49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-7-16”

  1. Seventy five years ago, I was an eleven year old kid living in Charleson, SC. It was a Sunday and I went to the American theater to see the movie Belle Starr. (Randolph Scott and Gene Tierney). When I got home, my dad said, “The Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor”. I didn’t know what “Pearl Harbor” was. But I knew it was war. We had been at conflict with the Germans for months in the Atlantic. Not officially, but I remember sailors talking about it last summer. Charleston, at that time was a major destroyer base.
    I always thought I was going to be in that war. The Bomb changed that. Elvera had two brothers who were in it. One in Europe, one in the Pacific (Guam and Iwo Jima). And a future bro-in-law who was in Europe. Long after the war was over, Bro-in-law, Joe G. got a Bronz Star in the mail. He was awarded a medal for combat in the Battle of the Bulge. Someone asked why he didn’t try to get it earlier.
    “I didn’t care about no medals. I just wanted the war over so I could go home.” I’m sure he spoke for millions. He had a girl waiting.

    I won’t ask any of you what you were doing on 7 December. 1941.

    It was a turning point in history. I wasn’t concerned with that at the time.

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  3. There was always speculation by some that Roosevelt knew about the pending attack ahead of time.
    I doubt it. They had radar but ignored it. A couple of P-40 fighter planes got off, but I don’t remember if they did any damage.
    The battle of Midway was about six months later. There was no doubt after that who would win.

    Liked by 4 people

  4. Nobody thought to ask, “What is an 11-year old kid doing in downtown Charleston about a mile away from home on a Sunday afternoon?”
    It was different then. The streets of Charleston were my playground. There were no “play dates”. We made our own fun.
    If you go to the Battery in Charleston (White Point Gardens if you’re a Yankee), you will see an array of Civil War cannons. Charleston doesn’t know how many times Bobby Murray and I saved them from invasion with those cannon.

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  5. Advent – Day 7: This hymn may be more familiar to most set to another tune. This setting of ‘Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne’ was written by Ira. D. Sankey, the singer and songwriter who accompanied D. L. Moody on his revivalist meetings. The hymn is being sung here in a Chinese translation, so I’ve included the English lyrics, written in 1864 by Emily Eliot.
    Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown,
    When Thou camest to earth for me;
    But in Bethlehem’s home was there found no room
    For Thy holy nativity.

    O come to my heart, Lord Jesus,
    There is room in my heart for Thee.

    Heaven’s arches rang when the angels sang,
    Proclaiming Thy royal degree;
    But of lowly birth didst Thou come to earth,
    And in great humility.

    The foxes found rest, and the birds their nest
    In the shade of the forest tree;
    But Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God,
    In the deserts of Galilee.

    Thou camest, O Lord, with the living Word,
    That should set Thy people free;
    But with mocking scorn and with crown of thorn,
    They bore Thee to Calvary.

    When the heav’ns shall ring, and her choirs shall sing,
    At Thy coming to victory,
    Let Thy voice call me home, saying “Yet there is room,
    There is room at My side for thee.”
    My heart shall rejoice, Lord Jesus,
    When Thou comest and callest for me.

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  6. Chas, my older brothers had bicycle paper routes when they were about that age.

    We lived in Phoenix until just before my 15th birthday. We lived about a mile from a McDonald’s and a large mall. I’m pretty sure my brothers came and went to those locations on their bicycles. As a girl, I hadn’t done so, but had we stayed in the area just another year, my sister and I probably would have begun heading that way together, and probably would have gotten jobs down there. (We moved away when my sister graduated eighth grade, about six weeks after my dad turned 65. Had we stayed into another school year, I imagine my sister and I would have had freedom to go to the mall while my brother was in school, as long as our own schoolwork was finished. But Mom probably wouldn’t have wanted her girl teenagers going separately, on foot or by bicycle, and it would never have occurred to me at that age to want to, though my sister likely would have.) My brothers, being boys, being four of them fairly close in age, and just enough older to be in another generation–they were all baby boomers, and the youngest of them is seven years older than I, 56–had that sort of freedom more than we did.

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  7. Good morning without rain in the forecast today. It is soon to be very cold at the dog parks in Atlanta and all around town.

    Chas, my friends and I probably wandered about a half a mile from home on our adventures. It was a different world.

    My dad died on 12/7/1988.

    Liked by 3 people

  8. I had great uncles who fought in WWII. Mr. P’s dad fought too. My two personal WWII heroes were George B and Bill B. George was in the Navy(retired) from a small no where town in North Carolina. He was a fantastic baseball player. He met the love of his life, a spunky little Northern Italian from Staten Island. They were married 67 years. Mrs. B taught me how to make a home. She is the reason I decorate for Christmas as I do.
    Bill was a privileged young man from New Jersey. He was initially in the Cavalry. He was a field commissioned officer. A German soldier surrendered his weapon to Bill on the battlefield. When asked about his education he would reply he graduated from the University of Madrid. The twinkle in his eye and the grin told you he was lying. When he spoke of the war he talked about the wine and cognac they liberated in France and the food he ate in each village. You got the impression that he did not fight a war so much as he ate and drank his way across France. To this day I blame him for BG’s horrid eating habits. He taught her to make “fingernails” out of Bugles (those corn crispy snacks).

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  9. Chas, small towns still sometimes have some of that. My husband and I were in town one day and saw a boy of no older than seven riding his bicycle downtown, apparently on his way home from school. When I was nine, I got out of school an hour later than my younger brother and sister. My mom went to pick up my first- and third-grade siblings every day, but the arrangement she made with me was that either she or one of my teenage brothers would meet me at the edge of the schoolground, but if they were not there when I got there, I was to head toward home and not wait. I think initially one of them was usually there, but as the school year wore on they were more and more likely to meet me somewhere in the park or for me to get all the way home by myself.

    No way would a caring mother let her nine-year-old girl–even a responsible one, as I was–walk through that park alone today. (It now has a dog park, and I saw on google that some residents were concerned about being in that neighborhood, and someone came on and said something like, “It’s definitely in the hood, but during the day it should be safe enough.” Well, when I lived there thirty years ago, it was a lower-middle-class neighborhood at best, but working class, and safe.) Mom did give plenty of cautions as to what was appropriate and what was not. We were told never ever to go into the rest rooms in the park, for example, and we were not to loiter in the park or play on the playground, and to be alert to our surroundings. I don’t remember when we all got bicycles, or whether I had one yet that year, but that gave us some speed going through the park on the concrete trails through it. The following year, I was in fifth grade and my sister in fourth, and we would all three walk or ride to school together, but my sister and I go home together. Once I was in seventh grade, we were all three together both directions, and Mom didn’t make any trips to school to pick up anyone at that point, and she gave me a house key to wear around my neck in case she was not home when we got back home. Previous years she had told me, “If I’m not here when you get home, check the back door. If I’m not sure I’ll make it home by the time you get home, I’ll leave the back door unlocked.” And then she showed me where the house key was hidden and told me that if she was ever gone longer than she expected to be, and the back door was locked, that I could use that. I only had to use it once, and then in seventh grade I got my own key and that was no longer a concern.

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  11. Good Morning…we have about an inch of new fallen snow on the forest floor…and we now have icy roads due to the wind whipping a nice glaze across them last night. It is so beautiful….quiet, still, lights of the tree shining….Christmas….
    I moved the sofa in the family room last night after everyone was in bed…I slipped on a blanket I had thrown on the floor…fell banging my head and hip on the floor…no one got up to see what the commotion was all about…I kept thinking about that commercial…”help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”!! I have a nice headache this morning, sore hip, shoulders and a carpet burn on my elbow….and what did husband say this morning “you need to be more careful we cannot afford broken bones around here”!!

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  12. My dad is a WW2 vet; a Navy helmsman on an escort ship for a battleship (USS Meigs if I’m not mistaken). He remembers they participated in the battle of Marseille, France. Afterward, they gave his boat to the French in lend/lease and sent him to Staten Island. His duty there was to pilot boats up the Hudson river where they were mothballed.

    He speaks fondly of his time in NYC. And he spent all of his spare time the theatre. He could get free tickets any time he wanted them. They treated servicemen like real heros. :–)

    It’s a big contrast to the “welcome” Vietnam vets received. :–(

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  13. My dad was a ten year old at the movies in Fresno when someone came in and announced the bombing. He ran to the newspaper office, bought papers and sold them on the streets the rest of the day.

    The first year of the war, he bought a green world atlas and followed the battles through the pages of the book. We have it still–pretty worn out, my father got a degree in geography from UCLA–with his penciled marks of the battle lines in Europe. The South Pacific pages were falling out even when I was a child.

    I remembered Pearl Harbor every December 7 we lived in Hawai’i–I could see the memorial from my kitchen window on the banks of Pearl Harbor. Here’s my memory:

    http://www.michelleule.com/2012/12/07/pearl-harbor-and-me/

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  14. Nancy Jill, I’m sorry to hear that. A few months ago I went out to our back deck, and it was wet and so were my shoes, and my feet went out from under me. I hit the edge of my back hard against the edge of the deck (a corner) and my head hit the deck hard. I yelled “OW!” as my head hit, and I hoped my husband heard me, since I knew I couldn’t get up right away on my own. Fortunately he heard and came out, and helped me up. And the next day, when I said I really would feel better about going to the doctor, he took me. (The doctor didn’t send me for X-rays, so it was just the cost of an office visit.) But the older we get, the worse a fall can hurt.

    On a side note, sort of humorous, my husband and I ran across one of those “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials, I think when we were googling something about my fall. And the company that uses that line trademarked it. That’s what the screen says! So we joked about someone calling 911 and saying that, and the responders cautioning about potential copyright infringement. So we started thinking of different ways a person could say the same thing without violating the trademark. “Eek, I seem to have slipped and I cannot rise to my feet! Please send aid.”

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  15. We rode our bikes all over town, too. We played on the freeway construction site near our school, wandered up and down and around Market Street (the main downtown street of my hometown), played baseball in the street with the boys who lived on the corner — our childhoods were pretty freewheeling, we had to be home by dark. At home, we used out imaginations and spent hours in make believe scenarios in my backyard, from cowboys to Olympics to Tom Sawyer. (My uncle had built us a “raft” from some old wood so we could play Tom Sawyer and it handily doubled as an Olympic bobsled when propped up against the fence.)

    The routines for kids today, with all the organized, adult-supervised “fun,” strike me as kind of sad. (Although I would have loved being on a softball team, but that wasn’t an option back then for girls.)

    Pearl Harbor was a defining moment in my parents’ lives and I grew up hearing those stories — my Navy dad was part of the cleanup crew sent there, I still remember his telling me about all the oil in the harbor and the horrific sights and smells of it all. My uncle was on board the USS Nevada and survived the attack, learning to swim that day (though he was initially reported as killed). My mom worked in one of the war plants, she was a “Rosie the riveter” in California. Both my parents were from northwest Iowa but only met and married after the war was over (my dad also had moved to California on his own earlier).

    I also remember my mom telling me about the rumors that Roosevelt “knew,” but she doubted them too.

    This year I interviewed the daughter of a survivor who died 10 years ago (and had been interviewed a lot in his day). She and her brother were heading back to Oahu to represent him at the 75th anniversary. She now lives in Florida but her dad (and she) were locals to our port area (where, interestingly, the Navy fleet was kept in earlier years before it was moved to Hawaii).

    http://www.dailybreeze.com/veterans/20161203/children-keep-alive-memories-of-san-pedro-man-who-survived-pearl-harbor

    I liked the story she told about the “sound effects” accompanying the Nevada as it got underway after being hit. I used that to end my story (somehow I can’t copy and paste it here for some reason).

    There’s a ceremony today on board the Battleship Iowa with a survivor set to attend.

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  16. Still trying to chase that gas company story, there were a couple people who supposedly had similar problems, but as of yet they’re not calling me back.

    In a perfect world …

    But with such a tiny staff, the editor demands a regular flow of copy so until something shakes loose on that, I’m back to churning and chasing some quick holiday-theme stories that I can at least leave for them to use while I’m off next week. Tomorrow I cover a groundbreaking.

    But, in general, “news” tends to slow down substantially around the holidays so we’re often scrambling.

    On Friday I’ll have to work from home for at least part of the day as the plumber is coming over to fix that closet bathroom and swap out the huge vanity for the little one I bought.

    I picked up Carol’s gift yesterday at Barnes & Noble, so that’s done. Still have the Angel Tree child to shop for and my other friend (though she may get a gift card this year, she and her husband also are making some changes to their home so maybe a card for Home Depot …)

    Ouch on the falls, hope you’re not too badly bruised Nancyjill. So you can navigate the ice but not those sneaky blankets. 🙂

    With all the boxes and other chaos around my house these days, I keep thinking I’ll go down in the middle of it all and not be found for days. There I’ll be, under all those boxes of sinks and bathroom fixtures.

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  17. The biggest challenge in developing a dog park is always the location. It has to be somewhere that isn’t already being actively used so often the parks are put onto parcels of land that are out of the way or in bad areas. The theory is that the steady traffic of “normal” people coming and going with their dogs all day long will eventually drive out drug deals and other inappropriate activity in an area.

    Our dog park along side the busy freeway onramp near the end of the harbor bridge and the railroad tracks — port-owned land that wasn’t planned to be used immediately, but someday it may be put to use.

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  18. Ouch. Did you get a concussion? Might want to take it easy for a few days.

    Husband is scooting his way to Sacramento. Meanwhile, somebody is failing to keep the home fires burning. Or at least, the hydrants from freezing. I had to use the heat blower on two of them this morning and decided it was time to put the heaters in the water troughs for the goats, sheep, and dogs. Still breaking ice for the chickens, turkeys, and rabbits. I think it is about twenty out and not expected to increase much. Snow for the next week.

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  22. Oldest stepson was born December 7. 1983. I was not yet in high school. His father got an early start on parenting without me. 😉 He is the source of two adorable grandchildren.

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  24. I’ll look at that site on a computer, having trouble navigating it on mobile for some reason — can’t get past the small appliances and wrinkle cure 🙂

    But my cabinets already have the divided glass fronts shown there, one of the perks I had done after I first moved in

    Liked by 1 person

  28. As we were out doing chores this morning:
    nine year old daughter: only eighteen days left until Christmas!
    me: yep, but who’s counting?
    nyod: (in a joyous response) I am.

    Liked by 6 people

  38. So, I just finished reading Courageous by Randy Alcorn. He wrote it from the screenplay. He says it is twenty percent the movie and eighty percent his filling in of the details. I have not watched the movie but plan to if it ever gets above freezing in the movie room. Now, now, Phos, it was not that cold. Surely the thick winter hat and heavy scarf and boots you wore were an exaggeration…..

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  39. It is 6 degrees here right now and ice crystals are falling…the low tonight is to be -7. That electric blanket will feel good tonight!!
    I have felt off today…pain in the neck…literally…a bit off kilter….ibuprofen for the headache…hoping this goes away tomorrow…I have to work on Friday!

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  40. We’re supposed to get about 11 inches this weekend. Our pastor was on vacation the last two weeks. Wonder what kind of praying he has been doing?

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  41. Not boots, I think someone lent me some lined slippers… And I had those lined trousers that my family gave me for Christmas, anticipating some such need. And a jacket. And thick socks. A hat, certainly, I’m still wearing that hat – it was well made 😉 . As my mother used to tell us, “If you’re cold, put a hat on.”

    Well, I just had the last lecture for this semester. First exam is on Saturday.

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  42. Parents still need water. Right now, they are planning on getting a load of water pumped into the well at Christmas so all the visiting relatives will have water.

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  46. Please pray for my friend, Charlette. Her husband died, very unexpectedly, about a year and a half ago. She has been a homemaker and homeschool mom. After Jeff died, her oldest son and his wife and young son decided to move home and help support her. She works part time for the post office. Her son died today. He is former military, and works as a police officer. He died enroute to a call. I am just heart broken for her.

    Liked by 3 people

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