83 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-30-17”

  2. You were chatty last night and I haven’t caught up. However @ 8:04 Chas came up with a dumb idea.
    Don’t ever listen to him again. 😆

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  3. Many Baptists also claim to be non-protestant because Anabaptists predated Luther.
    However, “Protestant” has become a generic name to identify Christians who are not Catholic.
    Don’t fight it. We have bigger issues.

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  4. At breakfast this morning, I was thinking about an interesting discussion we had in SS yesterday. It wasn’t the lesson, but we were discussing problems Moses had leading the people.
    Max pointed to Bob, a 93 year-old guy who could hardly get around.
    Max said, “Would you follow Bob if he told you to do something?”
    I said, “If Bob had a staff that could turn into a snake and turn the Nile to blood, I would follow him anywhere.”
    I still don’t understand the rebellious nature of Israel in the wilderness.

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  5. I finished reading Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi last nighrt.
    There was some discussion some time ago in which someone doubted his conversion
    I am thoroughly convinced that he has found Christ. No doubt.
    The book was not an easy read. Not difficult words, but he gives insight into a culture I can’t understand. Primarily, what he calls the “Honor – Sheme” culture of the Middle East. That vice what he calls the “Innocent – Guilt” culture of the West.
    He gives the illustration of a Muslim boy who ordered free water at a drive-in restaurant and filled the container with soft drink. He was discovered. The issue with him was not that he was stealing, but that he was caught. By a minimum wage employee, at that.
    It gives insight into a situation in WW II that I read about bit didn’t. understand. During the battle of the Philippine Sea, some Japanese sailors chose to drown rather than be picked up by our ships. Very few Japanese were captured compared to Germans. It is their culture of shame.
    Also, their comcept that truth is found throught authority rather than reason. e.g. I was taught that by my teachers who were taught that by their theachers. Who……
    “My daddy said it was so and Dad wouldn’t lie.”

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  8. I’m here Chas.

    Here is oone reason why American education is not as good as it used to be. Our football team won its first round playoff game Saturday. Today the athletic director sent an email with a few rules, including this one:

    “Noise makers, except whistles are aloud.”

    I know what he means, but really? Of course noise makers a aloud. They would be quiet makers if they weren’t! And where is the comma before “are”?

    The worst thing is if you point out his mistakes to him he shrugs it off. I am glad he no longer is in the classroom teaching. Know what he taught? History and PE, of course.

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  10. It could be that his device changed the word. It happens. I will give credit to spellcheck erroneous correction. Trying to think more highly of people than devices. 😃

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  12. Chas, I didn’t doubt his salvation as much as really wonder if he fully “disavowed” Allah, though I couldn’t actually remember what my specific issue was (and thus wished I’d just not said anything) except that the interpretation of one dream seemed really, really pushing it as far as it being a dream/vision from God.

    But your discussion of the shame/honor culture is one I’ve seen before. I once had an author really fight me on some of that stuff, since he/she was basically arguing that people are being insensitive when they go by Western rules, such as right/wrong instead of shame/honor and teaching people in illiterate cultures to read and thereby changing them from oral cultures to written ones. I argued back that one has to present anything in the proper way (that is, one can be wrong in the way one presents the gospel), but that Scripture tells us that there is true right and wrong and that the Bible was given in written form, therefore teaching people to read is a positive good even if it changes their culture in other ways.It was early in the multicultural days, when white males are automatically seen as the lowest form of life, but it came from that perspective, that the American way had to be the lesser way, and I found it rather disturbing.

    It’s possible that was my problem with that book, if the author presented the shame/honor culture as an equally viable one, though I don’t remember. We do see some hints of the shame/honor in Scripture (e.g., the Prodigal Son), but Jesus died to save us from sin, not from shame.

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  13. Chas, that is an apple tree, so Waldo isn’t a fish. He (or she) is extremely well camouflaged, but all of it can be seen and it’s a fairly large percentage of the picture. I’ll come back and identify the species once people have had a chance to see it.

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  14. I understand the Israelites. We want to think we’re different. But we’re not. We’d like to think we’d sweetly follow without a gripe or grumble. But we wouldn’t.

    I’m up early, the foundation crew is due shortly so I had to get the Jeep out of the driveway for them. And Real Estate Guy will be here early, too, I owe him $$ for materials he’s been buying over the past couple weeks. He asked how much I thought it would be. Couple hundred? More than that, he said, but he still thinks it’ll be less than what most people would think it should be.

    I’m at the point where it all seems like a lot of money all of a sudden. 😦 Ugh.

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  15. By the way, when I say “Jesus died to save us from sin, not from shame,” I understand that people often put the two together, that He saved us from sin and shame. But shame for something that is not sinful does not need forgiveness. If I were to wet my pants, I would feel embarrassment (shame), but I would have done nothing in need of forgiveness. In honor/shame cultures, a woman can be raped to bring her family shame–but the guilt is on the one who committed the rape, not the one who endured it!

    In other words, in separating shame from guilt, and focusing on shame and not guilt, the shame/honor culture has not just a different perspective, but one that is (biblically, objectively) false.

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  16. The “Waldo” is a yellow bird. I think it’s a finch.

    As for the “typo”, auto correct and spell check are no excuse for not proofreading, especially for a teacher. I won’t make an issue of it here at school. I just thought I’d post it somewhere.

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  17. “Shame” always has to do with other people’s opinions.
    It has to do with your stratus in the community.
    Not with God.
    It’s a difficult choice for some to make.

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  18. Peter, I agree with you that things sent out to students should be proofread.

    Peter, Waldo is a ruby-crowned kinglet. I’ve never seen the ruby crown on this species (only males have them, and they rarely raise them), but it’s Indiana’s second-smallest bird (after the ruby-throated hummingbird–yes, they both have “ruby” in the name), and like all tiny birds I know, it’s in nearly constant motion. Most of the photos I have taken of one, the bird is a literal blur, or it has left the scene already, or it has put its head behind a leaf. This year I actually got the bird in the frame (hard enough to do) several dozen times, but this is the only shot I actually like.

    To take photos of the birds in the apple orchard, I am standing on the other side of our fence, and generally when I’m standing there the birds stay at least one layer in (in the trees behind the trees nearest the fence). Even when a bird flies to the tree nearest me, it flies around the tree so quickly it’s hard to find it in my lens and zoom in, let alone get a good shot. And then fully half the time, I find that the bird is a chipping sparrow, not a warbler or kinglet. But I keep trying because practice has allowed me to get an occasional shot like this, where the bird is in focus, its eye and beak (and wings and tail) both show, and where it’s a good photo. (I did crop it a bit, so I didn’t actually zoom in quite as much as appears in the photo.) I was disappointed that in my bird photos in the apple tree, very few actually include an apple, or an apple close to the bird. But in this case it works better that there isn’t an apple and that it’s simply a muted green-and-yellow palette.

    The only reason one sees this bird is that it moves. The person behind the camera had that big advantage over the person viewing the photo–the bird could be seen because it was moving. But then again, the person with the camera is looking at a tiny bird several yards away, in constant motion. As camouflaged as the bird is, you will never get this good a look at a live one.

    I do hope that someday one lets me see his crown, though.

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  19. Good Morning! Well we did not get the snow overnight but boy howdy it is icy on the front steps! So here we have a frosty 23 degree morn with an expected 27 for a high…it is a stay inside, coffee, good book in hand kind of day for me. Not to mention I went to bed sort of late (what a game….but my team is losing at the moment!)
    That is the cutest little birdie in the tree up there Cheryl…is he/she a tree sparrow?

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  20. Workers are here. They’ve finished putting in all the rebar (lots of it!) and the next step is to make the forms into which the concrete will be poured. Or something. I’m assured it’ll be done by 11/9 which is when the window people come (and will need the house to be nice and sturdy and straight before they do their thing).

    The cat is demanding breakfast so I’d better tend right to that.

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  21. And I guess the shame/honor thing is one place our own society is totally schizophrenic. We repudiate the shame/honor idea so thoroughly that we cannot say it is “foolish” for a young woman to go to a party where men will be drinking heavily, wearing almost nothing, and drinking heavily herself. In our culture, on this one we have the precise opposite of the same culture; in ours, the man is 100% responsible, the woman 0%. (I am not saying that such a woman “deserves to get raped,” but that both parties are wrong here. You don’t swim with alligators and then blame the alligator–you know ahead of time how alligators behave, and act accordingly. You do not say the man must show self-control and the woman need not do so; both are morally responsible. It’s untenable to disconnect sex from marriage, expect college students to sleep around, expect college students to get crazy drunk, emphasize that there is no real difference between men and women, and then blame only the guy when sex and alcohol happen at the same time at the same party, a party where all who went knew ahead of time that both would take place.)

    But then, after being 180 degrees different from the shame/honor culture, we have an extremely hard time saying that the shame/honor culture is actually wrong.

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  22. Many of us have been wondering about the high number of home runs being hit in this World Series.

    https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/29/world-series-baseballs-leather-justin-verlander-yu-darvish-ken-giles-kenley-jansen

    Historic World Series Home Run Rate may be Result of Slicker Baseballs
    ________________________________

    HOUSTON – Pitchers and coaches from both the Dodgers and Astros complained Saturday night about the World Series baseballs—and this time the controversy is not just about liveliness. They say there is a new problem: the baseballs used in the World Series are slicker than the ones used in the regular season because of a difference in the grain of the leather. The slicker World Series balls particularly make it hard to throw a good slider, they claim.

    “We had a well-pitched game tonight from both sides,” Astros pitching coach Brent Strom said after Los Angeles won Game 4, 6-2. “I’m not taking anything away from the players. I just want to know why? Why in the world would the baseballs in the World Series be different? Because you can see the difference. You can feel it. I don’t understand it at all.” …
    __________________________________

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  23. I agree with dj. We tend to forget things quite quickly. It happened over and over in scripture and happens in our lives, as well. When things get difficult we can be overcome with foolish thinking, which leads to foolish action.

    The Israelites all came out as a people. They had become odious to the people around them. Some may have been a bit better off than others; for example, the overseers. When they had nothing, but manna or were without water, it would have been easy to think back about only the good things left behind. Like a drug addict, who has recovered, and remembers the high and fun times, but not the sickness and pain, the bad is forgotten. I am so glad we were given those stories for our own learning!

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  24. Agreeing. I have seen too much rebellion in myself and my children to ever begin to imagine I would be any different. I would like to be. I could be, but my leanings are definitely toward selfishness and knowing better than anybody else. The God they were following in the cloud and the fire is exactly the same God Whose Spirit is living in me and I still rebel.

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  25. DJ, I think it’s safe to say these two World Series teams are evenly matched. Until last night each had won one game at home and one on the road, and last night Dodgers were expected to win, cuz Kershaw, but I figured that if they did, it was likely all over for the Astros, and I guess they figured that too. With a 4-0 lead I figured it was most likely the Dodgers were going to take it, but it was such a wild and crazy game. When they go into extra innings with the game tied at 12, with both teams having held the lead repeatedly, clearly they are a well-matched pair of teams. If the Dodgers win tomorrow night, then they should just declare it a tie and forget game 7. 🙂

    I don’t really follow baseball, just more or less the Cubs (we watch Cubs games here and there, when they’re on TV), so I didn’t know the Astros had about as good a series as the Dodgers. The Dodgers would seem to have a better pitching line-up, but so far it isn’t making the difference; nothing is. So tomorrow should be a good game, and if there is a game 7, it may well be as much a nail-biter as last year’s Cubs/Indians extra-inning game 7.

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  27. And interestingly to me, I know it is available to me to live more like Him and yet I choose not to. I ask Him to make me more like Him, but when the choice arrives, I find myself after the fact, asking why I did it my way again.

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  30. Chas, the more one understands about the honour culture, the more one sees how the Patriarchs lived in such a culture and how the Mosaic law actually mitigated the worst features of such a culture. Recall how Simeon and Levi went about to avenge the dishonouring of their sister Dinah, after she was raped by Shechem. Just recently, in the cinema of Northern India, where honour culture is still strong, there was a film released depicting a father taking a similarly murderous vengeance on those who raped his daughter. There are many films with a similar theme that come out of ‘Bollywood’. Another recurring theme in their cinema is the woman who is threatened with rape who commits suicide rather than be so dishonoured. To even be talked about as unchaste is considered dishonouring to a woman, to the point where death is preferable or a relative may kill her to avert the dishonour. The Law of Jealousy (Numbers 5:11-31) – where a man who suspected his wife was unfaithful, and brings her to the priest, who makes her drink the dust of the Tabernacle and pronounces a curse that her belly would swell and her thigh rot if she was guilty – actually provided a way of escape for the innocent woman who, in the honour culture, could expect to be killed merely based on her husband’s suspicions. Similarly, the law causing parents to have to bring a rebellious child to trial before he could be executed (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) also stopped parents from simply killing children they felt were bringing dishonor on the family. In a very real way, the Law of Moses was a schoolmaster, changing the conversation from shame vs. honour to sin vs. righteousness, so that all could be convicted of sin and their need for a Saviour (Galatians 3:22, 24).

    Cheryl, the analogy of swimming with alligators doesn’t hold water. Alligators are mere animals who operate solely by instinct. Humans are moral agents. In a scandal a few years ago involving a prominent pastor who was arrested and then imprisoned for sexually abusing a young teenage girl, the pastor and his defenders tried to argue the young girl had acted seductively. Someone, in an online comment, snapped back that even if she had stripped herself and approached him, he still had the ability to say no. Joseph’s response to Potiphar’s wife is a perfect illustration of how even the most deliberately seductive woman cannot force a man to do what he has purposed in his heart not to do. Even a woman who seeks to seduce men still bears no responsibility for a man’s decision to rape her. Her seductive behavior is sinful, but each human bears responsibility for only their own sin, not another’s.

    As for a culture being right or wrong, Christians are strangers and pilgrims in the world. Every culture, being based on patterns of human behaviour, has a certain amount of sinful ideas and attitudes. None is perfect. The honour culture, which is really the default for how humans interact with one another in the absence of other laws or regulations, can still be seen in those internet memes of the father who lays down the law to the boy taking his daughter out, threatening to come after him if the boy tries anything. Duels and feuds, which both Mark Twain and Charles Dickens note to have been still practiced in the U.S. as late as the mid-1800s (and even later, if the Hatfields and McCoys are anything to go by) are products of honour culture. It is important to recognize that people often practice honour culture in order to stay alive. Without Christ, they cannot be expected to act as Christians. Paul didn’t go around condemning Roman culture, rather he counselled Christians how to live in Christ in whatever culture they found themselves.

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  32. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2741459-world-series-2017-latest-odds-important-stats-for-astros-vs-dodgers

    World Series 2017: Latest Odds, Important Stats for Astros vs. Dodgers
    ______________________________

    … The Dodgers are favored in Game 6 at minus-120 (wager $120 to win $100), according to OddsShark, while the Astros are plus-110 underdogs (wager $100 to win $110).

    Even though the Astros are not on the right side of the odds in Game 6, they are considered the likely winners of the World Series. With the first five games in the books, the Astros are minus-275 favorites to earn the championship, while the Dodgers are plus-225 underdogs.

    If Los Angeles is going to survive Game 6 and send the Fall Classic to a decisive seventh game, it will have to find a way to contain Houston’s explosive bats. The Astros have home run power up and down the lineup, and their key hitters include Altuve and Correa. …

    … The Kershaw vs. Dallas Keuchel pitching matchup that could have meant a 2-1 or 3-2 game had turned into a full-on donnybrook.

    By the time it was all over, both teams’ pitching staffs were bloodied and beaten. The Astros emerged with a 13-12 victory when Alex Bregman singled home Derek Fisher in the bottom of the 10th inning off closer Kenley Jansen.

    In addition to the blasts by Gurriel and Altuve, Houston also received homers from George Springer, Carlos Correa and Brian McCann. Yasiel Puig joined Bellinger as a Los Angeles home run hitter.

    “It’s hard to put into words all the twists and turns in that game,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said, per Stats AP (h/t CBSSports.com). “These are just two really good teams, just throwing haymakers at each other, trying to outlast each other.” …

    The 2017 World Series has provided drama and fireworks through five games, and there’s no reason to think anything will change when it heads back to Los Angeles.
    ______________________________________

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  34. From FiveThirtyEight

    (This is why we stayed up late and are still talking about it 🙂 )

    This Astros-Dodgers World Series Is Already One Of The Best Ever

    ______________________

    In one of the longest games in World Series history, the Houston Astros gained a 3-2 series lead with an incredible 13-12 win that featured unexpected meltdowns, a barrage of home runs, numerous late-inning comebacks and some of the most exhilarating baseball in history. Including an equally wild Game 2, this World Series is already one of the most exciting in baseball history — no matter what else happens. …

    … With the Series heading back to Los Angeles, the Astros retain a 69 percent probability of winning the title — and a 48 percent chance of closing it out in Game 6 with ace Justin Verlander taking the hill on Tuesday in Chavez Ravine. If that does happen, the 2017 World Series will still be remembered as an all-time classic. But with the way this matchup has gone, it feels almost inevitable that it will all come down to one heart-pounding, comeback-infused Game 7.
    _____________________________

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  35. I’m a sports heretic like Mumsee. I find watching baseball to be as interesting as watching paint dry. Even less so, since sometimes I care that the paint is drying on an object I painted. It isn’t something limited to baseball, however, since I find football, soccer, and basketball similarly uninteresting. Hockey holds slightly more interest, mostly because some of my siblings and my friend were avid fans in their teen years, so I understand the game, but that was years ago, and now I couldn’t tell you who won the Stanley Cup last season. Besides, I find it more interesting when it is Olympic, rather than professional league hockey.

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  36. You wouldn’t find these games dry, roscuro. 🙂 But i grew up watching the Dodgers & Angels, going to the games with my dad. While I don’t follow it closely now, this string of games may make a renewed fan out of me yet

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  37. Roscuro, I agree that a man is 100% responsible when he rapes someone. That wasn’t what I was saying. I was saying that in focusing only on “It’s all the man’s fault” we miss some very big parts of the picture. For example: If a girl is going off to college, especially to a party school, she needs to understand that going to a co-ed party where there is lots of drinking, drugs, and sex going on is a dangerous choice, like swimming with alligators or taking a lion as a pet. Does the young man have moral agency, absolutely–but the young woman has moral agency, too, and she should recognize that it is foolish to put herself in a spot where the likelihood of getting hurt is quite high. (Personally, I don’t think schools should tolerate these drunken orgies, but since they do . . . kids should at least know they are not good places to be.)

    Second, I read of a case where a girl went off to a party texting a friend that her goal was to get drunk and have sex. She willingly had sex, and then later decided she didn’t want to have had sex, so she accused the young man of rape. And so we have this conversation going on: No one can consent to sex when drunk, and therefore it is rape to have sex with someone who is drunk. But logically it doesn’t make sense that Boy A and Girl B both go to a party with the goal of getting drunk and fornicating, but Boy A is a rapist and Girl B a victim. I say that he had no right to her not because she didn’t consent, or was drunk, but because he wasn’t married to her. If a husband and wife want to have drunken sex in their bedroom, it may be stupid, but it’s no one’s business but theirs (and God’s–I do believe drunkenness to be a sin).

    I think it’s inconsistent to applaud women asking men out, and proposing to them, and even boldly seducing them . . . but if they are drunk, then he is suddenly an aggressor and a rapist. I foresee–you heard it here first–two people meeting in college, a male who considers himself female and a female considering herself male, and they have sex, and the court has to decide which one is the rapist, because only men are rapists but only biological males are rapists, too. Hmmm.

    If I were speaking to my son, I would tell him don’t get drunk, don’t have drunken sex, understand that drunken sex can land you a rape charge even if she was the aggressor (even Scripture recognizes that possibility–see Lot’s daughters), but do not touch a girl sexually until you marry her and do not put yourself in a position where you can be falsely accused. And to a girl, just don’t go to parties where there will be too much drinking, or if you go, only have one drink, open it yourself, go with a trusted friend, leave if others have too much to drink, etc.–but going at all to these parties is morally and physically dangerous for women, morally and legally dangerous for men.

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  38. Justin Verlander was with the Tigers for many years and is well-liked around here, so all around me people are rooting for the Astros. I’m still with the Dodgers, though, having grown up rooting for them.

    I’m pleased they still play at Dodger Stadium. All over the country new ball fields are built with corporate sponsorship (e.g. Comerica Park replacing Tiger Stadium). I keep wondering when the Dodgers will succumb to the trend. That will be sad.

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  39. Growing up in the Cincinnati area it was pert near impossible to not be a Reds fan. All the neighbors in our little community had the TV on during the games and I even went to one game at Crosley Field back in the day. Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and our beloved Sparky Anderson….those were the days. Now I did become a huge Yankees fan after leaving my home state of Ohio…Joe Torre was an amazing manager.
    This Series is one of the most exciting I have seen…it just seems like they are all having so much fun…I told Paul last night that if I were the pitcher I would smile at the batter…I would just love to see one the those pitchers smile 😊 ⚾️

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  40. We would sit in the outfield bleachers at Chavez Ravine where seats were dirt cheap back in the 1960s. My girlfriend and I also would head down to the bull pen, which was somewhere below those seats, to watch close-up as the pitchers warmed up. Such fun, and so much more access back then for fans I think. I think we got a couple of our autographs on our baseball gloves that way, hanging out at the bull pen. 🙂 The Angels also played there during their first couple seasons (when they were the LA Angels, the new team in town).

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  41. during the first games of the World Series, when they were playing in all that heat in LA, I was reminded of one time when we went to an afternoon game (just my parents and me that time) and sat in the outfield, as usual. It was hotter than blazes though and I wound up literally getting sick from the heat. We had to leave early (and I don’t think we were the only ones).

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  43. Cheryl, as a university student, I’m not sure where this popular concept of schools encouraging drunken orgies comes from. The last wild party I read about happening at my particular school, was through the medium of a school official publicly scolding the students for their behaviour. The incident, incidentally, took place off campus among students who were living off campus, so the university really had no responsibility in the affair. Most parties I see announced seem to be arranged by third party organizations not directly under the jurisdiction of the university. Furthermore, the trope of the partying student is just that, a trope that really doesn’t fully represent the tens of thousands of students who attend any given university in any given year. The hard partiers need only be a small percent to seem large. My university has nearly 28,000 full-time students, so that, say, 10 percent would be 2800, which might look big outside the context of the entire student population.

    As the for the incident you mention, there is an old saying, “Hard cases make bad law.” One false accusation does not a rule make. The case of Potiphar’s wife accusing Joseph had no bearing on the cases of Dinah or Tamar, David’s daughter, being raped, and certainly not on Lot’s case, which is careful to say he had no knowledge of what his daughters did while he was drunk. Both Lot and Noah’s case both argue for giving the benefit of the doubt to those who were drunk, or otherwise not in full control over themselves. Let me put it this way. I know, from my nursing experiences, that there are not infrequently affairs between residents of nursing homes, some of whom are dementia patients. It would surely be incorrect to conclude that the dementia patient, who appears to consent, is fully responsible for their affair. Most of us would recognize that the dementia patient is incapable of giving consent to other things, such as, say, giving all their property to another resident or a worker in the nursing home, so it would be unreasonable to conclude they were fully capable of consenting to an affair. Similarly, we know that a drunk person cannot be expected to be able to even drive responsibly, so why do we conclude that they are capable of being fully responsible to engage in sexual activity while drunk? It is foolish and sinful to become drunk, but Lot and Noah bear responsibility thus far, and no further in those incidents in their lives. Remember, Shem and Japheth were blessed for recognizing their father’s incapacity and protecting him while he was incapacitated, while Ham’s son received a curse for Ham’s mockery of his father’s helplessness.

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  46. I seem to remember bleacher seat tickets were $1.50 in the early ’60s.

    I will say that the consensus here where I work is that the Astros are pretty unlikable, they swagger way too much and are beginning to act a little to full of themselves.

    But all that could change of course. 🙂

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  49. I can’t get excited about the World Series. I have no reason to care about any of them.
    I need a reason to care about a team.
    I followed the Redskins a bit when I lived in the DC area.
    And Sonny Jergenson was the Qb.

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  50. I grew up in a baseball family, on the weekends I’d grab the sports section and my dad and I would go over the baseball standings together. We’d watch the games on TV and listen on the radio (I still remember the warm summer nights in the backyard when my aunt and uncle were staying with us short-term and the radio hooked up in the garage would be broadcasting the Dodger game.

    The trips to Chavez Ravine were the best. And playing catch in the backyard, too, of course. 🙂

    I always thought I’d be a baseball fan for life, but I gradually lost the habit of keeping up with the local teams.

    But I still love the game, obviously. 🙂 Doubt I could afford to go to many Dodger games nowadays through, seats and parking are through the roof.

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  52. Oh Jo’s newsletter finally downloaded…guess my airwaves are frozen out here…the temps have not gone above 24!
    I just let Paul see that DJ….”sour grapes” he says…those Dodgers better pull this one out…”so’s I can gloat”!!! 😜

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  54. I am on my tablet which for some reason likes the Anon identity. I have keyed in the right letters for a word and looked at it immediately after I keyed it in and saw it was correct. Then later when I read it after it has been posted, there will be another word in its place. I try to catch my devices doing such foolishness, but I have neither time or eyesight available to make it right. But, y’all are correct that teachers should be very careful to proof what goes out to students since the teachers are the standard makers.

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  55. I did not realize how long it would take at the doctor’s office for Karen’s testing. She had to be off of her oxygen for thirty minutes before doing some of it. She was pleased with the thoroughness of her testing. Her husband plans to go with her to see the doctor when she will get test results.

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  57. Did you miss me? I am back from a very short bike ride but figured I would never get serious if I did not start. It is a long way to catch up with Linda.

    Speaking of whom, did the bike ever show up?

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  58. Well, look at that, stopped by just in time for fifty seven, then I was out to chop kindling. Back to school work for the eleven year old that did not get it all done this morning. Which leaves me here to pester you some more.

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  59. Roscuro, I know that universities don’t encourage that behavior, and I didn’t indicate that they do. Some do, however, tolerate it, especially among their athletes or other VIPs. However, in the popular culture loose sexual behavior, even drunken sexual activity, is seen as normal for that stage of life; that’s just what many college students do, especially on spring-break trips.

    And I didn’t say that a drunken student can “give consent,” just that it’s a double standard to say that when two drunk college students (neither one, by that standard, considered able to give consent) have sex, it is assumed that the male is a criminal and the female a victim and it’s nowhere near that simple. If she cannot “give consent” when she is drunk, then neither can he! It also is unrealistic to set a standard that she can go and get drunk, fully intending to have sex while drunk, but she can decide afterward whether or not it was something she wanted. And it sets women up with a totally unrealistic standard: I can go, get drunk, make out, and he has to stop the moment I say “stop.” Should he stop the moment she says stop, absolutely. But it’s foolish to think that sexuality–especially drunken sexuality–is like window shopping in a mall, where you can handle the merchandise all you want, but put it down and walk away if you decide not to buy it. Women need to understand that they are playing a naive, dangerous game if they try such a thing–and they are greatly increasing their chances of being raped. That isn’t “blaming the victim,” it’s bringing some perspective that women aren’t helpless victims with no say over their own safety. Sometimes no matter how careful you are, you become a victim of a crime. But you greatly decrease your chances if you avoid foolish choices–and that’s something almost no one is willing to say. We’re willing to say “Don’t drink and drive” but not “Don’t drink and make out.” That is seen as blaming the victim.

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  61. I grew up in a town where baseball was major during Spring training. The Indians were in Tucson in those days. Once, when i was in sixth grade, our safety patrol got to go to a game. My friend was a baseball fan and knew who all the players were. He was excited because the Indians were playing the Braves that day, and we’d “get to see Hank Aaron.” I had no clue who he was, and don’t even remember if he got a home ruin or even a hit. My knowledge was limited to Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra. (Yes, I was raised as a Yankee fan.)

    In the summer, we had a Triple A farm team. Over the years it was the Astros, A’s, and finally the Diamondbacks after I moved away. My uncle would take me to the games with my cousin. It was great to see the players before they were stars, but I don’t really remember who any of them were.

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  63. I see many posters giving advice to keep the students safe if they are going to party (after all, there is technically nothing wrong with going out to dance and have a drink), cautioning against taking too much alcohol – there is a lot of effort to educate students on safe behaviour.

    Women are frequently powerless victims and have been throughout history. There is something in the sin nature of humanity which singles out women, children, the sick, the poor – those with less power who are thus weaker and more vulnerable – for targets of the powerful. The curse of Genesis foretold the power imbalance between men and women, and the book of Judges provides ample demonstration of how women suffer when everyone does what is right in their own eyes. It is difficult to say that women can reduce their chances of being raped without a) making women who have been victims feel at fault, b) presenting a loophole for predators to exploit. Two examples of what I mean: 1) the burka, which many perceive as a vehicle of oppression, has been defended by those who have imposed it on populations as a means of protection for women from lustful men; 2) the ATI curriculum placed part of the responsibility on Dinah and Tamar for their rapes, because Dinah went to visit the daughters of the land and Tamar allowed herself to be alone with Ammon – the Bible, however, makes no such claim while relating the stories. As I said, hard cases make bad law. I really do not think the scenario of the woman assuming she can do whatever she likes and still cry rape happens very often – it might make for a sensational story that stirs up outrage when it happens but it doesn’t mean that it is the rule for how most or even many women behave. The way scandals about sexual abuse crop up years after they occurred shows that victims are much more likely to be afraid to come forward.

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  65. just ordered Michelle’s book for my Christmas list from Christian Book dot com. For today they have free shipping for the code 1extraweek. Okay, I am on a budget, sorta, and I saved five dollars a book from the amazon price. Is that bad to find the best price??

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  66. Roscuro, we also speak in error when we use the word “drunk” as though it has only a single level. “Too drunk to drive” is not biblical drunkenness. Only once have I had enough alcohol in me that I would not have gotten behind the wheel–because I never have more than a single glass, and I don’t feel any effects of any sort from a single glass, but one time I had homemade wine that was made by novice winemaker and far more potent than wine is supposed to be (70 proof or so). I could feel that my sense of balance was just a little bit off, and I held off on starting supper (it was my turn to make supper at the event) both because I didn’t want to use a sharp knife just yet and because some of the people around were teetotalers and I didn’t want to needlessly offend by giving them any cause to know some of us had shared a bottle of wine.

    My husband, who had also partaken, got into a deep theological discussion with one of my nephews, and he jokes about that now, that the only time he was likely legally drunk, he was discussing theology. I have no idea what our blood-alcohol content was that evening, but I can say this: (1) we would not have gotten behind the wheel; (2) whether or not we were legally drunk, we were not biblically drunk; (3) had it been necessary to make some sort of moral decision, say whether or not to kick a stray dog or sleep with a stranger, either of us could have easily made the right decision.

    In other words, being too impaired to drive is one sort of “drunk,” but there are other levels, and being too impaired to drive (and choosing not to drive) is not biblical drunkenness, nor does it make a person unable to make moral decisions. Figuring out whether or not another person is too drunk to consent, or doing so after the fact, is often a rather subjective standard. I have family who think that any alcohol at all renders one incoherent (one brother said seriously that after just one drink a father might molest his daughter–no, not a father who is not subject to such sins already!),

    All I know is I wouldn’t want to serve on a jury trying to determine who seduced whom, and how drunk each person might have been–but I certainly wouldn’t automatically decide the guy must be at fault if both were equally drunk; that logic makes no sense to me.

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  67. Roscuro, absolutely women are often vulnerable, and in a way I think most men can never quite understand. But saying, “Thus and such is a safer practice than such and such” is trying to avoid women being victims where they need not be.

    My alma mater once had a woman murdered. She was walking alone at midnight in Chicago wearing headphones. The college used that example to say, “Women, you are in a big city, and it’s a dangerous place. Learn from this, and don’t do it.” That isn’t blaming the victim; it is saying that woman could have made different choices, and they would likely have had different results. Likewise, when I found out a young woman close to me was often driving around at 2:00 in the morning, I checked into what she was doing at that hour, for her safety. Women are vulnerable, but some choices are better than others.

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  68. One of the big things I see wrong with the college drinking is that a lot of it is illegal underage drinking. My eighteen year old cannot legally drink for another three years, well after he should be done with his college. A lot of the young folk killed or paralyzed or severely head injured from falling out of dorm windows, are eighteen. We have a society that condones out of control behaviour with “kids will be kids!”

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  69. Cheryl, I’ve been noticing lately on news stories a lot of that kind of talk. The journalist who was killed by the man she went to interview about his homemade submarine – immediately there were comments that she shouldn’t have gone onto a stranger’s submarine. The young man who died after he went to North Korea and was arrested and tortured there – once again people commented on how stupid he had been to go there in the first place. They do it with missionaries who are kidnapped as well. I’ve gotten used to seeing variations on the comment that natural selection is culling the stupid under almost every news article on fatal disaster or misfortune that could be labeled as possibly preventable. Did anyone stop to inquire what were the circumstances that led the young lady to be alone at midnight? I have had to be out after dark in the downtown area here through no fault of my own. If something were to happen to me, would I become another example of what not to do?

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  70. When I raised this issue at UCSB’s parent orientation, “what is going on in your school that 50% of the students need to binge drink every weekend,” they responded, “It’s a rite of passage. They need to grow up through it.”

    Fortunately, my children (as far as I know) were too sensible to go through such a rite of passage–which is dangerous if you have alcoholism in your family to begin with. 😦

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  71. Just realized that I have two blog members featured in my newsletter!
    Michelle, I took your book with me when I went to visit friends and supporters this weekend. I shared it with them. He shared it on Facebook today along with commenting on the Utmost post for today.

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  72. We’re emotionally exhausted out here. The three of us finally were at work together to make plans for future activities and we could not help circling back to the fires.

    It touched everything and we discussed it again and again. We had to give each other permission to feel happy–because you feel guilty if something good happens to you because so many lost their homes. It’s depressing and I feel weary right now just remembering it.

    One neighbor moved in the weekend before the fire. Her seven year-old son’s window faces the still brown hillsides. Every night he asks her, “How will we know if there’s a fire?”

    One child. A lot of us (though, I don’t think me) feel the same way. 😦

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  73. Roscuro, stop reading the comments on the stories, they are not helpful.

    None of my children have been sensible, as far as I can tell. Well, one of those who have moved on does not drink. One out of eleven, all children or grandchildren of alcoholics.

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  74. Mumsee, it was my habit of reading comments which eventually led to me meeting you. The comments are helpful in a sad sort of way, because when I start reading the same kind of comments, over different stories, made by different people, I know a trend is beginning. I’ve seen it happen several times already. When I talked about there being a movement of angry young white men who were becoming violent, it was partly because of the comments I had been seeing for several years – the demonstrations of Charlottesville were not a surprise to someone reading the comment section. In some cases, an old trend is resurfacing. I’ve talked about the population control programs of the past, especially active during the 50s, 60s and 70s. This horrifying article about Bangladesh offering the Rohingya refugees sterilization to limit their numbers was met with acclaim on the comment boards:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/28/bangladesh-to-offer-sterilisation-to-rohingya-in-refugee-camps. People expressed their disgust at people in crisis to be so irresponsible to bring children into that crisis, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Rohingya are refugees precisely because the government of Myanmar tried to curb their population. It was the same sentiment I had read earlier on several different comment boards on different news outlets on that couple who had been kidnapped for five years in Afghanistan and had three children while in captivity. The comments on the Rohingya refugees – some also mentioned the Syrian refugees – dovetail rather horribly with the alt-right comments I see. It doesn’t depress me, but it makes me aware of where the weak points and rotten places are in society.

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  76. Roscuro, one can be alone in a big city at midnight by necessity, but walking alone in a big city at midnight wearing headphones means that one is not aware of one’s surroundings, and it is foolish behavior. I once did something really foolish in the city myself, took the el at something like 2:00 in the morning. (There might have been one other young woman with me, I don’t remember for sure, but I know someone else was with me for at least part of the trip.) Back at college, the next day my roommate yelled at me, and I thought, “She was right, that was foolish.”

    More than once I have been in a situation, by necessity, that is unsafe. One time my car broke down leaving a crisis pregnancy center where I volunteered at something like 11:00 at night. I was on 290 (that’s in Chicago) and the gas station I pulled into to use a pay phone, the black lady behind the counter let me use her phone (the pay phone wasn’t working) to call AAA and a guy friend, but she told me, “Get in your car and lock your door and don’t get out of it,” because she knew it wasn’t a safe place for a young woman to be at night. But I sat calmly and prayed that God would protect me–I wasn’t doing anything foolish, just ended up in a bad place after dark. But when my guy friend showed up, he was panicking all over everything. “Those guys over there might be dealing drugs! If they come over this way, you are backing this car out of here even if the engine is shot!” I wished I hadn’t called him; his presence added absolutely nothing to my sense of safety. (And his frequent use of expletives wasn’t helpful, either–that was the last time I saw this particular friend.)

    Sorry, I don’t see how saying “This is wise behavior, and this is foolish behavior” says that everyone who gets hurt must have been engaging in foolish behavior, or even that the one engaging in foolish behavior must have “deserved” whatever happened to them. I know a family who lost their home because the husband left the iron plugged in when they went to church (and they were using one of those dollar-store white extension cords, which the fire department told them they should never ever use) and someone else who had a kitchen fire because she left the kitchen while she had granola cooking in oil on the stove. If I tell someone that those extension cords are dangerous, or that someone shouldn’t leave the kitchen when cooking with hot oil, am I “victim shaming,” or am I saying “This action can be dangerous, and it is best to avoid it?” I think it is the latter, and thus I have no problem with telling young women, “It is dangerous to drink more than one glass of alcohol, or drink any alcohol given to you by someone you do not know, at a party being attended by young, hormone-driven, alcohol-fuled men–especially if drugs are part of the mix too.” I strongly suspect that women who learned that the hard way would be the first ones to say it. Does she “deserve it” if she ignores the warning and goes and gets drunk? No–but she could have avoided that result. And depending on how egregious her own behavior is, she may not be an innocent victim; she may be someone who is looking for trouble, and is a party to the trouble she finds.

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  77. The new photo is of course a much more recognized (and much less camouflaged) species, a male eastern bluebird in one of our cottonwood trees. It was during the time around dusk where the lighting is best for photos, and he just glowed.

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  79. By the way, when husband writes those letters to the editor, he gets lots of feedback. On the online paper comments, most are trolls and very ugly. In the paper, some are negative but not mean generally, and some are positive. On the street, they are almost all very positive and encouraging. It appears from my little survey, that the jerks tend to cover the online comments and the civilized to not so civilized, in the paper. The kind hearted of either side reply in person, some even calling out of nowhere with good comments. A lot of nice people out there. Just like not all college attenders are drunks, and maybe not even the majority, not all white young men are jerks, maybe not even the majority.

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  80. Roscuro, I just have two questions, and then I don’t think I have anything else to say:

    (1) Do you think that communicating to young girls about the risks of attendance at drunken frat parties, and ways to lessen or mitigate those risks (and communicating other risks unique to a specific situation, such as living in an apartment building), would save some women from being raped and/or murdered?

    (2) Do you think that women who have survived rape in those specific settings would consider it a good thing or a bad thing (overall) to communicate those risks to women who may never have thought about them?

    If by chance you would answer yes to #1 but no to #2, then why do you think that the particularly egregious crime of rape is one that should not receive warnings, or would you likewise be opposed to warning of risks involved with other crimes, such as how to prevent carjacking or burglary, or lessen your risk of them? I get it that people who have survived these crimes (as with people who have gone through other tragedies, such as losing a spouse) will care how we talk about them . . . but I would think they would be the ones most vocal about helping others avoid them, insofar as it is possible. So while I understand that this is a very tricky subject, I don’t understand why it is the one crime that we seem to insist women figure out avoidance on their own, or don’t, as the case may be.

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  81. Mumsee, true, only a small percentage of young white men may be violent, and since there are tens of millions of young white men, the number who are violent and angry will only seem quite large outside of that context. That isn’t necessarily reassuring – most people in any given country which has ever committed genocide simply wanted to get on with their lives, and thus let the hate-filled minority get away with it. ISIS was relatively small.

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  82. Cheryl, in reply to your questions
    :(1) Not really, because rape most frequently occurs in familiar spaces by people the victims know (8 out of 10 in some estimates): https://centerforfamilyjustice.org/community-education/statistics/; while over half of all murderers knew their victims previously (with a quarter being family members and 1/3 of women murdered by their husband/boyfriend): https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expanded-homicide-data
    (2) Yes, warnings of potential danger have their place. As I said above, the university I attend has extensive information on safety. But safety manuals never use anecdotes of real people to make their point. It is one thing for a roommate to scold one for being foolish for being out at 2:00 AM; it is another for a stranger to make the same observation on a news article about a murder that occurred at 2:00AM.
    I have a question too, after looking at the above statistics. It prevention of another tragedy is the end reason for analyzing and citing cases such as the young woman walking at midnight with headphones, why is so much time spent warning women to avoid situations of stranger danger rather than on the warning signs of a predatory and abusive relationship and how to get out of such relationships, since that is the situation that is actually far more dangerous to women?

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  83. Roscuro, I think that frat parties and the like sort of overlap the stranger danger/abusive relationships fence . . . these are fellow students, some of whom she knows, and she feels herself to be in a safe place with them.

    I myself have worked to warn women of unsafe relationships–I don’t think it is either/or. Women who are vulnerable to abusive relationships often have multiple such relationships, and frequently don’t listen to those warning her of one. (Last year I was involved with a setting where several people attempted to warn a young married woman that she was at risk, and to try to get her some help, but she didn’t listen until after she had a child with the man and began to see him through new eyes.)

    Different women have different vulnerabilities, partly depending on their life stages. I don’t think I ever would have been particularly vulnerable to an abusive man (though I’ve had friendships with men who proved themselves too disrespectful to continue in the friendship), and I definitely was not at risk for one huge risk factor, the live-in boyfriend. But I spent 14 years in Chicago, with half of that time living on a street in a neighborhood with regular murders. Nearly every woman I knew in Chicago had had a purse stolen–one only kept it because she refused to give it up–and some had them stolen at gunpoint. I knew other women who faced other forms of violence from strangers. So one can’t really say “This is a higher risk factor.” For me, stranger violence was a higher risk factor, and a real one. For a woman in a smaller town, or a more violent family, the risk factors are likely to be different; it seems to me that it’s best to warn people (if we can) of the risks that they themselves face, and that risk will be different for a college student, for a country girl newly living in a large city, or for a girl dating a boyfriend who is exciting because he is in a gang. I know of people who have been murdered trying to minister to homeless people, and I know (or once knew, more accurately, when I lived in Chicago) women in two different ministries working with prostitutes. Risks vary from one person to another, and to say “Well, this is a big risk and that isn’t” is an overgeneralization.

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