51 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-4-16”

  3. Good Friday evening all. I am ready for the weekend. We had a riot in class today. I got out 6 of those silly, squishy balls that you can play with and have pieces that stick out. The kids were just screaming as they tossed them to each other. No one knows who ordered them, but there were several boxes of them and I took one for my class. I closed our windows, we were so loud. Then I planned a quiet activity for the last half hour. I can only take so much of that level of excitement.

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  4. Good morning. I posted on the prayer thread for my MIL. I spent yesterday afternoon at ER with her, until Scott could get there. The doctors thought it was a simple appendicitis but found a large growth in her stomach.

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  6. Good news from CCU at Emory. The new med finally worked overnight while I was here with Karen. She is out of A Fib!!! It has been quite a struggle. She is in the only place in Atlanta where they can give this newly approved med. God’s blessings has been distinctly over all. Praise Him!!!

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  9. Oh, this book! I was sailing along nicely until yesterday when I got several questions about clarifying quotes and then a reminder that anyone in the photos I’m using who is not dead must sign a photo release.

    I started to write back, no problem, most of the photos were taken over 100 years ago and everyone is dead, when I realized, oh, wait.

    A toddler in one of the photos taken in the early 1920s is still alive in Hong Kong. The photo has been out there and used for years–but no one knew the girl, who is very much with it, is still out there!

    Scramble, scramble, and we’ll see what the publishing house decides I need to do.

    Hey, how about I fly to Hong Kong and get that signature? 🙂

    Permissions have been huge in my mind throughout the writing of this book and they’re thorny and complicated. I just spent an hour reading through requirements, reviewing old emails and asking questions.

    Fortunately, I have 27 days to go. 🙂
    .

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  10. I’m spending the morning with Adorable #4–we’re going to get a new key fob for the car (Grrrr $175–it must be programmed), grocery shopping (using the ad, we’re going to play a game searching for the products on the shelves–I’ll have to make sure I choose items to find at her eye level!) and then to library where she’ll probably choose long boring picture books, but who cares?

    After lunch (eaten in our new matching aprons a friend sent yesterday!), I’ll return her to her father and then tackle permissions once more.

    The last time Adorable #4 and I spent the day together running errands, she was the hit of every place we went. While she is cute with her dark brown eyes and blonde curls, I was still surprised at how many people stopped to speak to her.

    A friend said yesterday, “it’s because they don’t see many children these days in public. The kids are all in childcare.”

    I wonder if she’s right?

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  11. I saw something on Facebook which asked. . .

    “A Simple Question for ObamaCare haters:

    Explain to me how repealing ObamaCare will keep insurance companies from raising your premiums?”

    Of course, I know that there is more to the issue than that, but is there a good answer to this?

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  13. Good morning everyone. I am late to the party today. I OVERSLEPT!!!!!! It wan’t until now, but I did sleep 10 minutes past my usual alarm time.
    I had to hit the ground running this morning. Lots to do.

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  14. My lay person theory is that medical insurance is irreparably such a mess now that there is no easy or obvious fix. I fear the only way to go is deeper into government ownership and management of the whole system. 😦 😦 I don’t think there’s any “going back.” Obama care was a big mistake at the time, but it’s too late to undo what it’s done.

    Meanwhile, I’ve been asked by the beadboard people in Texas (who called me a 6:30 a.m.!) for square footage numbers. Huh? You’re kidding, right? I’m a journalist who’s half a sleep, I don’t do math even when I’m wide awake. It was all like a bad dream where I had to do one of those “word” problems in school again.

    And I’m not clear if she needs the entire bathroom (which is 5 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet tall, I think, something like that) or if she just needs the beadboard walls … Argh.

    Jo, that sounds like so much fun 🙂 Maybe I’ll buy some of those …

    I like Plunder Together. Says it all, pretty much. 😦

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  15. I agree with DJ’s assessment of the ACA.

    While I know it’s impossible, I believe the answer would be to revert back to the “good old days” when everyone paid for their own routine healthcare (which was much cheaper before the insurance companies became the payers), and carried major medical insurance to cover the big stuff. Unfortunately, the concept that “healthcare is a right” has taken hold and there’s no going back to the concept of personal responsibility (and that paying for your own doctor visit has a higher priority than paying for your cable TV or your cellphone).

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  16. Michelle and the dearth of children in public. We saw that in Greece and Italy and were perplexed. In the three years we were there, we rarely saw a child. Unless going through a burqa area or with the beggars, always a lot of sleeping children there. We learned they drugged them for affect. Anyway, I wondered, even passing schools, why we rarely saw children. And then remembered the very low birth rate. Perhaps that in combination with children being isolated into children’s wards (schools) from an early age. Weird. We saw children all the time when we lived on military bases, but that was the age of the military personnel.

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  17. It seems now like the health care system is so layered that it’s simply too little too late to try to take it back to the the private sector model.

    So while Obamacare was (and is) dreadful in so many ways, it was successful in one way — it’s taking us in the direction of the full government health care model. And that was probably its design from the start. This current model is so miserably inept and expensive that we’re all clamoring for *something* to fix it, please.

    I’ve not heard a lot of good alternatives from the GOP on this, only the mantra of more private competition, etc., which is fine but I don’t think it’s enough now. I think that’s why repealing Obamacare outright never got off the starting line. What we have is lousy, but what would we do to replace it now?

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  20. Lovely header. Which one is Waldo?

    I think there are communities with a lot of children and others without. Where we live there are a majority of young singles and older retired people. That makes sense with the number of colleges and universities here along with hospitals and other retirement services. Most people with children live outside the I-285 perimeter where they like the schools and find a lot of friends for their children. We also have a lot of alternative lifestyle couples who don’t typically have children.

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  21. Re health insurance: My father said once that insurance was unheard of when he was a child (he was born just a few months short of 100 years ago, in a rural area, for context). I don’t know if he was speaking of any insurance at all (e.g., medical, fire, etc.), but I think he might have been. He said that things were cheaper then, and you paid for your own care . . . but if you had a major disaster, then neighbors would take up a collection for you.

    That really sounds like a much better system to me! You go to the doctor and maybe you pay $40 (they charge less because they have less overhead in terms of paperwork, their own insurance, etc.), but if you’re hospitalized and it’s $500/day, it costs $5,000 but neighbors end up collecting $4,200 of it. So rather than paying $500 in premiums every month of the year, you end up paying $40 twice for two doctor visits and the $800 left over from what the neighbors didn’t cover.

    Now, we have advantages today too, and on average maybe more of them. If a husband and father died, a family without life insurance might be left destitute. And I don’t know what might happen to people with chronic conditions and ongoing need of care. But surely paying thousands and thousands a year for the mere possibility of someday needing it is not the right answer. Nor is “single payer,” with the payer being the already overstretched taxpayer and the government deciding whether you qualify for open-heart surgery or you’re too old for it to be a good use of money. But I too think that Obamacare was set up to push us into it.

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  22. Oh, the single payer system isn’t so bad – it’s flaws are related to human fallibility and sinfulness, not to any inherent wrong in the actual idea. I know, the culture of the U.S. is inherently “every tub must stand on its own bottom.” Individualism and libertarianism have been inculcated into the U.S. psyche since the Boston Tea Party, and the U.S. citizen is constantly considered how his government might cheat him. However, privately funded or publicly funded healthcare isn’t a matter of what system is morally right or wrong. In fact, as regards the Church, it is inherently wrong to let your brother or sister suffer need, including medical needs, without helping them (Matthew 25:31-46, I John 3:17). I look upon the development of publicly funded healthcare as a result of the Church’s example provoking the secular world to emulation of what is a very life affirming idea, that we love our neighbour as ourselves by helping him when he becomes ill, for illness very often removes the ability to support oneself, never mind paying medical bills. The first two provinces to implement a publicly funded system (public healthcare was a grassroots movement in Canada) were, at the time, headed by premiers who also happened to be pastors. Little do most secular Canadians know it, but their support for public healthcare is support for a Christian ideal. Of course it doesn’t always work perfectly, but what system does?

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  23. Re children: In Nashville one day I went walking with my neighbors, an older Christian couple (they’d be about 70-75 now). A group of young mothers were walking in the same park, pushing strollers. One woman with a two-year-old in a stroller was visibly pregnant, and my neighbor expressed aloud (to me, not the woman) surprise that her children would be so close together. (To me, with a sister less than a year and a half younger, I’ve always felt sad when parents deliberately space children three years or more apart and the children can’t really be playmates, but that’s just me.) Anyway, my neighbor recovered from her initial surprise by saying, “Well, maybe she wants to get them over with quickly.” I said, “Or maybe she wants more than two children” and she said yes, maybe she did–as though that possibility never occurred to her!

    But even Christian couples are frequently deliberately waiting five years or more to have children, and they want only one or two (or none at all). Waiting five or six years to have children when you don’t even marry till the second half of your twenties is a bit of a risky choice. Also, some couples who choose to wait five or six years get so used to childlessness that they decide they like it, and choose to make it permanent. (Or they decide they don’t like it, but find with dismay that conceiving a child at age 34 isn’t necessarily easy, or even possible.) That’s in the Christian world, which used to be pro-child. Overall, our culture has decided children are an inconvenience, and many people would rather not be bothered. And with roughly half of children being born to unmarried mothers, pretty much your only chance of seeing mothers and children out and about is homeschooling families from intact homes.

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  27. Roscuro – Most Canadians say that public health care started in Saskatchewan with Tommy Douglas. However, what most people don’t know is that every family had to pay a “hospital tax” and if they hadn’t paid it, the doctor didn’t get paid and the family wouldn’t likely get care next time. The end result was that even though health care was public, there was still a specific tax created to pay for it – sort of like premiums the Americans pay.

    I was the one who went through a village’s old records dating back to the early thirties and there were all the tax papers for the hospital tax including letters asking the village to go after those who hadn’t paid up yet. I was very surprised as everybody in this province was so proud of the fact that they were the first to have “free” healthcare. Nope. Not true. The hospital tax was in place well into the 1970’s.

    Nowadays healthcare just comes out of our taxes – not a specific tax.

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  28. My mother told me when they had dental insurance added as a benefit at my dad’s job, the amount they paid remained about the same. The only difference was that the insurance company also paid the dentist and the company paid some to the insurance company. The prices all went up and the poor person with no insurance ended up paying more. It is that way with a lot of things.

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  29. If reading from The Message gets someone into the word, I am for it. It should, certainly, be taken as a paraphrase, however. I find the bibles, that have all kinds of special notes added to “explain” the text, have some danger, too. There are many that emphasize special themes. I would not dissuade anyone from any of them, but I would encourage looking at the bias and using a variety.

    They all have to be used prayerfully. The Holy Spirit will teach us, if we are open to it.

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  30. My knee jerk reaction is opposition to the message. Both of my priests have used it in their sermons AFTER it was read from a REAL Bible. I have learned over time to like it for the simplicity and beauty of the words, but I would never replace a Bible with it.

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  31. I was commenting the other day to my mother about missing the children from the residential neighbourhoods. I think part of it is due to a combination of protective parents and absorbing electronic activities for children; however it is also certainly due to a lower birth rate, but not necessarily for the reasons often attributed. For one thing, the economy has changed, so that people of my generation have to work harder and longer hours for a stable income – this is statistically a fact, the new economy has created “boundaryless” careers which have opened ended hours and less security than the former manufacturing economy. This makes it harder to even consider marriage, never mind children. I watch this going on with the family I rent from, who are clearly renting in order to pay for the house. They both work at constantly changing shift work, which means that there is little of the get up in the morning – eat breakfast as a family – go to work or school – come home at night – eat supper and spend the evening together routine that we associate with typical family life.

    In the instability of the new economy, if one is going to have a family more than ever a second income is needed. Second sibling is receiving maternal leave right now, but because of the instability of her husband’s income, who works extremely hard and long hours on seasonal work, she needs to resume her job when her leave pay runs out. As it is, with rent being so extremely high and house buying outside the hope of most millennials with families, life is not easy for them. This makes it harder to have more than a few children, because the more children that need care, the less time the mother can spend working.

    This economic instability is also making people more reluctant to take the risk of marriage, and if they do get married, it is later in life, when they have achieved more stability. This means, simply from a biological standpoint, that there will be less children. Eldest sibling and youngest sibling both got married in their early to mid twenties, and each had their first child within a year of marriage. Second sibling got married in her early thirties and had more trouble getting pregnant and more trouble with the pregnancy. The late teens to mid twenties is biologically the optimal age for childbearing. After that, the effects of aging create more difficulty with the pregnancy for the mother. So the reasons for decreased number of children are not so simple as people just wanting less children. The millennial generation is more pro-life than their parents generation and my siblings and their peers who are married are having as many children as they can – just a couple days ago, a young couple we are friends with announced the impending birth of a second child and their first is not yet a year – but quite a few of those young people we met at the church group are still unmarried and many of those are still struggling to find stable work and secure homes.

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  32. Kare, absolutely our taxes pay for it. We were talking about that in of my classes – we had a special lecture on it. The government is essentially acting as the health insurance agency, receiving premium payments and paying out money to each of the provinces to use in their plans. In Ontario, it is called Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) and there are extensive rules about who uses it and what for. The Canada Health Act of 1984 set five rules for the provinces to receive federal funding for their health insurance plans:
    – the plans had to be publicly administered (it couldn’t be a private health insurance company handling the money);
    – the plans had to be comprehensive (the policies had to cover medically necessary procedure, so there is some room for each province to determine the full extent of what is covered)
    – the plans had to be universal (all residents had to have the plan)
    – the plans had to be portable (this one creates some confusion as sometimes it doesn’t seem to work, but basically a resident covered in one province must be covered if they travel to other provinces. The coverage does happen, but sometimes a traveler will be horrified to get a bill in another province – it doesn’t mean they have to pay the bill since their provincial plan does cover it, it’s just how the system works)
    – the plans had to provide accessible services (this one is a challenge due to the remote northern communities)

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  33. 80 square feet

    Had to bribe someone else to do the math for me, I wasn’t even able to figure it out using online calculators.

    50+45+25= 120 ” wide X 96″ tall = 11520 sq inches divided by 144 Sq. inches = 80 Sq. ft.

    Math is such a mystery to me.

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  34. The Message. I purchased it years ago but did not like it. However, I have brought it out and given it to emotionally disturbed daughter. She has read a lot of the Bible in various versions and seems to pick up on whatever I don’t want her to. (Witches are mentioned in the Bible so they must be good.) I told her it is just a guy’s impression of what the Bible says. She is actually getting a lot more positive out of it. I really don’t like her to have a teen Bible with all of those inserts by well meaning people about looks and boys and etc.

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  35. Children: one of the questions the sheriff presented to son: do you ever have your friends over to your house? No, there is nothing to do there. Sheriff looked at me and said Technology age. Yep. Nothing to do here. Horses, dogs, hiking, fishing, paintball, airsoft, biking, exploring, trap building, varmint hunting, bird hunting, deer hunting, wood chopping…. Not a thing for a boy that age to do.

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  36. Two things recently were posted on FB that made me laugh and one made me proud. Janice one is for you.
    Last night someone posted on BG’s FB one of the begs for attention. “If I were in a hospital dieing who would give me a hug. BG’s response made my heart swell. “Hopefully someone who could spell dying”. Isn’t it enough to make a snarky mother proud?
    Today there was a meme that had grave stones on it. The caption was “The man who created autocorrect has died. Restaurant in Peach”. That’s the one that made me think of Janice.

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  37. Math is hard Donna. 🙂

    Elizabeth is taking a digital arts elective now that she is in high school. 😯 So I gave her my old Nikon and she’s been learning how to use it, what the settings are, and what not. She’s working on a project now and writing a report on how to use her camera. So she has been taking tons of pics to include, to show she knows how to use it. She’s got a pretty good eye for it and has already discovered the frustration of shooting animals that won’t hold still. 🙂 So I’ve selected a few of my favorites, and will run them in the header this weekend. A first showing of her work, if you will. 🙂

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  39. Kim, did you miss the part where I talked about millennials being unable to find secure jobs? It is not a matter of not wanting to work. My eldest sibling-in-law is slightly older than the millennial generation, and he has a good paying job, and having a Ph.D. in a specialized scientific field that has industrial use and having extensive work experience now, he probably will never not have work. My youngest sibling-in-law went straight out of high school into university on academic advice and got a university degree which went nowhere in terms of employment. He is now working in the retail and service industry. His boss likes his work, keeps talking about putting him into a more secure position, but has never really gotten around to it. Sibling-in-law is still part time, after over five years of work in the same place. He has been married to youngest sibling four years and they have three children. Youngest sibling gave up her part time job when her eldest was born. So, yes, they get child support benefits which enable them to raise those children with adequate food and clothing. If they ever get a house – they are living in a cheap apartment right now which leaves much to be desired – it will be because either my parents or the other set of parents has decided to move in with them. I fail to see how millennials like them are being enabled so they don’t have to work. The economy has changed, yet the younger generation is still being judged by the old standards

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  40. No Roscuro and I “liked” your earlier post. I also said I know not all millennials are like this. I think this video was made to be tongue in cheek. My own 19 year old thought nothing of paying 5 or 6 dollars for a frou frou drink at Starbucks as long as she was doing business with the Bank of Her Mother. Now that she has chosen not to go to college or trade school the bank closed. She has to decide between Starbucks and gas. She is working at American Eagle now. They had a floor reset last night and she worked it. The got in lots of new clothes so she wants me to come “see” everything tomorrow. That is code for there are some things I want and I am hoping you will buy them for me.

    I agree with Michelle, we have done a lot of young people a disservice by sending them to college to get degrees in subjects they cannot use and to spend money, go into debt and not be able to find a job. Again, my 19 year old is lucky. She has options. Her grandfather paid for her college education when she was a month old.

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  42. I just spoke with Karen’s sister who is at the hospital with her. She said Karen had a bad episode and is back in A Fib. This is a roller coaster ride of the worst sort. Somehow it seems that Karen always does best when I am the one with her. I can only attribute that to God and the connection that Karen and I have as Sisters in Christ.

    Last night Karen and her husband read the story I wrote which is in the newly released Additional Christmas Moments book compiled by Yvonne Lehman. The story is about Miss Bosley and tells a bit about when I was trying to get them to take her. Karen loved the story and cried while saying it is perfect. Her husband said he use to write some comedy and could have written for Saturday Night Live. He is from NY and knows Ackroid and a DJ who has written a book about musicians. I had no idea. I knew he was in a band when young, but he has been a doc at the VA while I have known them.

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  43. Millennials seem to be the group so many conservatives love to hate on. I’ve heard it quite a bit on the radio from various sources. It’s the in thing. But just remember, they didn’t give us abortion on demand; they didn’t give us no-fault divorce and the rotating disaster of family court; they didn’t give us lousy trade deals that killed huge swaths of the American job market. And although they’ve helped carry it to it’s logical conclusion, they weren’t even born when homosexuality was removed from the DSM-II and declared ‘normal’. I’m not a millennial (my children are), but even I was not of age when some of these things were set in motion. We all have to work with what we’ve inherited—the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we do the best we can—I know I do, and I believe the next generation is trying to do the same. :/

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  46. I love my millennial children. But since we raised them to be content and work hard for what you need,. none of them expect others to help them, but accept it when its given.

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