenated and I didn’t have my correct name on the ticket when they looked at my license. It took an extra 15 or 20 minutes for them to decide that this southern accented dressed in wrinkled linen tired looking old woman wasn’t on the no fly list trying to sneak through.
    BG had some bath products in her back pack but luckily when I told the agent what it was she laughed and “tested ” the bag and let it through. We are on I 10 out of New Orleans this morning headed home. BG s goal is to make it to a Chik Fil A before breakfast is over. 😉

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  11. Belated Happy Birthday to Michelle!

    To answer a question from yesterday- No, Donna, we don’t wear park ranger uniforms when working at the cave. We wear a polo shirt with the cave logo on it, khaki pants and sturdy shoes, preferably ones that have good traction for walking on slippery clay floors. We also have light jackets with the logo on them, but we don’t have to wear them. Believe it or not, 52° can fell comfortable in short sleeves. If it’s really hot out, I wear the jacket because of the temperature difference.

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  12. Kim- Are there any Zaxbys down there? My newlywed daughter and hubby came up to visit and had a Zaxbys bag. SIL says he likes Azxbys better. Can you verify that? I mean, how can a chicken sandwich be better anywhere else than Chik-Fil-a?

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  14. Zaxby’s is as good as Chik Fil A they serve crinkle fries instead of waffle fries and have Zaxby sauCE. They aren’t open for breakfast.

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  15. Thanks for the advice on the food. Most of it seems fine. The almost-empty jug of milk smelled a bit off, so hubby dumped that down the drain, but the full jug seems OK, as do the other things in the frig and in the freezer. Good and cold, though it probably would have been better to check right when the power came back on, rather than two hours later, as we did. (I’m not exactly a coherent thinker at 4:50 a.m.) 🙂

    I’m sure we’ll be alright. 😉

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  16. We have a Zaxby’s a few blocks down from our Chik-Fil-a here near home. I usually go to CFA because of brand loyalty. I have eaten at Zaxby’s down near the office and really liked their big salad bowl. My brother liked that, too.

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  17. I know how the Holy Spirit is not active with new revelations from God that would change anything in God’s word. That makes sense on many levels. But that does not mean to me that the Spirit is inactive in other ways such as comforting, guiding, teaching, drawing, maybe filling or refilling, restraining and pushing (or motivating), etc.

    Last Sunday in church, the pastor asked anyone who wished to say what they are thankful to Jesus for. At first I did not think of anything to say. After the others spoke I said I was thankful for the freedom we have in Him. I was not even sure where that answer came from except a prompt from the Holy Spirit. I have not thought a lot about the freedom we have in Christ, but He is the truth that sets us free.

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  19. Butterfly at the top is a silver-spotted skipper, a common (but pretty) little thing around here. Most of the skippers are hard to identify, but not that one.

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  20. I think I googled the question about how long food would be good in a power outage once. I’m inclined to toss if I’m not sure.

    Sounds like a fun morning at Ann’s house — Good to have you headed home Kim, can’t wait to hear about all your adventures.

    Yesterday was very long with a lot of stories to write — I didn’t leave until 8 p.m. and, on top of the weird election night schedule earlier in the week, I desperately needed to sleep in this morning (which I did).

    But I feel I need to read over my last story filed this morning. It doesn’t run until Monday but it was the long one based on the lengthy Thursday evening (boy, I did work a lot of late hours this week!) interview with the coyote researcher and I want to make sure it’s not going to get her in trouble (the animal rights folks are vicious if you don’t give at least equal time to their views — I did quote them in the companion piece I wrote about the upcoming coyote management meetings this coming week in LA and another city, but not in this one). So I’m a little stressed over it. I really hate political bullies and the animal rights people have earned their reputation for being very high on that list.

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  21. Six, our freezer in our garage got unplugged a few weeks ago, we don’t know how, and we had no way of knowing how long that had been the case, just that some food in it was soft (but still cold). I wrote to my brother who was long a manager at Taco Bell and is a food safety expert, and this is what he had to say. (Based on his reply, we threw away meat in the door–sausages and so forth–because the door wouldn’t be as cold, but we kept all the rest of the meat, and anything in the door that wasn’t meat. We’ve since eaten a lot of the food that was in there, including fish, with no ill results.) Much of his reply is quite humorous, and it’s also useful.

    Cheryl, there’s actually no food safety issue with thawing and refreezing food, so long as the food itself was not at an unsafe temperature (above 40°F) for more than four hours.
    Even the four hours is a really conservative number, lawsuit prevention type stuff. Try telling one of your immigrant friends (a brown one) that food left at room temperature for more than four hours is unsafe to eat.

    If the food were to thaw, let’s say to 39°, and stay at that temperature for several days, it would still be safe to refreeze, as long as it wasn’t held above 40° for more than four hours.

    It’s true food can have its quality ruined by going through one of the above processes, 1, even then it would be safe to eat, 2, if you’re not a gourmet/connoisseur/foodie you’d be surprised how many foods don’t seem to be particularly harmed by thawing and refreezing, I do it all the time.

    So picture this: Rosario’s Authentic Mexican Frozen Food Inc. (most likely in New York City) The big freezer breaks down in August, their delicious frozen dinners heat up to about 80° and stay there for about two days then get refrozen. This food is not safe to eat (more in appendix A). It will make people sick. The media will report exactly what happened one time in 10, the other nine times they’ll simply say: don’t eat such and such delicious frozen dinners, because they have been thawed and refrozen. The media has done it this way for decades I think that’s why the myth keeps going.

    Appendix A
    So why were Rosario’s delicious frozen dinners unsafe to eat after being refrozen then heated to 375°F for 35 minutes, didn’t the freezer and or the oven kill the bacteria? you ask.
    That’s an excellent question. The freezer did kill some of it, but not all of it. The main value of freezing is to render the bacteria inactive, while frozen. Cooking does kill all the bacteria therefore cooking prevents many types of illness, but during the two days the bacteria were active, they had time to produce enough toxins (the way they fight other bacteria) to make humans sick, and these toxins are usually not destroyed by cooking.
    Love you
    Dr. [his name]
    PS Dr. Is a perfectly acceptable abbreviation for dropout.

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  22. Considering we had A LOT of meat in the freezer at the time, I was reluctant to throw everything out if it wasn’t necessary. Again, this brother is an expert, and we safely ate the food. Our question was about the freezer, not the fridge, but hopefully the answer will be useful.

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  24. Art and I watched the movie, The Wall, last night which is based on a German novel by that name (in German). It was dubbed into English. It sounds like it is a well known German novel, maybe like a classic. Anyone who loves animals would appreciate it, and the scenery is spectacular. It is similar to a fable about a woman who is forced into survival mode by an unknown force that has put an invisible wall around a rather large area. She has animals with her, and she hates hunting animals but must for her survival. At one point she does not kill the fox that killed her beloved kitty. Of course it made me think of Donna and the coyotes. I think this film could be popular with animal rights people. We had never heard of it or the book. I liked it but found its lack of consideration of God in that situation disturbing. It was a bit like Robinson Crusoe yet that book reflects on God as Providence.

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  25. Oh my favorite topic, coyotes.

    (Is that a collective groan I hear??)

    Among the things I included in my one story were the stats I got from the county health dept detailing (but loosely, due to hippa laws) the 15 attacks on people by coyotes in 2015 in LA County. (In Orange County last year a toddler was grabbed and dragged, but she was rescued by her dad, thankfully; but an LA 3-year-old was killed by a coyote in 1981.)

    Most of the incidents last year involved coyotes coming up and biting people on their feet as they were either lying in a park or jogging or trying to defend their dogs against a coyote … Several children playing in an LA park were bit.

    Rabies shots all around, as a precaution.

    While it’s true that coyotes have rarely attacked people and generally aren’t a major threat, the concern of some researchers is that those incidents are now showing up for really the first time in at least documented records (again pointing to a possible behavior change as coyotes evolve into creatures living more closely among humans and losing their natural fear of them).

    Seems to me that nature is dynamic, always changing — and that’s where the animal rights folks slip up, I think, they see everything as static and unchanging.

    While coexistence is needed (coyotes in our cities and neighborhoods aren’t going anywhere soon, it’s the “new normal” for us), sound wildlife management still needs to be a big part of the equation (which is just flatly denied by animal rights people). If there’s any management to be done, it’s in our behavior. Hands off the animals at all costs.

    OK, you can now return to your regular programming.

    Chas unplugged? What’s going on with you guys today? When is the actual moving day? Are you getting things moved into the new place yet? It’ll be a lot better once you get moved, this must be a horribly difficult time. (Said by someone who cries every time she moves out of a place or turns in an old car for a new one.)

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  27. Donna, I thought that info in the video about hazing the coyotes was useful. Is that the sort of thing you can include in your story?

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  28. AJ, I got photos of those same two species of wildflower this morning (without any insects on them) before I came on and saw yours. I know the one with the bee is a variety of sweet pea, but do you remember offhand what the other flower is?

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  29. Did you have a nice trip?

    A couple of months ago now, this started.
    Condensed version.
    When I bought the house in Greensboro, a settlement date was set for .six June and we planned to move on 10 June.
    Those days have come and gone. We’re still here. There have been problems in the financing. All trivial. As an aside. they told Linda it’s because of government regulation. I don’t have any trouble believing that. But I’m beginning to suspect that they may be adding some “billable hours” in this. It’s too trivial.
    Back to the story. Since I was to be out on 10 June, I arranged for ATT to stop my service on 10 June.
    They did. Yesterday morning I had no
    TV, internet, nor phone (I had cell).

    That was OK by me. We can survive and we had cell service.
    But Linda called AT&T and arranged for service to be reinstalled. It took hours and a service man had to come out. I wouldn’t have done all that for a week’s service.
    But she arranged for service to be restored.
    I would think it would require flipping a switch like they did when they disconnected.

    I wonder what the bill will be?

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  30. On Memorial Day one of the parishioners made the observation he had heard from someone else: We have freedom in this country to do what is right. That was what was needed and wanted. It is the same with Christ’s death: we are now free to do what is right. What a marvelous thing! Even more wonderful is that we have the power and a helper to help us do it. I believe our freedom in Christ is too often ignored to our peril.

    We are losing the freedom to do what is right in our country, but will never lose it spiritually.

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  31. For your weekend chuckle: Husband and I almost attended the wrong funeral this morning. We actually were in the entry way of the church when we saw an acquaintance. He almost walked by, but I tapped him on the arm to say hi. He asked if we knew Helen long. Who? I did not, although I did know her daughter. However, that was not the funeral we were going to attend. Went out to look online and sure enough; the funeral is next week, same time, same venue. What a hoot! Good thing it was close to home!

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  32. Sorry chas, moving is never easy.

    cheryl, we have written about hazing in the past & it’s mentioned in passing in my latest story. Problem is that it’s not really known how well hazing even works — it may work on some individuals and not others. Coyotes that already are habituated to people seem not as impacted by it. And they quickly become used to your hazing methods, so it’s a constant battle to change it up. Eventually they get used to that, too. So it’s not a very good permanent solution obviously. And it can even be dangerous — one of the coyote bites from 2015 was when a man tried chasing one off his front yard; coyote advanced (yikes!) and bit him on his hand.

    The city has been woefully negligent in my mind — no training offered, they just leave it to residents to deal with it. (I’ve also read you’re not supposed to haze a coyote if you have your dog with you!).

    Most coyotes in our community just look at you, maybe they’ll walk away a bit, then stop and stare back. Ideally, they should be running away.

    But coyotes born and raised in cities and neighborhoods (we have several generations of them now, according to the researcher I interviewed) are very used to humans and their antics. They know we don’t hunt and can’t really hurt them here.

    Smart animals. It is a fascinating species. (One ongoing study at a local university, my alma mater, is looking at coyote brain size — from road kill specimens — to try to see if urban coyotes are actually ‘smarter’ than their rural cousins).

    Again, wildlife is ever changing, ever adapting.

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  34. One woman in our town shared that she carries an unbelievably number of things now when she goes on a simple dog walk in her neighborhood where there are coyotes. Everyone’s using air horns, cans filled with coins, walking sticks, bear spray … She has a small dog so especially has something really to worry about.

    Dog walks have become very, very complicated

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  35. A warning about “Easy Pay”. It’s a system where you give a comp0any that has a recurring bill authority to withdraw from your checking or add to your credit account on a regular basis.

    Problem is. It goes on forever. You can’t get out.
    I had Easy Pay where ADT Security put a charge on my credit account each month..
    It just happened that the following happened at the same time.

    There is no way for you to disconnect or stop a pre authorized payment without jumping through lots of hoops. They tell you everything but how to close the account.

    It just happened that there was an unauthorized $22 charge against my credit card. I alerted the credit company. They investigated and changed my credit account.
    (The $22 is trivial. but this means that someone has my card number.)

    Meantime, I had written ADT, on 10 May that I wanted to discontinue service. I got no reply, but when they tried to deduct from my account on 1 June,, they couldn’t.
    Hence, a letter. They want money.
    I told them that I no longer have ADT.

    Be advised, it you sign up for “easy pay”, they have you forever

    (except where you can go to the office and tell them to stop, as I did at YMCA)

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  37. Better to send in the $ on your own via online banking each month — though easy pay can be convenient (I allowed my mortgage to be paid that way so I never have to worry about it). But I stay away from it for everything else — they have control, not you, so yes, things can easily go wrong.

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  38. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/28/suburbs-clash-over-solutions-residents-battle-coyo/

    ___________________________

    When Charlene Warner walks her dog each morning in her neighborhood in upscale Seal Beach, California, she’s terrified she’ll be attacked — not by muggers or gangs, but by coyotes.

    “They are killing our animals. They are scaring us. I go out every morning with rocks in my pockets, tennis shoes on, mace on my neck, a whistle on my neck and a foghorn on my leash, and I still don’t feel safe,” Ms. Warner said last week in comments before the Seal Beach City Council.

    She has reason to be nervous. Stories abound in nearby Orange County of dogs and cats snatched off leashes and plucked out of backyards a few feet away from their horrified owners. Mangled pet carcasses turn up on front lawns, often identifiable only by their tails. …

    It’s not just Southern California. From Florida to Washington to Maine, communities are wrestling with how to handle the influx of a surprisingly fearless coyote population. Nobody knows whether the coyote’s numbers are actually on the rise, but there’s little doubt that the adaptable predator is increasingly making itself at home in urban and suburban America.

    “It’s spreading all across the United States now,” said Rex Baker, professor emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona, who’s done extensive research on coyotes. “You’re having less hunting going on, and urbanization is continuing, and the coyotes are showing up everywhere.”
    ________________________________________________________

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  39. I have notes from last week on the Holy Spirit, but am too tired to find them. I have lots of good things to tell, but am too tired to tell them. I have had a shower and started laundry, but I think nap time is in the immediate future..

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  41. We’re having a moving experience here, as well. 3 daughters, two sons-in-law and 5 grandchildren converged to help pack and so daughters could get anything that belongs to them. Problem is, someone doesn’t want to give away old school books our children used. And the young ones keep grabbing things to play with that we’re trying to pack. So, the toys will wait until they are gone.

    12 days until closing. But we don’t close on the house we’re buying until July 8, unless things move faster.

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  43. I hope thing move smother for you< Peter, than they did for me.
    A R$d set it back three days. Then they found something about mortgage insurance on this house 'till Linda proved that I didn't have a mortgage. Another three days.
    As I said, I'm beginning to think "Billable Hours" is behind this.

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  45. Cheryl, 11:57, thanks very much for sharing what your brother wrote. That is reassuring. I neither wanted to throw everything out (a lot of sources were saying 4 hours max), nor throw caution to the wind.

    I’m not sure how much of a run-around we’re going to have if/when we try to sell our house (probably when, unless Jesus comes back before then), but we suspect we have what will be a very big problem on our hands — we can’t find the title to the house.

    My husband and I are 99% sure we gave the title to my parents to keep in their safe, since we didn’t have one of our own at the time. When we did buy a safe some years later, we asked for our title back, to store it in ours, and — guess what — yeah, you guessed it, it wasn’t in their safe,

    My mom is big on downsizing stuff, sometimes by giving things away, sometimes downsizing via the burn barrel…

    Or putting things in obscure places when she doesn’t understand the significance of them, forgetting what she once possessed, and where she might have put it.

    Real estate experts? What happens if the original title can’t be found?

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  47. My response yesterday to Janice’s question about living in the Spirit was brief, kind of “in a nutshell”. I agree with what others have added. Roscuro pointed out the importance of following the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, & corporate worship, which are all of utmost importance for staying close to God, & for hearing from the Holy Spirit. We are more attuned to the Spirit, & ready to walk with Him, when we are following His ways, practicing those disciplines.

    And of course, there is so much more to say. It is a deep subject, with many layers.

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  49. Kind of like that social security card you got when you were young and were not supposed to lose or laminate or keep with you or show to anybody for identification purposes.

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  50. Hey, I kept my SS for YEARS, it kept getting transferred from wallet to wallet until one day it failed to transfer, I guess. 🙂 I thought you really HAD to keep that always or you’d not be able to work (anywhere, ever) and might even cease to be a citizen.

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  51. We are all criminals.
    The reason?
    It is illegal to use Social Security numbers for identification purposes.
    I suppose the law is still on the books.

    The way that happened is that when FDR originated this, people were afraid that it could lead to, or become the universal identification number mentioned in Revelation. The so called, 666.
    So, they made the law.

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  52. The law obviously changed by the time I moved to Missouri in 1979, since this state used to have the SSN as the drivers license number. We had the option not to use it, which I took. Also the university I attended used it as ID.

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  53. Chas, we Canadians call our equivalent to the SS number, our SIN (social insurance number), so we are all toast. And yes, I’ve had to use my SIN card recently as ID, in order to apply for a student loan. Don’t think there is a law against it, but if there is, it was the government itself which made me break the law 😀

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  54. Finally sent my newsletter off for checking, even though it is Sunday. I asked if she would check it tomorrow and get it back to me by the evening.
    I do it in powerpoint and it is hard to see, especially with this remote monitor several feet away. One page I inserted into an email and deleted it and redid it four times. I kept finding that I had either inserted an extra stop dot or left one out. Glad that it was me catching these mistakes and not my friend.
    I felt like I was Donna who keeps tweaking her news stories.

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  55. Newsletter is done and sent!
    I really did not expect her to check it today, but it is so nice to be done.
    And she is a mom of one of my students and I was able to then send her a photo she wanted that had her son reading to his sister and two other kinder kids.

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  56. Kathaleena, my husband’s uncle and aunt did that for our wedding (almost 37 years ago!). We got married in the house we’d bought and they showed up on the RSVP date. I was there, filthy and sweaty, cleaning and painting, getting it ready for the wedding and for us to move in. They were quite embarrassed.

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  60. I had a woman show up for bible study one day on the wrong day. She was quite a bit older than me and very embarrassed. I invited her in, but she declined. She was driven by her husband and when she saw no other cars, had him wait to make sure. I thought nothing of it, of course.

    My mother once had someone show up for a monthly meeting of garden club or some such thing. Turned out, it WAS her month to host and she had forgotten. She just had my dad run to the corner country store (a mile away) and served a ‘fancy’ ice cream. She had a living room seldom used and always kept impeccable. Good thing. 😀

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  61. I’m finishing up what was a surprisingly fun 60th birthday weekend with cakes, chocolate, friends, gifts, music and WAY too much food. I may veg out the rest of the afternoon reading 13 Hours–the story of Benghazi by the SEAL-types who survived.

    One chapter in, the writing is exquisite, no matter how high it may send my blood pressure . . .

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  62. I may be catching up on my sleep. I took a nap yesterday. Fell asleep about 10:30 last night and awake at 10:15 this morning. I am still tired and tomorrow holds the promise of being a beast. You know, those who play eventually have to pay.

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  64. My husband and I went to our favorite state park this afternoon. Saw more dragonflies (and damelflies) than I’ve ever seen in my life, several different species. The water lilies (two species) were in bloom, and so were the wild irises (which I’ve only seen from a distance before, and just once).

    But the best catches were the red squirrel who forgot the instruction of his mother to be wary of people, and basically posed for multiple shots. It’s a hard species to photograph, since they’re tiny (barely bigger than a chipmunk) and wary, but this one sat on a branch and ate, moved to another branch to find more food, and then finally posed in “classic” squirrel posture sitting upright on a branch and eating. So I got multiple pix, and we walked away while he was still there. Also, the trees near the parking lot were loaded with ripe berries . . . and with three cedar waxwings. I didn’t get the photo of “waxwing eating berry” I would have liked, but I did get a few shots of “waxwing in tree full of berries.” And then they left, and since I was with my husband I couldn’t just stick around waiting for them to come back, as I might have been inclined to do if I had been by myself. (They were coming and going, and so I imagine if I had just sat there quietly for a few minutes they would have been back, or others of their species would have.)

    We then went to the visitors center to see if any interesting birds had shown up. (State parks here usually put out multiple bird feeders and have a viewing window.) Usually it’s just lots and lots of chipmunks, two species of squirrel, and a few birds that we have at home, but once in a while we get a rose-breasted grosbeak or two, or a better view of orioles than we get at home, so it’s worth checking out. At a different park, we once saw multiple cedar waxwings at their visitors center, and until today that had been my only chance to photograph adults of the species. (They were drinking, not eating berries, that day.) Anyway, my husband went to the rest room and I went to the viewing window. And there ahead of me were a middle-aged woman, a boy about 12 or 13, and a dog (a Labradoodle, I think) of about 75 pounds. I’m pretty sure dogs are not allowed in there, and this dog kept barking, and being so close to the glass the bark was echoing, and the mom kept saying, “Keep him quiet” but neither was doing anything to quiet the dog. I don’t know if the lady at the desk didn’t have the courage to tell them dogs weren’t allowed, or if they got sympathy by telling her “Oh, he’s a good dog, and it’s too hot to leave him in the car” or even pulled the “This is my child’s comfort animal, and legally he’s allowed to be in here” bit. At any rate, a very rude family had taken over the viewing window, and I walked out and waited for my husband and we left. (There were no interesting birds anyway.) I did explain the situation to my husband in the hearing of the lady at the desk in the hopes that might give her the courage to tell them “People are leaving because of your dog, and you need to take him out.” But in today’s culture that might just result in a “We’ll keep him quiet” but a dog that kept barking while mother and son continued not to care they were inflicting their dog on anyone who might want to enjoy a few minutes sitting and watching the birds. Seriously, I like dogs too, but you don’t take a large dog inside and let him bark several times a minute in a room that echoes when other people are hoping to sit and quietly watch birds! They were the only people at the viewing window until I went there, but others may well have left for the same reason we did.

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