128 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-20-16”

  2. Good morning everyone.
    I hope Donna can get everything settled.
    I would just tear that house down and start over.
    having said that, someone should say, “Chas, you patched up that rickety shed. How about that?” Do what you need to do Donna.

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  5. What time is it there Jo.
    You told me once but I don’t rightly remember. I’m thinking you’re 15 hours ahead of EDST.

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  7. Wow, that picture was worth waiting around for. Lovely. I will be saving this one for a screen saver.
    Chas, it is 9:33 pm on Saturday evening the 20th.

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  8. Good Morning….there is a most beautiful bird up there now….Cheryl that is amazing! The colors of the birdie and the cat tails blend perfectly!!
    It is 43 degrees this morning…and foggy….Fall is just around the corner….and it snowed on top of Pikes Peak yesterday….not quite ready for that yet…..
    Have a blessed day ya’ll….

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  9. Good Morning Everyone. The dogs are fed and I am having coffee. I really need to clean the house today but the grass beckons. What to do? Nothing right this minute.

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  12. I’m waiting to see if someone else identifies the bird (including the sex and approximate age) before I say more about it. 🙂

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  13. I saw a Kiwi Bird last week in Galveston on the golf course. Surely they are not native to Texas. Maybe he escaped from nearby Moody Gardens.

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  14. I had an open house yesterday at a 1.3 million dollar listing. It was an hour there and an hour back. I was listening to my Amazon Prime Music yesterday. This song came up. I can’t remember the last time I hear it. Probably sometime in the 80’s. It made me smile and I had to listen to it loud.

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  16. I started over to buy it Kim, but then I noticed all the grass I would have to cut.
    And bushes to trim. I wouldn’t have time to go out on the boat.
    On radio station WMAL in Washington, there used to be a morning show, “Hardin & Weaver” I think it was Jackson Weaver who had the boat he cruised the Potomac in. He once said, “A boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money..”

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  17. Gee, I was still up at midnight practicing turning my reading light on and off in between reading a chapter of a Mary Russell/ Sherlock Holmes thrilled. I could have been talking to Jo at her dinner time tonight!

    Too complicated to think about time right now after only 5 hours sleep!

    But my daughter is home with some friends so I need to start making a breakfast worth their long drive from the south!

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  20. Was it only last Saturday that I was snarky about the rain in Louisiana?
    What happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left a bitter taste in my mouth. Southerners don’t whine. We get kicked, we get up, dust off our pants (or dry them out), and get about the business of helping our neighbors even if we have nothing left.
    Southeast Louisiana took a major hit last week, but they restored my faith in them. I am still ashamed of what I said and it will take a while for me to forgive myself for being so unsympathetic.
    The news media has largely overlooked this disaster–or at least it seems so. The very people who crucified George W. Bush for flying over are now defending Barack Obama for staying on vacation. Win some; lose some.
    The people of Southeast Louisiana or the “Cajun Navy” got out to help their neighbors. Some Facebook posts show the devastation, but the comments are “leave us alone we will take care of ourselves”. Neighbors helping neighbors. That is the South I grew up in and know. Yes things are bad over there and people from the outside are sending supplies and some are coming to help.
    Several years ago I typed out the preface to a cookbook and posted it on WorldMagBlog. I went looking for it this morning. It turns out it was turned into a book. I couldn’t “steal” the content although I pieced some of it together.

    In my South, we know the difference between
    surviving and truly living.

    Around here to be rich means to never go hungry,

    so you’ll find food, and love, and opportunity a’plenty,
    and there’ll be people telling you to pull up
    that extra chair that always seems to be handy
    and to make yourself at home at the table that
    overflows with wisdom and corn bread.
    And we’ll quench your thirst with sun tea–
    made sweet and made cold and served best in
    jelly glasses and Mason jars, if you please.
    It’s the tall pines under which I played in my youth
    It’s the soft red clay that was a key ingredient in my mud pies
    It was those hot summers
    When my cousins and I would gather in the shade sucking on icees we had made with red cherry Kool-Aid and a Styrofoam cup
    My South has big families where everyone remembers everyone else’s birthday. In my South, we put peanuts in bottles of cola and hot sauce on almost everything. My South was cane-pole fishing and creek swimming.
    In my South, grandmothers pass around pictures of grandbabies and argue about the best azalea fertilizer.
    In my South, people still say “please” and “thank you,” “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir.”

    My South is the best kept secret in the country.

    My south is home

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  21. Up early, waiting for the roofers. Story of my life this summer.

    Chas, those of us who love old houses cringe at your ‘solution.’ 🙂

    I still remember the guy years ago who came to fix my wobbly, almost non-functioning front door handle (old brass plate on the outside, old glass knob on the inside).

    His solution was to go to Home Depot and buy a whole new, modern door mechanism.

    I gasped.

    He really didn’t get it. This hardware was the original from the 1920s. The goal for me is always to fix and preserve what’s there (if it’s from the 1920s).

    Nothing sadder than to see a great old craftsman or original Spanish house all stripped and tricked out, “modernized.”

    My house is hardly historical-register worthy, but those remaining 1920s elements — the original wood floors, wainscoting, french windows, paneled doors, original hardware — are what I love about it.

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  22. I am, at times, given to contemplation. I always knew why all the traffic was on I-495 at 6:00 a.m. But sometimes, at other times, I ask myself, “Where are all these people going?” Everyone is going somewhere, for different purposes. Some happy, some sad, some profitable, some not. But a necessary trip for each.
    There used to be a radio program, (this was before TV) called “Grand Central Station”. It centered about the drama that passed through GCS every day. A million stories.

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  23. Kim, Jeanie C. Riley is from the West Texas town of Anson, which is in the middle of the 400 mile drive from Oklahoma City to Lamesa.

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  24. I had forgotten about putting peanuts in the coke bottles. I never had enough money to buy peanuts and a coke at the same time. Not kidding.
    That’s the truth.

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  25. Dan Rather
    August 18 at 4:51pm ·
    If residents of Louisiana are watching television news, they must be feeling woefully forgotten. We have the worst natural disaster in years. People have lost their lives and families have lost lifetimes of memories under the waters. However, on cable news at least, the bizarre, apparently fabricated story of the discredited armed robbery of Olympic swimmers is getting almost wall-to-wall coverage. It is ridiculous.

    I don’t mean to downplay the interest of a story like the one out of Rio. It is so strange that it is compelling. What were they thinking? I wonder that as well. But the news business should have higher standards. Technically the supposed robbery is news, but not when compared to what is happening in Louisiana. It doesn’t take much imagination as a reporter to find gripping human interest stories there too, not to mention the headline-worthy state of emergency and the underlying take away about the specter of climate change on extreme weather.

    Of course that kind of reporting requires resources and may not draw the easy ratings of pundits playing the schadenfreude game in air conditioned studios. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. It doesn’t mean it isn’t news. And it doesn’t mean that news organizations can give it the second-billing it is getting. I must say that I had reason to be around many local newsrooms in Texas this week and they were dedicating resources to the disaster befalling the state to their east.

    A final rhetorical question- if these floods were happening in New York City, or Washington DC or even San Francisco, do you think the coverage would be differen

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  26. On the flood coverage (or lack thereof)

    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/explainer/article/Louisiana-flood-media-coverage-9171347.php

    some of the behind-the-scenes reasons

    _________________________

    … The storm didn’t have a name, said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, so it didn’t generate the kind of anticipation that a hurricane would have, though it did comparable damage.

    The rain started Friday. Newsrooms use the same work schedule as the rest of the country: Monday through Friday, with scaled back crews on Saturday and Sunday and vacations in the summer. Mobilizing coverage of a widespread disaster is tough on a weekend in August —especially with print newsroom staff nationwide at less than 60 percent what it was in 2000. That trend has followed a decline in print revenue, prompted by the move of advertising to online and reader preference for free news.

    It’s been a strenuous summer. Publications put up a lot of money to dispatch staff to big news events, like the two recent major political party conventions, aftermath of repeated shootings of black men and police, or the Olympics.

    “News organizations are on the whole a lot smaller than they used to be, they have fewer resources,” Benton said. “Even fewer on a weekend in August when everyone is on vacation or in Rio.”

    In contrast with the Louisiana floods, Superstorm Sandy on the east coast in 2012 drew days of non-stop live coverage. Benton said Sandy not only had a slick name, but also struck “the middle of the media universe.” It was a lot cheaper to send New York-based reporters upstate than to book them flights and hotels in south Louisiana.

    There’s an old saying in the news business: Rain’s not a story until water falls on the editor’s house.

    Most national newsrooms never made the call on Friday to send cameras and reporters to the scene, to witness the strife and share what they saw. Maybe editors didn’t think the floods would get as bad as they did. Maybe they thought their audience was tired of flood stories this year, and that their investment in coverage wouldn’t pay off with reader engagement. Or maybe they were thinking about too many things and lost track of the situation in the South. …

    When disaster strikes, victims depend on national media to make the case that they need aid. Without publicity, help doesn’t seem to arrive in quite the same vigorous way, whether from the federal government, volunteer groups or other charity funds.

    Even with a slew of smart phone footage, photos and other information available online, Tompkins said, the public depends on professional journalists to package it, make sense of it, sort fact from fiction and say what it all means.

    On that front, much work still lies before the national media. Many complex issues will have to be untangled so stories can be told. Tens of thousands of new claims will put serious strain on the already-struggling National Flood Insurance Program, which insures 5.2 million people across the country. The media will articulate what that means. …
    _____________________________

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  27. I don’t know how the national news covered it, but the severe flooding in SC last year got lots of local coverage. And truck loads of supplies from the Hendersonville area went down there. Our Lions club provided some of it.

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  28. Houston Chronicle:

    In an atmosphere often hostile to so-called “mainstream media,” the episode highlighted the vital, irreplaceable role that professional journalists and publications play in covering disasters—even in the age of camera phones, Twitter and Facebook Live. As the big outlets dropped the ball, the netizens declared: coverage was insufficient without the mainstream media on the ground.

    “It’s an interesting time where journalism is both vilified and craved,” said Al Tompkins, senior faculty at the Poynter Institute. “In this day and time, when there are so many ways to get news, I think we’re suggesting that it still matters whether or not the cameras and the reporters are there.”

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  30. There were some practical and logistical problems — I think everyone agrees this story was missed, but I also think it’s valid that there were numerous things going on (from timing to staffing to a late summer overwrought with campaign and Olympics coverage) that made a difference.

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  33. Character. That’s one way to put it. 🙂

    But I chose this house because of its history, at least what was left of it (I imagine it was much quainter back in the day, but also a lot smaller — and it’s not “big” now, even with the kitchen, back room add on done circa 1970; just under 1,300 square feet.

    But I’d like to pass it on to whomever buys it next with those features that remain still intact, if I can.

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  34. Michelle, Ballard is coming to work in San Pedro, he (and/or his “people) will be based at the AltaSea marine research campus being built out near Warehouse One on the outer harbor. He’ll be here for part of the year for several years running, based on the deal that’s been signed. I think he arrives in September sometime. Kind of a big deal, we think.

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  35. There has to be someone in the area who likes to make things in the original style. Many craftsmen enjoy the classics and reenacting the past. Just finding them may be a challenge but you are a reporter. Such a person puts love into their work and it shows. You will pay a bit more but not a lot as that type also does it for the love and artistry but needs some cash for tools and materials.

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  36. I don’t watch the news, haven’t for many years, so I don’t know when coverage is good or bad. My concept is the smaller the problem, and the farther from me, the less it is “relevant” information for me to know. Let’s say a school bus overturns in Dallas and 40 kids are taken to the hospital but only one dies–there is simply no reason that I, in Indiana, need to know about that. They don’t put it on nationwide news because it’s important but because it’s a school bus–human interest. Plane crash in Indonesia that kills 13? Same thing; I don’t need to know. Fatal car crash in my small town, yes, I might need to know–it might be someone I know, and it’s likely to be someone I’ve done business with, or someone known by family or friends. But I don’t watch local news, either–I figure that in-laws who get the paper and watch the news (and are in town and in the “gossip chain”) will let me know if anything happens that I need to know.

    Rockslide that kills no one but closes a the only major southern route through a certain state and is expected to be closed for two years, I need to know (especially if I have family in the area, which I did).

    Major flooding that affects thousands of people and kills a few, yes, it’s important if they need help from outside (which apparently they did not) or you might know someone there or you might be planning to take a trip down there. The news should have covered it . . . but for me personally, since I don’t know anyone there, have no plans to go there, and have no resources to help, it isn’t news I need to know. It would only be voyeurism. If I knew churches in the area, I’d pray for them during that time, and in past crises in our land or others, I have prayed for the situation. But I don’t see generic prayers as being that valuable; thus, without knowledge of a tangible need, such as that there are still people needing rescued or that a church is using this opportunity to love their neighbors and share the gospel, it is nothing more than a “news” story–entertainment. My need to know is small.

    We’ve watched the Olympics quite a bit this year (which wasn’t true in the other Olympics that have taken place since we married) and we heard about the “armed robbery.” I think it’s perfectly legit that a news story that turns out to be false gets more coverage than the original did. (If a politician’s side of the story turns out to be a lie, then the follow-up–the lie–should be several times as intensive as the time devoted to the original story.) The robbery was originally mostly human-interest: hey, you watched these people compete, and here is news that happened to them. But the original story made Rio look bad, and the second story makes Americans look bad; it is a real story and shouldn’t be covered up. (Neither should the third story, blackmail: the news reported that one of the young men agreed to “donate” $11,000 to a youth organization, and in turn for that agreement, he got his passport back. Sure sounds like blackmail to me, though I didn’t hear it called that. If there was no criminal activity and they paid for the damage, then holding passports ransom is wrong, and that is part of the story too. That becomes an international-relationship story.)

    But I suspect that most people are watching the Olympics as part of their way to “escape” and have a mini-vacation, and interrupting coverage for hour upon hour of coverage of a physical disaster would only annoy viewers. I assume the flooding has at least made the evening news. (??) We had a young, over-eager weather reporter breaking in the other night to tell us about possible bad weather headed our way, and two or three minutes of a weather update made sense. When the coverage stayed on him for 15 minutes or more, it was “enough already; you already said what needed to be said.” The same is true for much disaster coverage. Tell me how much property has been damaged, how many casualties, whether help is needed and what sort, what might be affected by this (no oranges this coming winter, road from this state to this state closed for the foreseeable future), and you’ve said all I really “need” to know. By the time you are interviewing people whose homes have been damaged, you actually have turned from hard news to human interest. And it’s the fact that most newscasts spend nearly all of their news time on human-interest stories or human-interest angles of news stories that make nightly news a waste of time in nearly all cases.

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  37. Cheryl, for the most part I agree with you and sometimes thing that if it didn’t get national coverage there wouldn’t be so much of it–mass shootings etc.

    What has happened with the 24 hour news cycle is that we are fed pablum and REAL news is ignored. What is getting coverage right now is that Donald Trump went to Louisiana thereby using the people of that state for a “photo-op”. What they aren’t telling you is that he showed up with an 18 wheeler loaded with needed supplies. They governor told the candidates to stay out and not use this as a tool in their campaign. Trump didn’t make a big deal out of it and seemed to sneak in, do his thing, and leave.

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  38. I don’t watch network news, though I do watch cable news and consume the rest of my news from online (often print media) sources. I have a fairly large ‘need to know,’ I suppose, but then that’s the career I’ve chosen. It was a good fit.

    I realized the other day that I hadn’t watched any of the Olympics this time around (I usually watch part of it). Someone remarked that the Olympics haven’t really been “fun” since the Cold War rivalries ended. lol

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  40. DJ, my Nashville home wasn’t as classic as yours. But it was built “circa 1955” according to the real-estate data, and according to my own knowledge of stuff, much of the house was original. The previous owners had turned the one-car garage into a den (carpet over concrete though the rest of the house was carpet over wood), and they had moved a wall in the kitchen to enlarge it a bit and turned the master bedroom (which had been next to the kitchen) into a bathroom. But the original bathroom had an enameled cast-iron tub, walls with white-and-blue tiles, and a tiled floor, all of which seemed likely to be original. The sink was in bad shape (they’d put a patch over a bad spot and the patch had come halfway away from the bad spot but was now just an eyesore), and they’d removed a medicine cabinet and filled the hole with plywood and put wallpaper over it, all of which we corrected with better repairs. But the kitchen also had a massive stove that pretty much had to be original to the house. (Burners operated with push buttons.) The kitchen cabinetry was original, too, and plentiful: hand-crafted pine cabinets. The kitchen pretty much sold the house to me–beautiful cabinets and lots of them. The previous owners had torn out one cabinet installed a dishwasher; since that cabinet was no longer available to be put back in, I took out the dishwasher (which I didn’t want, which almost certainly leaked since everything else with water going through it leaked, and which was placed in a ridiculous place for a dishwasher–on the opposite side of the kitchen from the sink and dishes cupboard), and I replaced it with a small freezer. I also replaced the oven element and got my electrician to rewire the stove. But a 1950s stove that still worked was well worth repairing, not replacing. If I’d replaced it when I moved in, by the time I moved out eight years later I might have had to replace it again.

    The house sold again a couple of times after I moved out. My next-door neighbors had painted their lovely pine cabinets (like mine) white, which was to me almost a sacrilege, because now they were ugly. But a couple owners later, buyers of my home committed worse sacrilege on it, redoing the whole kitchen and throwing out that wonderful stove and gorgeous cabinets. They updated the bathrooms and they’re probably prettier now, but if I were looking at the home today I wouldn’t buy it–last time it sold it was way overpriced for the neighborhood (selling for 15-20% more than homes with an additional bedroom and the same number of baths) and it no longer has those beautiful classic touches or that lovely kitchen. (I’d take that lovely kitchen over the smaller one with newer finishings here in a heartbeat.)

    All that to say I’m with you: If you modernize a home, you’ll only have to do it again in a decade, but if you repair what needs repaired but keep what works, you can still have a beautiful house in twenty or thirty years.

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  41. DJ, I agree that you have a larger need to know than many. I try to keep up on what is being published, and sometimes read horrible books like 90 Minutes in Heaven that I probably wouldn’t read if I wasn’t an editor and author. (I did resist Jesus Calling and The Shack, as both seemed blasphemously heretical, but when several of my authors refer to a book I wouldn’t personally choose to read, sometimes it seems like a good idea to read, and in general a good idea to try to stay on top of the publishing world . . . an impossible task these days, though.)

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  42. I see we have a new bird. Both of these birds so far seem to be defending nesting sites (though I didn’t see either nest) and angry at the photographer. The one up there now is of course an American robin. She was in my neighbor’s yard and I wasn’t going to trespass into his yard to see which apple tree held her nest, but she didn’t know that. So I took a few photos of her over the fence and then left to let her nest in peace. 🙂 I liked this one because you can tell by the open beak and the blurred wings and tail that she’s putting a lot of energy into scolding me. By the way, did you know American robins are named for a similarly colored but much smaller European bird? The American robin is really a thrush, but new Americans were nostalgic for a favorite garden bird and named ours after theirs. So if you see “robin” in English literature, it is a very different bird, a friendly little bird that follows gardeners around the yard hoping they’ll find bugs for him to eat.

    The earlier bird was a red-winged blackbird on cattails. When I took the photo, the bird was scolding and I knew a nest was quite nearby although I couldn’t see it. Usually you get scolded by adult males, and one did show up eventually, though with nothing like the vigor or bad language of this bird. It has a reddish patch on its wings, so I rather figured it was a very young male . . . but reading around, it looks like some females have that, and thus it’s likely a female and not the teenage male I thought it was. But I’m not sure either way. (Usually you see blackish feathers–not glossy black like an adult male–before you see the epaulet feathers coming in, but sometimes birds from an early nest get their adult feathers at a different rate than birds from a nest later in the season, and I figured that was the case here, and he was defending his parents’ second nesting attempt. That was a guess, but my research hasn’t clarified it either way and it’s likely it’s a female.) At any rate, I cropped the blackbird photo vertically (getting rid of the imbalance of having very little on the right side of the photo by removing the right side of the photo) and it’s one of the ones being entered into the fair. My husband particularly liked the way the colors of the wing epaulet are reflected in the color of the cattails. Me, I like it that I finally got a good “redwing on cattails” photo.

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  45. Roofer thinks plumber didn’t do the job right a year ago, thinks by replacing a piece we can fix — ah, dog park pal is here, maybe he’ll interpret for me!

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  47. OK, just texted the plumber I need to cancel the Monday-Tuesday job. I’m sure he won’t be happy. But seriously, if this can be fixed without demo-ing the entire bathroom, I’d much rather go that route.

    We’ll see I guess. Hopefully what this guy does will do the trick. It may be temporary, but it should fix it enough for now to get the foundation people in to do their thing a couple weeks from now.

    Tess is absolutely in love with the roofer.

    Gutters appear to be mostly up, he’ll get what h needs for the tub and then hopefully be on his way.

    Oh wow, just got the text back from the plumber, he said “ok, let me know when you’re ready.” Whew. That was easier than I expected. I was afraid he was going to give me an argument like the one super-high-priced roofer I’d gotten a bid from but didn’t use.

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  50. I haven’t liked the Olympics since they went professional, so instead of having the TV on all day to watch as we did 20 years ago, I’ve only seen one night of it (while babysitting) and the gymnastic highlights to celebrate the rough draft of my book.

    Otherwise, I catch the highlights off Twitter or FB. Works for me. I jus don’t like how fawning and commercial it feels.

    My guy has met Ballard before:http://www.michelleule.com/2014/05/30/scorpion-titanic/

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  51. I led discussions on both 90 Minutes in Heaven and The Shack at church. I then got rid of both books.

    If you mine deep enough, squint your eyes and look from the corners, you can find some truth but I agree. The writing was SO awful and the theology SO suspect, it was hard.

    But, both books opened us to fuller and important discussions– including theology and back to the Bible to double check stuff.

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  52. Agree mumsee, some of this really does require finding someone who appreciates the old.

    When a friend was redoing a lot of stuff in her house, she interviewed a couple contractors. This was a mid-century house (not my favorite era of architecture — and it’s hard for me to even think of that as ‘old’ — but friend really wanted to preserve the character of the house).

    First contractor wanted to drywall over the high, open-beamed ceilings and take out the fireplace. Thanks for coming. Next contractor walked in and expressed immediate joy in finding a house that was still so authentic to the style in which it was built. Hired. And it all worked out well, albeit to the tune of something like $100,000 before it was all done.

    I am disappointed not be getting a new vanity out of all of this, but I’m fine with the old, beat up one (I’m guessing from the 1960s?) for now so the money can go elsewhere in the house.

    Maybe I can tackle all of that later. But it’s too overwhelming and unexpected to take on that project right now. Especially knowing that even when the plumber was all done there would be some cosmetic, cleanup work to do to the walls (and I didn’t even think of the flooring that would have to come out with tub & vanity removal!).

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  53. When I was renting a house in the 1990s, a gal (limousine driver by trade) bought the beautiful, historic bungalow next door — and then told me she was going to rip out all of the built-ins (secretary desk, book cases, buffet). Again, I gasped. That’s the value of this house, its history, I told her. But she wanted to paint murals on the walls and said the built-ins were too confining of the space.

    Sadly, she wound up selling it only a few years later, after I’d moved out of the neighborhood, so I’m not really sure if she actually took out the build-ins or not. But why buy a great old house like that if you’re just going to rip it up and modernize it? I really don’t get that at all. But I suppose the price was right (real estate was cheaper back then) and it had a cute back house she was able to use as rental income.

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  56. I hadn’t watched any of the Olympics so far, but was forced to see some this morning as I was getting my nails done. And I’m glad I did, as it gave me an ideal illustration to use in the Children’s lesson I’m to do in church tomorrow.

    Did anyone else see Sarah Somebody have to stop in the bicycle portion of the triathlon due to a leg cramp? The commentators mentioned that her husband, son, parents, aunts, etc. were all on hand to watch her compete and asked what could they say to her at the end of the race? The other commentator said, “Just ‘we love you’.”

    (p.s. to those of you opposed to Children’s lessons in church – just don’t go there; it’s a long story)

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  58. Michelle: I have two thoughts on professionals in the Olympics. One is that the line between “professional” and “amateur” is nebulous. If a kid is playing sports and getting a free ride thereby to an expensive school, it seems only a matter of semantics that he is an amateur, and sometimes only semantics that he is a student. (Meanwhile, I put myself through the last half of college writing and editing for the yearbook–did that make me a published author and a professional writer? If I’d done yearbook photography instead, would I have had to enter photo contests as a professional?)

    Two, in sports like basketball it’s silly to have professionals competing . . . but then, basketball hardly seems like an Olympic sport anyway, which is why I don’t bother to watch though I’m OK with watching college or professional basketball. It’s just kind of silly to have the best basketball players in a nation that treats sports like a religion playing against teams from other countries that don’t have professional basketball. But in individual sports, and especially those that are rated objectively, why should the fastest runner or swimmer or highest jumper be kept out of the Olympics because that’s the way he makes his living?

    Now, to me it’s very unbalanced to spend three years of life training for two weeks of competition, and especially those children and teenagers who live apart from their families to train to be in the Olympics someday, but I think that sort of stuff was done even when the athletes athletes had to stay (technically) amateurs. If someone else is paying your living so you can focus on athletics, then you might as well be considered a professional.

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  59. I’ve been watching the Olympics – Canada is doing really well compared to previous Summer Olympics. I especially enjoyed the men’s 200m semi-final heat where Andre de Grasse and Usain Bolt were having so much fun.

    I don’t enjoy the judged events as much as the other events. I loved watching the women’s Rugby 7s – great short games – lots of action and excitement.

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  61. No Olympics here. I have not watched any for about thirty years. Ever since that bobsleigh incident and a couple of skiers. Even when husband was working on site and we had free tickets for such things as opening ceremonies and figure skating and other things. I left my seat for somebody who wanted to watch that. I have a hard time watching countries put millions to billions of dollars into it and the social adjustments of the locals, forced on them, and then the country is left with some venues and a lot of debt. For three weeks of entertainment.

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  62. The Olympics end tomorrow. At least they didn’t have some of the disasters that were expected.

    roofer/plumber is gone, everything now has to dry for 24 hours. Hoping this works for a while at least. So relieved I’m not having to demo the bathroom. I was really just dreading all of that and the damage it would inevitably leave in its wake.

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  64. Meanwhile, our photo ed has a coyote that appears to be excavating and establishing a den in his yard (seems not the right time of year for that, though). He thinks it’s pretty cool — and since he doesn’t have pets (and his son is now out of high school), maybe it doesn’t raise the red flags it does for the rest of us. He said his parents have ‘hundreds’ of them where they live in the country. I said I hoped it worked out for him. 🙂

    He sent me a video of the coyote tracking through their patio last night, I told him he was now officially a landlord. At least we might get some decent coyote photos out of it to use with our stories.

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  65. Mumsee, I’ve been seeing all sorts of ads for the Paralympics. I assume that is what used to be called Special Olympics?

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  66. Special Olympics is for folk with intellectual disabilities, Paralympics is for those with physical disabilities. Lots of things like wheelchair basketball, tennis, fencing. Blind skiers. People with no arms or no legs, competing at the world class level.

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  67. A blind skier doing the downhill, for example, wears a special backpack with technology so he can hear cues from a sighted skier going ahead of him with a transmitter. He makes all of his skiing decisions based on what the other guys tells him seconds before he gets there. Amazing.

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  70. Ah, Mumsee, that’s helpful. I’ve been seeing the commercials but had somehow never heard of the Paralympics before this year or maybe a year or two ago. (I think I heard about them before the Olympics, but not all that long ago.)

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  71. I’ve mostly ignored the Olympics this year but I’m excited to watch the 1500m men’s final tonight. New Zealander Nick Willis went to the University of Michigan and has been part of our church for ten years or so. He has a strong Christian testimony. This is his fourth Olympics. He got the silver medal in 2008. If he medals tonight he will be the oldest medalist ever in this event.

    athletesinaction.org/olympics/articles/running-gets-meaning-after-emptiness

    He’s also friends with the Nate Brannen, the Canadian runner in tonight’s final, who also went to Michigan. It’s Nate’s third Olympics, but the first time he’s made it to the final race.

    8 PM EDT, T minus 43 minutes.

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  72. Donna,@ 7:07
    I haven’t heard any Baptist worship leaders say any of that, except for #1. Every church has a time when you are supposed to turn and shake hands with others. Dr. Pat, our present pastor always ends a service by saying, “Shake five hands as you leave.” Most people shake a couple or three. .

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  78. On news coverage of the flooding: It’s a cop-out or a major news network to use the excuse that they don’t have enough people available. They could use the local affiliates’ news team to report for them. When I worked in radio our news director fed stories to the network when it was something of national interest, like the time an air force plane crash landed next to a school playground near the University of Arizona.

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  79. I had a hummingbird today.

    The house on Fig has issues. Not a good bet. It’s the location bet is is a raised cottage and would need all the joices replaced. There is water damage visible. Ah well….

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  83. He claims to have been working, like none of us do? and somehow manages to get here just in time? Does that reek of something or what?

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  84. The new photo is one species that probably everyone knows, the cardinal. Long one of my favorite birds, one thing I love about my current camera is that I can finally photograph cardinals after a lifetime of wanting to, and trying occasionally. They’re bright red and they know it, and they just don’t let you get close.

    Anyway, the thing I find fascinating about this photo is how wide his beak is open.

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  85. A good day at work…a couple of friends from long ago came in the shoppe…they didn’t know I was working there…lovely surprise for us all…
    We watched some of the swimming, girls gymnastics and running of the Olympics…we enjoyed it very much….
    My running husband finished 50miles of the hundred and decided to drop out along with his buddy…I don’t believe either were having a good run…and running up that 14’er did them in for some reason…I’ll hear all the stories tomorrow…but he was laughing on the phone and having a great time…that’s suppose to be the idea anyway right?
    Donna I am glad to know you are trying to keep the historical integrity of your home…I lived in an old Victorian as a little girl…how I loved that house….

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  86. I can elaborate. The “busy here” post referred to the fact that there were 72 posts already on a Saturday. I did work at the cave today. And mumsee was busy eating bonbons on the deck keeping an eye on her flock of children doing their chores. So she missed out on the chance to get 75. But I noticed she got 57. God job, Mum!

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  88. Misten isn’t doing well today, couldn’t get to her feet tonight, and I suspect she has a full bladder and more. I carried her outside (twice), but without the ability to stand, anything else is kinda hard. I’ll take her to the vet Monday, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to help at this point. She has declined quite rapidly this summer.

    She’s “just” a dog, but she has been a really good one, and she’s my friend.

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  90. Cheryl, tears. 😦 Actually tears. It’s incredibly hard.

    Peter, I think the biggest problem was the flooding hit on a Friday and, over the weekend, turned into a much bigger story than anyone realized it would. Now the media’s trying to play catchup. But available resources do matter. 😦

    I’m watching the Peanut’s movie tonight, delightful. And a partner of an acquaintance was one of the producers of it, so extra fun to finally see. Well done and true to the original characters.

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  91. Thank you and once again, a correction. I no longer have a chore patrol. The younger two are too young for it and the fifteen year olds have too many other issues to do them. So, guess who gets to do the chores?

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  94. So sorry about Misten’s fast decline this summer, Cheryl. Hard to watch a trusted companion deteriorate like that. Saying a little prayer tonight.

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  96. Love these photos today, but that first one was especially spectacular. The colors and alignment of bird and cattails grabbed my attention. Excellent shot.

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  100. Doesn’t seem to be anyone else around. Hmmmm…..
    Not much of a race when everyone else is asleep.
    I will laugh if someone pops up right when I push the post button.
    Well, I will just saunter on by and take 100….

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  101. Hey! Jo, no fair. 🙂

    I got a few hours sleep, but half expected to awaken to a houseful of poop and pee. Once I woke up, I didn’t feel like I could go back to sleep. But it looks like Misten is still asleep–and she spent the whole night in the living room, though she moved around to at least three different positions (on her bed, off her bed, behind her bed) and she’s now in a different place than she was when we went to bed–but she pretty much always comes down the hall after we go to bed to sleep outside our door for a while, and I don’t know if she ever did that. I know she gets too hot in any one spot to want to lie in the same place all night, but it does seem like a good sign that she is still moving herself around. As far as I can see, the living room is “clean,” but I really can’t see into it far. But I think I’m going to go out there and crash on the couch, and then whenever she is ready to get up, I’ll be on hand. I’ll feel better (and I know she will) if she can potty this morning, and I suspect that if she does, she will eat something and that will help too. (I’ve only been giving her supper, not breakfast, for the last few weeks–that has been the case nearly every summer of her life, even, with the vet’s permission, when she was less than a year old, because her appetite drops way down and she won’t even try to eat in the morning, but that changed when she moved to Indiana with me and got a big yard to run around in and a cooler summer. But she only ate a bite or two last night and I suspect it’s because she hasn’t pottied. So if she does, I’ll give her something to tempt her appetite and hope to give her a little strength, too. And then the vet tomorrow, see what he says.

    Thanks, friends, for your concern. It means a lot. My husband held me while I cried last night, and then I told several Misten stories. I’m sure he has heard them all, but I told stories about how remarkably perceptive she has been in terms of being gentle with children and old people. Like the time when she had her first trip to the dog park at just seven or eight months old, and in a park full of unleashed dogs, some parents foolishly put their infant on his back on a blanket. My puppy saw the baby and took off, and she ran along his whole body, legs straddling him on each side, and stopped at his face to sniff him. What puppy has that much instinctive sense of her body and of the care needed with a baby, maybe the first she had ever seen? Or the time I took her to visit a friend in a nursing home (with prior permission from the home) and in the visiting room area at least three old women in wheelchairs gathered around her and she didn’t notice the wheelchairs at all but just loved each woman in turn, moving her head and body slowly and carefully from one to another. Her vet in Nashville marvelled years ago, “Collies are usually more reserved than this.” She has simply spent her whole life rejoicing at each chance to meet a new person, and rejoicing extra hard when one she already knows comes back to see her. She has never acted reserved toward anyone (though she hasn’t pushed herself on anyone unsure of her, being willing to ignore them if they want her to, including my younger stepdaughter for the first year), but it’s always been clear who her extra-special friends are, because they get a whining eagerness that is incredible. She only has four or five people in that extra-special place in her heart. I’m not one of them, not because she loves me less than she does them, but because she takes me for granted–she just trusts me to be there. And I’ve tried to be. My husband says he can tell she’s especially my dog, more than the family’s. I can’t see it, but he can, and I “trust” that it is true. I believe that she does know me in a deeper way; she has been mine since she was eight weeks old, and the others joined her family only five years ago; we married a week before she turned seven, in late October.

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  102. Well, I think she managed to go pee with the help of the towel sling–hard to tell since the grass is wet already, but my husband and I both thought it looked like she did. She squatted to go, and recently when it has looked like she is doing that, her whole body crashes as though she just can’t hold herself partly off the ground anymore. So today when her rear end squatted, with the sling I kept her back end from going all the way down and her front end didn’t collapse. I wasn’t completely sure she was trying to pee and not lying/falling down, but I just held onto it, and a couple of minutes later she definitely stood back up, and my husband (who was watching from the steps) said, “She went, didn’t she?”

    Now I’m cooking some rice, and I’ll mix it with bits of wiener to give her a breakfast “snack,” and then tonight I’ll probably mix rice, dog food, and raw hamburger, and see if the combination is enough to get her to chow down. It may not be, if she doesn’t manage to poop sometime today, but if that is the case I imagine the vet may give her an enema tomorrow. In the meantime she has gotten up on her own a couple of times since I got her up, so it was probably good to get her moving, and particularly helpful if she did indeed go pee. (She also drank quite a bit while I held the bowl, since she came over as soon as I filled it.)

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  103. I read a survey once that said the number one reason folks don’t return to a church they visited was the “shake hands and greet your neighbor” portion of the service.

    One thing that grates on my nerves is “just” in prayers – “Lord, we just want to ask your blessing, as we just come before you to just praise your name.” I can’t help myself – when I hear a prayer like that, I start counting the “justs.”

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  107. According to friend who posted it, the style of singing “shape notes” (prior to a hymn or song) heavily influenced singing patterns found in Appalachia and other parts of America.

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  108. The style, which also seems to joyous, reminded me of some of the Shaker songs I have on a CD I listen to in the car sometimes. Like this one, “Followers of the Lamb”

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  110. Linda, I used to attend church with someone who in prayer meeting would say “Lord God” multiple times per sentence. Like, “We come to you Lord God to ask you, Lord God, if you would hear our petitions, Lord God . . .” Years later one of my siblings commented on how “picky” I had been in complaining about the way that person prayed. But honestly, if my husband said, “Cheryl, I was wondering, Cheryl, if you wanted to go out to dinner, Cheryl, or if, Cheryl, you’d rather eat at home?” I’d probably scream. I can’t be the only person who got their nerves rubbed a little raw by that one.

    Misten seems to be doing a whole lot better today, so far. She ate her breakfast/snack, and other than the first trip outside this morning, she has walked around without help, even help coming up the two steps back inside. I didn’t give her her pills this morning, thinking I just don’t know if they’re doing her any good, and they might possibly be hurting her (it may be, for example, that they help just a little with the pain and/or swelling but the side effects make her so sleepy that she can’t walk well anyway).

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  114. I thought of changing my name to Burt, but it didn’t work.
    AT S. Carolina, I took the name Tzschnauble (pronounced Kishnable), for a joke. A lady in the cafeteria thought that was my real name.

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  115. Talking to a friend at church today who says her dog gets periodic steroid shots that work wonders for rear weakness — no, it’s not a cure, but I don’t think it’s overly expensive & it can provide some more quality time if it makes the dog perk up and feel better. It also provides more time for humans in which to process what ultimately will come, of course — but maybe not just yet?

    I’ve been going around with someone on FB (nicely, but I can be too persistent sometimes) who says she talked to a random homeless guy at the park who says he was the one that investigators said was bit several times (19 puncture wounds in the leg) by coyote in a park. She says that HE says nah, just a little nibble on the hand, they got it all wrong. She’s adamant now that the story was blown up by the media, says I should go out to the park, somehow hunt this guy down and talk to him.

    She (and a couple like-minded folks) keep saying the MEDIA blew this story up when all the coverage I’ve seen (including my own story) quoted strictly from the Fish & Wildlife investigator.

    I told her I’m glad to talk to this guy if she wants to put me in touch with him but there has to be some way to verify that he’s the victim in that report. Otherwise, to me he’s just some guy talking.

    Battling a combination of obstinate positions regarding both the media and coyotes. It’s probably no use. 🙂

    People gonna believe what they’re gonna believe.

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  116. cheryl (2:26), something definitely to ask your vet about, so glad to hear she’s better today. 🙂 🙂

    I think we all may be a little self-conscious when we pray aloud with others listening, so I try to cut people (including myself!) some slack if they sound repetitive or stumble and use the same words too much.

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  117. Some interesting discussion in the Q&A segment after the service today. Responding to a question about the culture pretty much blowing up around us, our pastor cautioned us not to become “territorial” with regard to the U.S., that God, in his providence, has brought this all about and that our weapons are the gospel, love and kindness. God also seems to be bringing the world to us in terms of missionary endeavors — rather than going out to other countries, we now have other countries coming to us.

    He also said (drawing on his sports and coaching background): We’re not the home team anymore.

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  118. DJ, yeah, I wouldn’t be inclined to parse others’ prayers to make sure each sentence has a subject and a verb. But I think that by the time someone prays with a verbal tic for many years, you do wish someone would say something to at least point out to them what everyone else notices. Sometimes it’s inadvertantly erroneous theology (I remember pointing out to my pastor or some elder at some point that several times in prayer he’d said, “And, Father, we thank You for dying on the cross for us”–I know he wouldn’t say that in a sermon, but in a prayer he was so used to praying to the Father that the Trinity just got quietly condensed).

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  120. I don’t have a collie, I have a goose.

    I took a nap this afternoon, and when I got up my husband told me it would probably be good to get Misten out for a bit, get her walking around, and so I leashed her and took her out into the front yard. Even somewhat groggy from sleep, she got to her feet OK (slowly but all the way up herself). But when I took her into the front yard, she was looking toward the back, and I thought OK, her days of adventure are over, and she feels more comfortable in the “known quantity” of her own backyard, and that’s OK. So we went through the gate, and I got her to walk a few feet to me a couple of times. And then she went toward the back door as though she was ready to go back in, but I’d unlocked the front door, not the back one, so I told her I’d go around and let her in.

    She walked to the gate with me, and I thought why not, let’s just go around together. So I let her go out, and the moment she got out, her brain said, “I’m not on a leash, nanny nanny nanny” and she took off toward the neighbor’s apple orchard. 🙂 Now, she was definitely not running, not even a very fast walk, but it was definitely “time to explore, hurrah!” So I walked around with her a bit, let her enjoy the feeling of freedom while apparently she was feeling pretty good. (No medication to make her sleepy, cool weather.) Then I thought I’d better leash her just in case, so I did. And I tried to get her to go in, but she looked at me like “You told my master we were taking a walk down the driveway, and we haven’t had our walk yet miss.” So we walked down the driveway. We have a longish country driveway, so a couple of times i tried to encourage her to turn around and finally I insisted, and we turned around. She didn’t hesitate until we got to the front step (which seems to be taller than the back one, though I hadn’t noticed that). So I lifted her up that step and then together we got her up the other one. She lay there for a while, tired but probably happy, and then my husband picked her up and took her to her water dish. Afterward she lay in the kitchen for a few minutes, but then she took herself into the living room and crashed next to her bed.

    That was a bit more exercise than I planned to give her in one session, but once she got going she really just wanted to do a bit more. And I’m sure she’ll be sore, but she’s likely to be sore either way, and if she felt up to doing it, why not? It might make her sleep well tonight. (And it was cool this morning and so we just left her outside while we went to church, and there was a pile back there when I checked later. So far so good.)

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  121. Nancy Jill, she isn’t on that one (unless it’s a generic), but on two other pills, both of which are supposed to be for pain and joint swelling. But one of them she gets only every day or every other day and I don’t give it to her on Saturdays, so it has now been 60 hours since she got it and that just may be the culprit. I e-mailed a vet who goes to her church (she now does something else with medicine, working in a lab, but she’s a licensed vet and thus knows more about these things than I do) to ask what she thinks, including telling her what Misten has been on and how she has reacted. If she can tell me “Keep her on the other pill for a few more days” or “try this other one instead,” I’m inclined to wait a couple of days before taking her into the vet, to see if we can sort some of it out. But as of now I haven’t given her any pills at all today, and I’m tempted to think she probably should still stay on the other one–but I don’t want to give her anything now until I’ve heard from a vet. Last night was not good, and not something I want to repeat. And they don’t list side effects on veterinary medicine like they do on ours!

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  124. My vet friend told me one medicine she is on can have sedative properties, and she asked if I want her to examine Misten, and I said sure. So she and her mom will come to lunch tomorrow and she’ll look at my puppy. And hopefully I’ll end up with some better answers. Misten had a regular vet in Nashville, but here she doesn’t have anyone who knows her, and that’s a disadvantage now. But someone who cares about us and won’t see my dog as just a one-time patient is an advantage. (Misten has seen a different vet each of the few times she has been to the local clinic here, compared to having the same vet for eight years in Nashville.)

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  126. I have been eating bonbons and it is way passed eight thirty. But daughter’s birthday cake is out of the oven and frosted. She will be nine. That must mean that I will soon be fifty nine. I know that because my youngest is fifty years younger than me. Which is okay as I am older than my children’s grandmother.

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  127. Oh Cheryl how nice that your friend will come to your home to see Misten…
    Rimadyl helps with pain and arthritic issues in dogs…it can cause liver damage however, and our vet monitored Babe’s bloodwork and saw that the pill helped her with being able to get up and down for a while….We consider ourselves very blessed to have had our vet for the past 20 years…he has loved on our dogs their entire lifetimes…and he has cried along with us too….I continue to lift you and precious Misten in prayer ❤

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  128. I’ve been enjoying a visit from 2nd Arrow, who is home for a few days.

    The house is quiet now (at 1:30 a.m., it should be!), and I’ve been to bed, asleep, and then woke up not long after falling asleep.

    Decided to finish reading the Philip Glass memoir I’ve been working on for several weeks, Words Without Music. An engaging read, and now I am done.

    There were a couple places late in the book where he mentioned his musical experiences when traveling to the Gambia. Interesting reading, to be sure.

    Time to head back to bed, though, now. I’ve been up a couple hours since waking up, so I’m hoping to be able to fall back to sleep now, and maybe this time sleep a good long time!

    Night (or morning or afternoon), all, whenever you read it.

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