46 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 6-16-16”

  1. Good morning to you, if the timing applies! I think Jo gets a good morning greeting now!♡ Glad you are stateside just in time to hear the political battles heat up (not really about the political battles, but glad you are home).

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  2. For your information, I am posting below an e-mail I just sent to some of my regular correspondents.

    I think some of you already know this, but this is our last day in Hendersonville.
    We have bought a house in Greensboro and the movers are coming tomorrow.
    It has been a difficult couple of months and you likely haven’t heard much from me. I have been very busy.

    What happened is that Elvera had to go to the hospital a couple of months ago. We still don’t know what was wrong. But she has been developing mental problems for a couple of years now. And keeping up this place and caring for her has been too much for me.

    Chuck & Linda have been bugging us to move near to them and the children for several years now. So? We decided that it was time.

    We bought a house in Greensboro and they have been helpful in arranging the move.
    We don’t really want to do this. We like Hendersonville, But it is time.

    We put this house on the market and it is sold already (about three weeks). We close on it early in July.
    I think I will have the same e-mail address, but if not, I will let everyone know.
    Keep sending stuff, though You may not get it back for a couple of weeks, until I get settled.

    Lots to do yet.
    Charlie

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  3. I’ve started putting almond milk into my coffee to cool it down, and it is really good. Not sure I will want to go back to black when the weather cools. When I drink the plain almond milk or have it on cereal, I do not notice the almond flavor. But somehow the coffee highlights the almond. Very good.

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  5. Now I have a dilemma. I am suppose to look after Karen so cats for their time of vacation, but what if the surgeon wants to operate on Art that week? Art said we can delay, but surgeon’s schedules are sometimes booked and you need to take what they offer.

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  6. Karen needs to know you may have the dilemma. I would be horrified if a friend of mine delayed surgery so she could take care of my cats. I’d find a kid or pay a house sitter before I’d ask you to do it, Janice.

    In other news, I’m playing Donna’s part this morning–awake after about 2 hours of sleep and waiting for a phone interview with a busy professor back east. He’s calling me sometime in the next 90 minutes. I went to bed about 2 and got up at 4:44–it will be a LONG day.

    This is a Chambers-related interview. Given it took Os Guinness 6 weeks and Brother Andrew 3 months to get back to me, I was a little taken aback when Jed Macoska said, “how about tomorrow morning?”

    Scrambling . . . he and his wife wrote The Daily Companion to My Utmost for His Highest and I’m hoping they will have insight into how Biddy put the devotional together.

    If not–I can tell they’re fun. They’ve been following my posts . . . 🙂

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  7. Birthday party #4 (of 5) for the 2016 “Birthday Season,” will be celebrated tonight. It’s supposed to be here–daughter-in-law is being taken to dinner by son and her aunt and uncle to a Himalayan restaurant. Adorables will be with us and they’ll return here for a small party: mixed berry crisp and home made ice cream.

    I’ve borrowed a maker and have been making it in small batches since yesterday. If I time it right, the crisp and the last batch of vanilla ice cream will come out of the oven and maker about the time the party girl returns.

    However, there’s this basketball game on at the same time and we, of course, do not have television. I may be taking the show on the road to their house with a big screen TV so sections of the family can have their crisp and watch the game, too.

    I don’t need that much confusion on a day when I’m already tired!

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  9. Good Morning…oh what a beautiful morning….oh what a beautiful day!!! I’m staying home today…going to weed out my flower bed…and perhaps even lay out on the hammock and read…with ice tea close at hand…another day in the 80’s….
    Janice I agree with Michelle….tell Karen of the possible surgery…at least she can have a plan B if needed…I,too, would be horrified if someone put off a surgery to watch my pet!
    Beautiful lily on the header photo…I’m going to take a photo of my iris this morning…it was tightly budded yesterday morning and by afternoon, it was fully opened…I can’t stop putting my nose to it as I pass by…isn’t the the Lord so good to give to us beauty to the eye and the nose?!!

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  12. About those coyotes…if people are taking care of the mice and rats, which I presume they are and not by agreeing to just be friends, but with traps and poison, and the garbage is being taken care of, that just leaves taking what the people donate. Pets, bird food, that sort of thing. What is with the compost? Do you people put food products in your compost? Why would coyotes eat dirt? That makes no sense unless people are putting their food garbage in the compost. Anyway, you folk have elevated the coyote to top of the predator chain. Coyotes are wild, they do not understand getting along. They do understand, “you are weak and I want that so I am taking it”. There is nothing in your city that scares them. They are smart and learn from seeing their companions killed by people. Rural coyotes tend to be more wary because some ranchers and farmers shoot them. An occasional bullet is a deterrent to the rest. You could always reinstate the wolves, they are a higher predator and can kill coyotes. As I understand, the coyotes and wolves kept separate territories in the past. Though there is some question of if they are now interbreeding at times, though I think that is rare along with coyotes and dogs. But wolves will bring bigger challenges to you.

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  14. Whoa, mumsee, you make way too much sense!

    This is one of the best summaries from a lay person (on our local coyote FB page) I’ve seen yet. She must have been channeling you from Idaho (slowly, some people are “getting it”):

    ________________________________________

    I think the reason for the increase in the numbers of coyotes invading our neighborhoods is mostly a matter of common sense.

    Every generation in our area moves further away from its agrarian roots, which included taking whatever steps were necessary to control species that threatened people, crops, and livestock. The areas we live in used to be full of fruit tree groves and dairy farms – and it was not all that long ago. I did not grow up in the South Bay area but I have many friends who did and they all remember the many dairy farms that existed in this area up until the 1960s. Back in those days, farmers and ranchers shot any coyotes that actually killed livestock or destroyed crops or even came close enough to threaten them.

    No one made a big deal about it and the coyotes did not become extinct but instead learned to stay away from humans and the land they inhabited. Even today, hunters will tell you that coyotes are very rarely seen in the uninhabited areas in which they live. It’s not that the coyotes are not there, it is that they are not habituated toward humans and stay very far away from them. The behavior of the city coyote is very different from that of those that live in the wild.

    In the years since, we have not continued to exert our claim on our territory as was once done. This allowed the coyotes to move into our areas. The plentiful food sourced from backyard fruit trees and vegetable gardens, unsecured trash cans, containers left outside filled with pet food, and even our pets themselves, has allowed city coyotes to live a longer life than they would have out in the wild where food was less plentiful and required greater effort to obtain. And, I might add, they were subject to predation from other animals in the wild, which would have also served to limit their population. We can all do the math that if the same number of pups are born but all live a longer life span, there will be a larger number of coyotes.

    And now these highly adaptable animals, living in much larger numbers in close proximity to our human inhabited neighborhoods, have figured out that not only do our neighborhoods provide a great source of food for them, they have also learned that no harm whatsoever will come to them when they use our streets to hunt for food and prey in the front and back yards of our homes.

    This awareness on the part of city coyotes includes a growing recognition that no harm will come to them from the hazing that is so commonly recommended by government authorities as the solution to keeping coyotes from becoming habituated to humans. This is why hazing efforts are becoming increasingly ineffective as a deterrent to unwanted coyote behavior. How many times can you shake a can of pennies or blow a horn at a coyote without any other negative subsequent consequences before the smart and adaptable coyote will catch on that it’s ok to ignore that behavior from humans?

    This is why I believe the coyote population in our cities is exploding and without action being taken to remove habituated coyotes, this problem will escalate to the point of a child or adult being bitten, or worse. In my view, what happened in Irvine will happen here, it is not a matter of if, but when.
    ______________________________________

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  15. Walking the dogs yesterday we passed by a front yard that had installed a charming little recycling waterfall as part of its new landscape. There was a sign on it saying it had even won some local community garden club award for creative design.

    All I thought was “coyote watering hole.”

    Asking a community that of 80,000 people — not to mention the 4 million-resident city it’s part of — to “eliminate all outdoor food and water” to successfully deter coyotes is ridiculous.

    Meanwhile, from another neighbor this morning:

    “3-4 coyotes howling on my front lawn this morning at 2:45am. I believe they were trying to get to my 2 small dogs…something has to be done!”

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  21. Hello? I have three coyotes in my backyard. They are playing with my chihuahua but seem to be getting a little rough and he is scared. Could you please send an officer to tell them to play nicely?

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  27. NancyJill, I remember singing that song “Oh what a beautiful morning…” when I went to a one-room country school back in the day. 😉 We’d walk and dance and sing around the school grounds sometimes while out for recess, and that was the one song I remember. Back when I was in 1st, 2nd or 3rd grade.

    Fun memories! 🙂

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  28. Yep. I have never used the favorites thing on here other than to try to put some stuff there. But never remember to check there. Today I checked and there was one titled: Launch or crash and burn. And I wondered. Fun.

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  29. What’s the favorites thing on here? I don’t see anything like that. I do remember the title of that post, “Launch or crash and burn,” though. 🙂

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  31. Speaking of coyotes, I was reading an interesting piece on BBC. They say the chance of being attacked by an alligator is very low as alligators are wary of people. They have been hunted from antiquity. What? Alligators are now kind of protected, are they not? Some folk still hunt them. Any chance they will be losing some of that fear as they realize people are not a threat?

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  32. Kim, I ordered two pair of the three I picked out. I decided to put the Bernie pair on my wish list at DSW so I can get to a store and try on some platforms to see if I do okay with them. I really love the black and white polka dot and just wish they were not quite as high, but I will have to see. I have not worn platforms before, except maybe at half that level. I ordered a black pair of Earth sandals and a white pair of Naturalizers, both for about $50 each. The Bernie are $60, and I hope from my first order to get a coupon for some dollars off to apply to the Bernies if I can wear that style. I also found some flat Bernies at Beales for around $30 (Catwalk style) which I liked too, but I like the polka dots better.

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  33. Just got off the phone from talking to him–8 or 9 hours late, but who’s counting? 🙂

    Fun conversation in which he pretty much verified everything I thought, but he did have a couple leads to share, so that may be helpful. 🙂

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  39. Husband is kind of like Elvera. When he started out with this school, he stocked us with everything including lots of pre made things. Guess he has forgotten that I have somehow managed to feed people for the past thirty five years and need not worry too much. He wanted to make it easier for me. And we are actually using the pre mades. Since we have been out of fresh fruit and bread for a while, we have had to be imaginative. Rather than making pancakes every day, since the weather has been cool, I have been able to make fresh bread and pita bread every day. Today, I used two of his prepackaged items. We used a stuffing mix (we did not have any store bread and fresh bread gets eaten before it cools) but managed to improvise with mixing in rhubarb and cranraisins. Worked very well. And with the pita bread we had one of those pre made curry mixes with which we mixed some of our leftover turkey and chicken. As expected, few leftovers.

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  40. Another long day — but I feel redeemed, our new editor (we have a new overall editor who’s being transferred in from one of our inland papers) said he ‘loved’ the coyote store and made up a very fancy picture/tweet to share it.

    Had to work late, though, what started out as a simple development story turned weird when I googled the developer and found a bunch of fraud charges filed against him. So I had to call him for a comment. He’s innocent. 🙂

    Seems like I’m catching a cold or something, I have a tickle in my sinuses and really runny nose, sneezing.

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  41. Glad you got your interview, michelle.

    And tomorrow is the big move for Chas. Praying all goes as smoothly as possible. It’ll be good to be on the “other side.”

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  42. Moving woes. The FHA inspector noticed some siding that needs replaced, and one piece is at the top of the second floor, over 20ft off the ground. There were a few other minor things, but the closing date has been moved later. Also, someone at the FHA office in St. Louis misread the contract so the appraisal came in $2,500 lower than the contract agreement.

    Ç’est la vie, as they say in French.

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  43. See? Moving is always a nightmare. 😦

    Colleague thinks the prey from my wild night on the front porch may have been a fox. I said (just for convenience) it was a raccoon, but what I saw was something I actually couldn’t identify — large, pointed face, huge bush tail, brown/gray, NO stripes.

    It didn’t really look like a raccoon or a possum (the two most logical animals in these parts). But we have foxes in the southern part of town, several blocks away (never seen them in my neighborhood, though) and my colleague who lives there thinks that’s what it was (maybe being chased by a coyote, which I do think is likely).

    So do foxes climb? This guy was shimmying up one of my front porch rails and managed to get onto the roof.

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  44. Well, I guess they do climb. Still not sure what I saw, I probably should have been braver but I was sure there was going to be a slaughter on the porch and I really didn’t want to see it! I slammed the window, hoping to scare away the predator.

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