80 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-4-16”

  1. I reach over and steal a kiss on her cheek.
    She says, PUT IT BACK!
    So I have to put the kiss back where I got it.
    I can’t get away with anything!

    😆

    Today would be my young brother’s birthday. I don’t think of him often now, but every year this time. He was thirteen. Hit by an auto. It was his fault, though dad never forgave the guy who hit him. He was already a Christian. Belonged to the North Charleston Church of God. (Cleveland Tenn. group.)
    He would be 77. I

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  3. I mentioned that my little brother was killed by an auto when he was thirteen.
    I just opened my Bible and turned to Isaiah 57 to read a couple of chapters.
    Isaiah 57:1 says, “The righteous perish and no an takes it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.”

    Weird coincidence.

    Liked by 8 people

  4. Chas, I believe we were meant to remember our dead. As long as you remember your brother or you and your sister mention him he is not dead in your memories. He was a vibrant boy. Just the other day BG told me she could remember how her Pop (paternal grandfather) smelled. She said she was in the bank several months ago and a man was in line ahead of her who smelled exactly like him.
    Forgiveness is hard. There was a couple who attended my church. One of their sons graduated with me. They chose a life a little different. He had retired from a corporate job. They hiked the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Coast Trail (among others). They chose to live as organically as they could and they biked anywhere they could. Both of them were killed two years apart while riding their bikes. First the wife was struck by a young man while she was riding on one of our back roads. The son I graduated with is an attorney. He could have really stuck it to the young man for killing his mother, but the husband and all four children agreed one life had been lost, why ruin another. Two years later the four children went to court to ask for mercy in the sentence the judge could give for the man you struck their father while riding his bike. I attended both funerals.
    I don’t know that I am that person who could forgive so easily. That’s a shame on me.

    http://woodtrails.blogspot.com/2009/09/profile-remembering-annie-salesman.html

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  8. Good morning all.

    I see from last night that there was a dolphin photo. That’s a problem with rotating banners. If one doesn’t get on here several times a day, one misses some of the pictures.

    And it’s Mrs L’s birthday. She and a famous person that I won’t name, because she would rather not be reminded, are exactly the same age today: 55. She doesn’t look it, though.

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  11. Happy Birthday to the blessed Mrs. L who hopefully looks younger than 55 and not older!!! If she doesn’t look her age, that could go either way, but I know what you mean, of course, in our culture it could only mean one thing. In another culture some may desire to look older to be counted as wise.

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  12. Nice header shot. It almost looks like it was taken on a foggy day with those colors. It looks like that a lot when we are at Hilton Head in the winter.

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  13. Cheryl, lately I have been reading in the book, A Poem a Day: 365 Devotional Readings Based on Classic Christian Verse, by Philip Comfort and Daniel Partner. It’s a book that I think you would enjoy.

    As I go through my days, I find that often I think of this blog family, the individual personalities, and what each would find pleasing.

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  14. Photo could be titled Out on a Limb. 🙂

    The dolphin photo was delightful. It’s tricky — and takes several successive shots — to catch them in full jump like that.

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  17. Today, fourteen year old boy turns fifteen. He is doing okay right now. I am letting him hang out at the worksite where we told him not to be and he is washing windows and such after I explained once again to them that child labor laws do not allow him to run heavy equipment and a bunch of other things at fourteen. He could if it was agricultural work but this is a business serving farmers. I also cleaned out the hunting mansion but not before he had found lots of toys the other boys had left. I gave him time to set aside what he wanted but he sort of didn’t so I took care of it. I told him if he did not start showing up for his appts (7 am, 12 noon except when he is at work and not coming home for dinner, and five thirty pm) so we could check on him, he would have to move back into the house. He was there promptly the last two times. (He overslept twice now, and that is not okay but definitely something the new freedom will make easier as he no longer has a bedtime or a need to be reasonably quiet in his room after others go to bed. But he is one who goes to sleep at seven thirty and can sleep soundly until seven in the morning. And so life moves along.

    Liked by 3 people

  18. An interesting sight on my chore rounds this morning. I was walking toward the feed shed from feeding the buck goats and noticed a turkey, a chicken, and a rabbit eating from the poultry feeder. As you know, we released some of our rabbits to a happier life for a few months and they have blended nicely with the chickens and turkeys.

    Liked by 2 people

  19. Two young coyotes were lounging on a front yard a couple blocks from me this morning (while the resident small dogs were barking up a storm locked inside).

    They’ve really come to like it here.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Peter,

    First, Happy Birthday to the Mrs.

    Second, you can see the photo on yesterday’s Daily Thread. When I rotate the header pics during the day, whatever I take down goes into the post below. You can still see Cheryl’s dolphin pic and the others from yesterday. For a bigger view, just click on the pic.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. My husband has been told he looks like Hawkeye (Alan Alda). We’re in a small town where people know one another, so the first time I went to the post office after we married, my husband told me to tell so and so that I was married to “Hawkeye.”

    I used to have a co-worker who shared a birthday (including the same year) with Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t pleased about it.

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  25. My college boyfriend (Italian american) looked like Hawkeye. 🙂

    Chas never saw Mash or Johnny Carson or Twilight Zone. I’m making a list.

    Liked by 2 people

  26. Hillary appeared on “Fox News Sunday” last week. I didn’t see it. But I wonder.
    Did she wear her pants suit?
    I have never seen a woman wearing a pants suit on Fox.
    Maybe they didn’t have body shots of Hillary.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. Don’t Know Who
    When we lived in Virginia, we didn’t have a convenient TV set. Other than a portable B&W set in our BR, we had to go downstairs (split level) to the basement to watch TV. We had to deliberately go down and spend time watching the TV set. I usually only did that for football games. I have never seen most of the programs you people talk about.

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  29. Back from a three day speakers conference. I had only a vague idea about this very busy circuit. Much to think about in the upcoming weeks, though I need to finish the book– next week.

    But you’ve heard that before from me. Sigh.

    Off to work, now, after a fun catch-up walk with my patron of the arts!

    Liked by 1 person

  30. I think Fox mandates “their” women wear tight-fitting short dresses and ridiculously high heels. It’s a bit of a throwback in that way.

    I’m wondering if that station will see a shakeup following this election. It really is time for some fresh faces and to bump some of the tired ones (Hannity, O’Reilly, etc.).

    And, yeah, let the women break out of the dress code a little bit and relax. Sheesh.

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  32. Maybe someone could post a line up of the MASH characters for Chas to guess which one? I would, but my phone/tablet does not always cooperate with my wishes (under statement).

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  33. I think the women have a choice. i.e. I’m sure Shannon Bream has beautiful legs. But I don’t know for sure. You never see her legs. There are others who don’t wear short skirts.

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  35. Never mind Chas, I’ve only seen part of one episode rerun of MASH (seen while sitting in a hospital lounge), not enough to know anything about anyone. Growing up without a television – and the fact that both my parents, for different reasons, didn’t see much television either – means that some pop culture references are a total blank to me. Both my father and I get frustrated when doing crossword puzzles and the clue asks for the name of an actor on a TV show. Now, with YouTube, I will sometimes look up a show to see a sample, but I almost always conclude that I didn’t miss much.

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  36. I was once mistaken by a kid for “Mister Rogers”. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I was wearing a sweater, but he must think I favored him.
    Mister Rogers hosted a children’s program on PBS.

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  37. MASH was set during the Korean War and was a spin off from a movie. It was mostly a protest against the Vietnam War. They tackled some social issues of the time. Like making a racist look black because he didn’t wan to accept blood from a black person. It was pretty racy because Major Hotlips Houlihan carried on an affair with Major Frank Burns who was married. I liked Colonel Sherman T. Potter more than Colonel Henry Blake. MASH ran 11 seasons which when it ended made it the longest running TV show. Law & Order now holds that record.
    It was one of the TV shows I was allowed to watch at 8pm on Monday nights. My parents would make comments because they were against protesters of the Vietnam war, not that they were pro war. I think looking back we watched MASH, Sanford & Son, All In The Family, and for some reason I can remember begging to watch Maude but that for sure was not allowed.

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  38. Thanks for all the help yesterday with the computer question. It was malware and a lot of adware, and 1st Arrow bought some MalwareBytes and installed free AdBlock, too, so the problem’s taken care of now.

    Guess Who, reading your description yesterday of an LA city meeting had me laughing so hard I was crying. 😉 My vet tech arrow sometimes gets people in her clinic who are just as bizarre. 🙂

    Cheryl, stunning dolphin photo! And the sparkly water as a backdrop was beautiful. Gorgeous glimpse of God’s creation.

    AJ, I like that you bring the header photos down where they are still visible when you put up a new header. Something funny happened one day this week. I came to the blog and it looked like the top picture in the lower group was the same as the header. I’m looking and looking at the two, comparing them, thinking, this must be some sort of game, to spot the difference between the two.

    Then I refreshed the page, and the header was different. 🙂 So I must have gotten here right when you were in the middle of switching the header, and I got a twofer — two of the same pic, in a big version on top and smaller underneath.

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  40. There must be a lot of Alan Alda-lookalikes out there. One of the fourth-grade teachers at one school where I taught looked very much like Hawkeye.

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  41. Kim, when I started to watch television reruns, I was surprised at the amount of innuendo allowed in family programming, even in classic TV shows from the 60s. Television seems to have been always before films in pushing the envelope of what was acceptable to show and say.

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  48. Sunday when I was at a concert, a friend of mine introduced me as a piano teacher to someone she knew who was also there. My friend’s acquaintance seemed very interested in what I do in my studio, and because she’s a teacher, she wanted to get my contact information, to be able to pass along to her students.

    Then she asked what I’ve never been asked before: Do you have a business card?

    Argh! I’d considered getting some at one point in the past, but never followed through.

    I told her I didn’t, but my friend said she’d email my phone number to this lady, that she can pass along to her students.

    Anyway, I am now in the process of looking for different business card designs that I like, and thinking of how and where to distribute them.

    I’ve looked at quite a few online for music teachers, but don’t like most of them for one reason or another. This is one I liked, though, and am considering.

    http://www.zazzle.com/classy_vintage_music_notes_music_business_card-240215623978700733

    I like the color, and the shape of the staff with notes on it. I’m not sure about putting my address on there, though, as I think I’d rather only give that out to people if they call or email about lessons and want to come to an interview, and not have it on cards that are in who-knows-whose hands.

    I wouldn’t hesitate to put my address on them if I had an outside studio, but it’s a little different teaching from home, with family living here, instead of being solely a place of business.

    Now that I look closer at the linked page, I see there is an option to customize the design further. I might try putting a tag line under the music teacher line, something like “Comprehensive Musicianship Through Applied Piano & Composition,” and eliminate the physical address line, if that’s possible.

    The other thing I was thinking was having a local print shop with whom I’ve done business before custom-make something like this for me. I’d really rather do business with friendly people I know than order online, but I don’t know if they have a design like that. I saw a lot of cards online with pictures of grand pianos or a partial keyboard picture, but I didn’t particularly like those, and I don’t want plain cards with only text, either.

    Anyone have experience with ordering custom-made items through a local print shop? Or any related thoughts about business cards, etc.? I have practically no experience with stuff like this.

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  49. 6, never made business cards, but in my experience, local dealers are better and often cheaper. My sisters had local printers do their wedding invitations and were quite satisfied.

    Actually, I have made business cards, but I did them myself. I bought some business card printer paper and used a Word template to make it up. Of course, they were very plain, no graphics, just text with line accents. However, free, copyright free, clip art of music/instruments should be widely available. So, that is another option if you have a trustworthy printer (alignment of the printing with the business card paper can be tricky).

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  51. Roscuro, we had a local printer do our wedding invitations, but that was 30 years ago, and I can’t remember much about the process!

    I like the idea of DIY with some things, and using a home printer with copyright-free art is an idea. Our printer has had some issues, and me not being very technologically adept might mean I’ll have to let someone else print cards for me. 🙂

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  52. I don’t have a business card, nor any other.
    But I do have a word of wisdom.
    So. Listen carefully
    Do not let English Ivy get started on your property.
    It will take over. And it lives forever. And it climbs high into trees.
    Weed killer doesn’t kill English Ivy.

    Liked by 1 person

  55. I killed the English ivy on my property but I did not want to.

    Fifty four is also a very good number as husband was born that year. In the nineteen hundreds. Twentieth century. In case you are wondering. He will be home today, if all goes according to plan!

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  56. Kim, I was thinking of what was actually family programming, such as The Beverly Hillbillies, which founded half its humour on sex appeal or lack thereof (admittedly, the other half of its humour was genuinely funny).

    Mumsee, even some of the Looney Tunes cartoons raise an eyebrow, though not all of them thankfully. There were some films we used to enjoy as children that going back and watching them as an adult, I was horrified at all the double entendres.

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  59. 6 Arrows. I would recommend that you go with a nice white or cream colored card with black thermography. Choose a nice paper. Most people scan business cards these days and auto add the information to their cell phone, I use CamCard. I take a photo of the business card, it “reads” the information and auto populates. It saves a photo of the card, adds the contact to my phone and I have it synced so that it adds it to my Google Contacts. If it is a plain card with nice printing I have no trouble but if it has coating, fancy colors, script writing, or anything too cutesy I can’t get it to scan.

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  62. 6 Arrows, the price of those cards looked pretty high compared to what I’ve done.

    I don’t currently have business cards. I mean to get them . . . but I so rarely have given them out that it’s almost a waste of money. The only person in Indiana who has asked me if I have one doesn’t seem interested in my services, but only interested in being able to look shocked when I tell her no, I don’t have any yet. (She is a girlfriend of a family friend and has asked me several times.) I do need to get some more someday, but I too have the dilemma of what to put in the card. In Nashville I had a post office box, and though it hardly ever got any mail, it was a way to avoid putting my home address out there. But the post office was close enough that I could walk to it, and checking it weekly wasn’t a big deal. Here i I got a post office box I’d have to make a special trip into town, and I haven’t gotten around to doing it yet, since the need is hardly pressing. I also want to make at least one new website (the current one, which I’m pretty much ignoring, has my maiden name on it) and it’s pointless to make cards until I get a website and sort out the PO box thing.

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  63. I’m just back from a conference and no one exchanged business cards (except the Compassion INternational speaker’s bureau head who gave me one of her cards for Biddy). Everyone used FB–friended each other there.

    I used Vista prints last time. No complaints, very inexpensive.

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  65. Had to get comments about the Pope’s commission to study the history of women deacons.

    Bishop’s office assistant kept wanting to call me ‘sister’

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  68. What dress code?

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/01/27/well-it-looks-like-ill-be-able-to-wear-pants-fo/208228

    Just sayin’ …. 🙂

    _____________________________

    On Fox News’ The Five, co-host Kimberly Guilfyole inadvertently highlighted the network’s sexist dress code when she said that she may be able to wear pants on the show’s Iowa set because cameras won’t get “a suitable shot for me there. … ”

    Guilfoyle’s comments highlight Fox’s well know problem with sexism and scantily clad women. In 2013, Fox host Gretchen Carlson admitted that “pants were not allowed on Fox & Friends,” a show she co-hosted with two male co-hosts from 2006 until 2013. Journalist and author Gabriel Sherman also noted several other examples of Fox’s dress code, notably by Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. On several occasions, Ailes has made sexist comments about female reporters legs, including, “I did not spend x-number of dollars on a glass desk for her to wear pant suits,” and “move that damn laptop, I can’t see her legs.”
    _____________________________________________

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/01/27/well-it-looks-like-ill-be-able-to-wear-pants-fo/208228

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  69. Yeah. Definitely Potter. Although it’s hard to say on some of those pics since they show the actors now instead of then.

    Mrs L looks in her 40s, by the way. At the daughters’ weddings she looked even younger in makeup, which she rarely uses. Kim can verify that she doesn’t look that old. And if Mrs L approved, I’d have Kim send AJ the picture we took at last year’s meet-up.

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  70. Okay, so the dolphin picture wasn’t there this morning when I checked yesterday’s thread, but it’s there now. Interesting.

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  71. Cheryl, the price of those cards seemed rather high to me, too, though I saw some that were over $30 per hundred. The price was pretty well in the middle of the range with a lot of others right around the $25 mark, also. I think Roscuro’s right that a local business would probably be a good deal less expensive than even the low-end business cards I saw online.

    Speaking of websites, as you did with yours, a number of people are of the opinion that a private music teacher’s best advertising come through having a website. Maybe, but I’m not sure I want to go that route, even though I’ve heard it’s becoming more common that people google “piano teachers in [city, state]” before doing anything else to check into getting lessons for their kids.

    OTOH, having a website with my policies on it (and business cards distributed to the area public schools music teachers, for example, with a web address listed on the cards) could help screen people who may be interested in piano lessons, but not specifically in what I have to offer. It would save time in the process I now have that includes the initial phone consultation when prospective clients call, followed by the student interview and free mini-lesson I give so we can all determine whether there is a good fit. Then I give them a week to think over whether they want their child(ren) to study with me under the terms of my policy.

    I’ve never had anyone go through that procedure and decide to not enroll except for the family I mentioned a couple months ago who opted out after the interview/free lesson. I made a pretty fair investment of time in that case, because it was a transfer student, and planning a lesson for someone who’s studied before is more time-consuming, asking extra questions in the phone consultation to determine approximately what level the student was at, and finding materials that would be roughly doable at the projected skill level.

    I’m not sure exactly why they didn’t sign up (they said something about wanting to stay local, but they already knew from the phone consultation that I didn’t live in the same town they do, so something else must have changed their mind about enrolling). Maybe it was something with my personality that turned them away (though before them every job I’ve ever interviewed for, I have been hired). I suspect it was something in my written policy, and that’s fine. But if my policy were posted somewhere prospective piano families could see, it might help me avoid situations like that in the future — going to considerable time and effort, and ending up with a no answer, anyway.

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  72. Kim, I like the idea of a cream-colored business card. But black and white isn’t me. I’m earthy and eclectic, with long brown hair — where it’s not gray 😉 — and an autumn-palette wardrobe of clothing I wear. I want business cards to match. 🙂 Black and white is too crisp and sharp for my tastes.

    Even my piano is brown!

    Maybe my cards should read Earthy Eclectic Piano Lessons at the Little House in the Big Woods. 😀

    Liked by 3 people

  73. And I don’t have a smart phone, only a dumb one that doesn’t do any of that stuff you mentioned in your 5:49!

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  74. Michelle, yeah, FB is also a big way to get the word out about one’s business, I’ve heard. I’m not on there, though, and don’t really want to be, either.

    I’ve tried finding information online about our local music teacher’s branch of the Music Teacher’s National Association, but the last I looked, they were only on Facebook, and I couldn’t read much of anything about the group.

    I am seriously considering joining the local chapter, but I think the group meets during one of the Bible studies I’ve attended for many years. If I were part of the local music teacher’s group, I’d want to be able to associate with them regularly. (And of course I’d be paying dues, so it would hardly pay to be a part of a group with whom I couldn’t often visit with and bounce ideas off of.) And even if I did attend meetings, I’d feel like I was probably missing a lot, not being on FB. I don’t know how much more discussion goes on via social media compared to in-person meetings of the organization.

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  76. I just got a ‘smart’ phone, since I needed a phone to call home and also to keep in touch with my siblings, who all text. I also had a premonition that, university/college being what it is, having a smartphone might come in handy in case any of my courses use such a feature. When I enrolled, the school encouraged me to enter into contests which involved taking pictures of self with poster about enrolling and posting said picture on FB. Not having a phone with such capabilities, I didn’t do it (I didn’t want to anyway, and I knew perfectly well that the school was using students’ penchant for social media as advertising for the school), but I have a feeling that phone will come in handy. Thankfully, I was able to find a relatively cheap model and got the cheapest plan I could for what I needed it for. Yesterday, when I posted a comment but my picture didn’t appear beside my name, I was testing the phone.

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  78. If you put together a website, 6 Arrows, you could post at least the sound recording of you playing the piano, thus demonstrating your skill. If any of your friends/family have a phone that can take video, you can upload that as well.

    I would be impressed if I could find a reasonably priced piano teacher who could play Rachmaninoff–it serves as publicity. You could also post the video on Youtube.

    I recognize you may not want to appear, but if you wore a bag over your head while you played, I’d be even more impressed! 🙂

    WordPress is the web hosting site to use. Get your domain name “Six Arrows Piano,” or whatever, through Bluehost.

    Liked by 2 people

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