35 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-5-16”

  1. Good morning, and Happy Friday!

    Michelle, from last night, thanks for the website information. Something to consider.

    And you made me want to dig out my Rach Prelude in G Minor that was my recital piece my junior year in high school. Hmmm…I one had it memorized. Maybe I could work it back up and play it with a bag over my head. 😉

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  4. Good morning everyone.

    Re: 52/20 club from yesterday. You have to understand that $20 in those days was not trivial money. I figure that the dollar is worth a tenth of what it was when I got married in 1857, and I remember, in 1948, hearing my uncle complain of inflation. So? Roughly, I would figure that $20 would be equivalent of at least “$300 now.
    That translates to other things. In 1957, gasoline cost $0.30-$0.35 per gallon. I figure that anything less than $3.00j/gal is cheap gas. It’s $1.50/gal in Greensboro now. Real cheap.

    0035When

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  9. Wood ducks in eclipse plumage? I’m so glad they stayed in their full colors till we saw them in Florida! They’re cute even in eclipse, but I’ve seen them too far away to photograph well so many times that it would have been a horrid disappointment to be close enough for good photos and have them in the brief season they aren’t boldly colored.

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  10. Goodnight, Jo. Sweet dreams.

    Good morning, day, and in-between to others who stop by for a chat and maybe to share some coffee. I am on my second cup.

    Last night Art and I watched The Kite Runner. That means, we got to visit in Afghanistan and Pakistan along with San Francisco. As Roger Ebert declares on the DVD cover, “This is a MAGNIFICENT film!”

    A few nights ago we saw Monsieur Lahar which was set in a Montreal middle school so we were in Canada for that film. The main character was a refugee from Algeria so we got some history lessons on that nation.

    We saw Starting Out in the Evening recently, too, about a New York literary novelist who has failing health and a young doctoral student is doing her dissertation on his works. It definitely has the New York standards down pat, but is tastefully handled.

    The Pool, another interesting movie we saw, took us to India. It engaged by showing the lives of two boys who arrived in the area and worked in the hotel and restaurant industries. The older one watches, from a tree he climbs, a wealthy family with a pool they never use. He eventually becomes a gardener for the family and finds out why they never use the pool. Very good movie.

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  12. Janice, I read The Kite Runner years ago, and it as such a dark story that while I was glad I read it, it’s a “never read this again” book, and I can’t imagine it as a movie. How was it?

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  13. So, BG has been doing her community service at the Habitat For Humanity ReStore. They love her. I had no doubt. She is hanging out, outside with the smokers. She is without transportation due to the fender bender she had Sunday. Nana took her to work yesterday and I went to pick her up. The guy added 30 minutes to her time when he signed off on her paperwork. She needs 30 hours. She had 21 just this week. Makes you wonder why she didn’t get it done in the original 90 days she was given.
    I had to admit to her that I always hung out, outside with the smokers at work. You really find out what is going on where you work when you do that. The engineers and shipping people at smoked at a former company where I worked. If I sold something I knew whether or not it would ship or not so I was in a better position to manage customer expectations. I can not smoke. It makes me pray to die.
    She wanted her bedding from here on her bed at Nana’s so after work I took it over. Now I have an unmade bed here, but whatever. Anyway BG, Nana, and I sat at the kitchen table talking. We had the best time. A friend came to get BG to go somewhere and Nana and I kept talking. Then Nephew came in from work and the 3 of us talked. I think I got back home about 7:30.

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  14. Cheryl, I was imagining the book would cover details that would be really dark that were only alluded to in the film. The film was rated PG -13. It does show the brutality of extremist Muslims as far as stoning a woman for marital infidelity. Also, it showed children in an orphanage and how every so often one of the religious leaders chose a child for their own. The scene of one of the boys with his captor showed the boy, fully clothed, dancing or performing for his captors. Nothing else was shown, but it was subtly alluded to so I don’t think children would even understand if they viewed it. He was the boy his relative went in to rescue. And after taking a beating, they were able to escape. This was a very suspenseful part, trying to rescue out from the Taliban. The boy was taken to live a much better life with his uncle and aunt in the states. It has many positive messages about the value of life, family, bullies, how to change direction in life after a sinful choice, and it shows how the country changed after extremists took control and how so many children are left as orphans.
    So how does it line up with the book, Cheryl? I think in this case, you might like the Dreamworks version better than the author’s version.

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  15. I was so engrossed in The Kite Runner I didn’t want to visit the bathroom for fear I’d miss something while I was gone.

    But you’re right about intensity, Cheryl. I’ve avoided the movie.

    Try The Lunchbox out of India, Janice. My husband and I really liked it.

    Still haven’t caught up yet.

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  16. I don’t think I would want to read the book because it would probably be too much as far as the details. The movie is probably like The Kite Runner Lite.

    Thank you for your suggestion, Michelle. I will see if the library has a copy. Being in a major city gives us an advantage in quantity of selections.

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  18. I’ve tried to read both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; but I couldn’t take it. The books have that modern style of narration which makes me feel like I’m watching a dream (I don’t know how else to describe it, but that is how much of modern fiction makes me feel when I try to read it), and with the grim realism of Hosseini’s stories, that sensation of dreaming turns into a feeling of being in a nightmare. I prefer non-fiction when it comes to grim realities. I read The Taliban by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, and that gave a very clear account of the situation in Afghanistan.

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  19. I never read or saw The Kite Runner but had heard good things about it — I believe my cousin saw the movie (and read the book, too) and liked it quite a bit. Maybe I’ll look for it to watch this weekend.

    I slept too late (7 a.m.) but I still had time to take care of getting all the trash out to the curb (while catching up with my neighbor) before the trash trucks arrived (they still haven’t come, an hour later).

    I’ve pulled something in my left leg, it’s been bugging me all week but today feels worse. I’m not quite limping yet, but close to it.

    I get to watch/listen in on another LA city council meeting this morning, we’ll see if the coyote relatives with their puppets will show up again. Along with the other crazies (one guy finally was tossed out last week — it takes a lot to be removed from those meetings — when he showed up with hanging nooses).

    And this afternoon is my long postposed eye appointment, I missed going last year so undoubtedly will be up for new glasses. Hopefully everything else is OK, the older I get, the more I dread going to doctors.

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  20. The massage therapist and my husband have diagnosed me with bursitis in my left hip. It could be that. When I looked up the causes I have had nothing happen to cause it so the only other reason would be arthritis in my hip. Ugh.
    Take an anti-imfammatory like Aleve or Motrin and see if that helps. It did me.

    Liked by 3 people

  22. Roscuro, I’ve read both of them, and found both excellent and helpful for some cultural understanding–but very grim and not books to reread. I’m not saying I’d never, ever reread them, but probably not. Once was enough, but I was glad I’d read them once.

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  23. Karen, anything is possible. That is timber and hunting land. My mother’s people were from the Butler area and my grandparents are buried in the Brightwater Cemetery in Needham which is outside of Butler. It is in Choctaw County. I seriously doubt this is true. Sounds more like the minister “weren’t from around here was he?” My thoughts are there wouldn’t be many children in the area anyway so why not. I read the comments. People seem to think we still burn crosses and wear our white robes down here. Things like this make me see red. I did send the link to a cousin and ask her if she knew anything about it.

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  25. I wrote a blog post a couple weeks ago I titled “the unexpected expert.”

    Today, I got an email and just got off the phone with a DMin candidate writing a dissertation on Oswald Chambers. He was thrilled to find me on the INternet. I’m now passing on a bunch of information from last summer’s scanning spree at Wheaton.

    Funny. I don’t feel that old . . .

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  27. “The sound of abundance of rain…” We’ve been having drought conditions this summer, with rainy days few and far between. We haven’t had any rain for over a week and the last rain was pretty light. Add to that, the heat has been stifling. So thankful for thunder and steady rain this evening.

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  30. We need rain here. Even our water tank is down a third. I think that no one checked the screen and it was clogged. I got a new screen for the tank with one phone call. Now I hope someone is coming to clean the solar panels and the gutters. When all of your household hot water comes from solar panels and all of your water comes from rain on the roof, this is important.

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  31. We must have all your rain. We have had pools in our yard several times this summer. It is a challenge to get out and mow between showers. We should be without showers until the middle of next week, but with the look of the clouds, I wonder. It is green and we do not have to worry about forest fires. Now the mosquito population is another issue.

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  32. My phone does not ring. It just goes to voice mail. I wanted to use it for GPS tomorrow, but guess I will have to hope I remember how to get to my writer’s group which is almost an hour away.

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  34. I agree with Chas about the political cartoons.

    I thought ‘the kite runner’ was a tragic movie. I imagine the book would be even more so.

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