57 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-26-17”

  2. From yesterday, according to RNS, over half (53%) have almost no knowledge of the Bible.
    These aren’t evil people, just spiritually careless. Willing to follow any charismatic leader.
    That’s our problem today.

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  3. After finishing Shattered, last night, I almost felt sorry for Hillary. Then I remembered all the thing I have read about how she treats subordinates and other associates.
    I am convinced that If Hillary had won, Human Abedin would be running the country. She has that much influence. I don’t know why. She’s young enough to be Hillary’s daughter.

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  4. Today’s photo, I’m sure, had everyone thinking “AJ.” But it isn’t his.

    This is a pair of ring-necked ducks. And without a long zoom, they would only show as dark specks in the water; you’d know they were ducks, but assume they were mallards. They are in a pond at our favorite state park, but a very long distance off the trail. The one on the right is a male; on the left is a female. I know nothing about this species, having seen them only through a long zoom on two different occasions (the same pond last year or the year before, with slightly less zoom on that camera). Notice that they do have similar ringed bills, the strongest suggestion they are the same species. I don’t know if this is a pair or they just happen to be close together; I don’t know if this species breeds locally or just migrates through, whether they stay together in pairs year-round, etc., but if I had to bet, I’d say they were a pair. (But there were other ducks around, and I don’t know when they choose their mates, so it’s possible they weren’t. But some species of duck choose mates in the fall and stay together all winter, and for all I know this is one of them.)

    I’m out to see if I can find a singing meadowlark. Wish me luck. 🙂

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  5. Good Morning….pretty ducks up there…
    I am looking out upon a wintry wonderland this morning…frosty snow covered pines, thick fog that masks anything beyond a hundred feet…it is so beautiful…and cold…I’m home in Colorado and wouldn’t have it any other way…. 🙂

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  6. “All that said, there is something a bit . . . rich here, given what Obama had to say in a 2010 speech pushing tougher Wall Street regulation:

    “We’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

    Which makes you wonder when Obama will reach the point where he’s earned enough.”

    The above article is about a speech Obama is making for $400k. My point in posting this is to comment that there is never a point when there is “enough” money for those to whom money is important. The Clintons don’t have enough. Trump doesn’t have enough. There is no such thing as “enough”.

    But is suspect that for Trump, the process is more important than the cash. Not to say that the cash isn’t important, but it isn’t the driver.

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  7. For Cheryl’s search for a lark:

    It is an appropriate piece, considering the ongoing remembrance of the hundredth anniversary of the Great War. Vaughan Williams completed the piece just before volunteering for service in WWI. He survived the war and went on to write more music, but ‘The Lark Ascending’ has become something of a memorial to those who fell in that war.

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  8. Chas, for people in that income level it ceases to be about the money so much as it is the only way to keep score that they “won”.
    Some people are generous with their “winnings” and some are selfish. I have known both.

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  9. Good morning! I am still playing catch up at home. I have checked off the laundry piles. Now I am working on other piles. Also, I am getting ready to go to a women’s conference.

    When I opened my tablet this morning, I had a message that said it is corrupted and some things will not work properly. Guess it will be a project of discovery and a trial of patience.

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  10. That’s a lot of money for a speech — nearly a decade in earnings for me (and probably for some of journalists covering that speech).

    Chas, you beat me to finish Shattered, my work schedule keeps getting in the way of my reading time. 🙂 After getting home last night I pulled out the last of 4 large patches of foxtails that had sprouted in my backyard (those of the weeds that can be hazardous to dogs’ ears, paws and skin in general as they bore right inside a pup).

    I pulled the first patch Sunday night, the second and third patches Monday after work and the 4th last night. Done, although there may be some stragglers out there, to be sure. I should probably now go out and douse those areas with vinegar, but I’m hoping that getting them out by their roots will take care of the weedy pests at least for a while as we head into summer (when we may get another batch before that season is over).

    There are more foxtails in the front yard, but since the dogs don’t hang out there I’m not as obsessive about them. The gardener will come later this week and mow them down, though that just means they’ll spread their seeds some more.

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  14. Chas said “The Clintons don’t have enough. Trump doesn’t have enough. There is no such thing as “enough”.

    But is suspect that for Trump, the process is more important than the cash. Not to say that the cash isn’t important, but it isn’t the driver.”

    I would add that the Clintons, both of them, come from less advantaged backgrounds. To them money is power and they will never have enough.
    Trump comes from a moneyed background. He has never been without. To him the money is a score keeper.

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  15. I suspect that with Trump, it’s power.
    He’s obviously an egomaniac. “Trump Tower, Trump Airlines” Now the Trump White House.
    Same for his women. Trump Trophies.

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  17. I found my meadowlark. Actually at least two of them. (I had four sightings, but three might have been–were likely to be–the same bird.) One singing on a wire, one sitting, but not singing, on a fence. (I saw one in about the same location on a trip into town for breakfast afterward, and then on the same fence around the corner, on the way home.) I didn’t get close to the birds anytime, but close enough to get some photos. I’ve learned with creatures, with a zoom lens at least, to take whatever shots I can get, at whatever distance, and then move gradually closer and take more. I got to move a few yards closer with the first bird, but the second never got comfortable enough to start singing, so I didn’t move up on him at all and he soon flew.

    But that does mean I’ve had four photographable sightings of the species in the last week (until this week I’d only once gotten photos)–so far none of National Wlidlife quality, none taken from especially close range, but decent shots nonetheless. (Normally we drive by them sitting on the fence, and either there is a car behind us and my husband doesn’t want to stop, or we don’t see it in time to stop, or we do stop and it flies away. That’s why I decided this morning to walk to where we usually see them, even though it was farther than I usually walk in our neighborhood, walking along the road. And I got one on that fence and one on a wire before I got to that fence, but near where I photographed them the other day.)

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  19. Cheryl, please refresh my memory. Do you have an Etsy shop with cards? I met someone who is doing that type thing.

    This morning I made a smoothie from plain yogurt, pomegranate juice, unsweetened coconut milk and cinnamon. I have been enjoying that lately for breakfast. Does anyone here have favorite smoothies?

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  24. I hate how the sports seasons all overlap now.

    My CPA’s oldest grandson just entered high school & signed up for football but apparently the overall signup numbers are way down, he said. We were speculating on how much of an impact the concussion issue may have become.

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  25. My other, a junior Hig P.E. teacher who loved UCLA football, would not allow my brothers to play. We weren’t allowed to ski, either.

    A pertinent question is, how many ER docs allow their kids to play football? I understand they don’t have trampolines in their backyards either.

    OTOH any excessive sports will cause damage. Our family has knee issues from volleyball and basketball, both.

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  28. Michelle, I’m pretty sure that ER docs don’t let their kids ride motorcycles either.

    When I taught English adjunct, I wondered how any male survives long enough to reproduce. I had them write “how-to” pieces about something in which they had experience, and one boy wrote about mountain climbing, and being close enough to the peak that he kept going for another 45 minutes (or whatever period of time) even though he knew he was in danger of frostbite. One kid wrote about going into a cave with ropes tied together . . . and another wrote about caving safely, including the danger of that first method. All in all, it made me think my mom must have appreciated having five sons so non-adventurous that they had no broken bones or sprains or trips to the ER while under her roof. (One brother now does SCUBA and owns a motorcycle, both high on the danger list, and he also canoes, which may be up there a bit too. And he used to do mountain climbing. He uses care and does things properly, but there’s always a chance for things to go wrong when you engage in dangerous sports, and the 60-year-old body is not the same as the 30-year-old body.)

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  29. The new photo is tree swallows, taken the same day as the ducks, though a bit different location at the state park. The one on the left is the male; the dead tree is (was) growing in the water, surrounded by water. (We’ve seen muskrats and one beaver, and lots of turtles, in that particular pond, as well as ducks off in the distance, and once a great blue heron in a tree above it.)

    A group of four tree swallows was flying around. It was likely that it was two pairs, though these were the only ones I got a close enough shot to identify sex. I watched to see if I could see a nest, and sure enough the female went into and out of a hole. I think it was a hole on this tree, but on the right side and not where she is sitting in this photo. But there was a lot of action, so I couldn’t swear to it being the tree she is sitting on. But the male is blue and the female brown, and so this is one of each, whether or not they are a breeding pair. I’m pretty sure they are, though, because sitting on a tree this close is different from being in a group of four birds buzzing around together to catch insects.

    Oh, and if you have never watched swallows catching insects, you’ve missed a treat. They catch them in the air, in flight, so they can do some amazing acrobatics as the bugs twist and turn and hope to get away. That’s what four of them were doing over the water to the left of this tree minutes before these two landed.

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  30. I just did an obit on an 88-year-old adventurer — when I interviewed his grandson (a 38-year-old police detective) he said his granddad taught him to fly a bi-plane and to deep ocean dive when he was growing up, but he drew the line at letting him get a motorcycle.

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  31. Sometimes I receive books in the mail at work for review, many hooked to the pet blog, and the latest was “Adventure Cats: Yes, Your Cat Can Hike, Camp, Sail and More!”

    Author describes three kinds of cat personalities:

    * Green cats are “savvy, unflappable, and adventurous”

    * Orange cats, though not as bold as green cats, are considered “good company” — they are sociable and interested in their environment

    * Purple cats “seek affection, are pretty quiet and tend to stay out of trouble”

    Green & Orange cats make good adventure cats, author says, they’re simply not meant to watch life from inside a window.

    “Purple cats, on the other hand, are cautious and often keep to themselves, so venturing outside could be more stressful for them. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule — like an Atlanta cat named Snowflake. ‘Snowflake is definitely a purple cat,’ said owner Anna Norris. ‘She’s very shy but loving. Always ready to snuggle, but quick to run away when guests arive. Even so, after a couple of years of harness and leash training, she really enjoys lounging on the front porch and poking around the plants in our backyard. We know she would not do well on a hike with so many unknowns, but in the comfort of our zone, she really thrives.'”

    I think Annie is between a Green & Orange cat as she doesn’t tend to like strangers and will vanish when they come. But otherwise she’s really confident and, I’d say, pretty adventurous.

    Which, of course, could probably get her easily killed …

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  34. I am not sure how Miss Bosley fits into color coded cats. She is not afraid of strangers. She is afraid of the big booms of fireworks on the 4th. She does not appear to be afraid of close thunder. She has settled down so I do not find her up on top of doors any more, but she still can go on crazed cat wild tares through the house where she flies over furniture like a speeding bullet. She must be a combo.

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  37. Son and family have a pool at their home in Pensacola. He found a cottonmouth in the filter the other day. I guess it was on Facebook but I have not seen it. They did not eat it.

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  41. Cheryl, no, the hippocampus develops in the unborn child during the second trimester. It has several roles, but its most well known is the role it plays in consolidating memory, since destruction of the hippocampus due to brain injury results in anterograde amnesia, which means that although memories from before the brain injury are retained, no new memories will be formed.

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  43. Thanks, Roscuro. The author specifically said “adult brain,” and I was pretty sure that wasn’t right, but figured it made more sense to ask an expert than to google it and decipher the results.

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  49. I have been rather unproductive as well. Though I did repot some tomatoes and planted some flowers and some hops and some berries. And moved a dresser. And listened to a ten year old read. And listened to a nine year old read. And did math with some children. And washed some dishes. And milked a goat. And fed some chickens and turkeys and sheep and goats and rabbits and guineas….

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  51. My point is that I don’t actually do much. I do lots of little things. But I would not do well with a job. Even an at home job would be challenging for me as my time needs to be available. Not to spoil the children but to keep them from going into old habits. All of the time. We went up to watch a movie and ten year old mentioned that he had watched way too many adult movies when he was in foster care. He is talking about horror movies and the other kind. Remember, he came to us when he had just turned four. And yet, God continues to work and we see marvelous things happening.

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  55. My friend Carol is still without a phone (having chosen a password system that is so secure she’s locked even herself out of getting access to it). I call her every few days on the facility general line and apparently MetroPCS hasn’t been able to fix it, saying she has to go into downtown LA to corporate to see if they can help. It’s not real far from her, but considering her handicaps and lack of transportation options, not doable.

    So she had me text her brother in NJ (a) to let him know why she’s been out of touch for a couple weeks and (b) to see if he might want to send her some money as an early BD present.

    I’ve cut her off for money (and she knows that), so she’s in a major bind and is going to be short on her rent — but maybe that is where she needs to be. She said tonight that she has a ‘money problem’ but I think she figures it’s a temporary thing, she still isn’t “getting” that this is a long-term issue for her, that she pretty much always has a money problem, some months are just worse than others. If they’re going to evict her, I may need to intervene somehow, but her brother also has gone through this with her for a lot longer than I have.

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