70 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-20-17”

  1. Hanukah ends today. Winter starts tomorrow. And Christmas eve is Sunday.
    There were rumors about .not having SS this week. But they were wrong. The lesson is about Mary taking Jesus to be dedicated. If I teach, I’m going to start by asking “Hoe did Luke know all these intimate details?

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  5. Chas, some of the shows I watch on the History Channel interview “tribes” that have a long history of oral tradition. I imagine the intimate details were more known to the early Christians than what we have now. Once the “Church” agreed as to what to accept and what not to accept, we probably lost a portion of that history.

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  6. Mr. P and I received a Christmas present from oldest son’s family. It is a laser cut out of an H and our last name at the bottom. We have received a variation on this gift for the last 3 years. This year there was a wallet sized photo of Grandson’s school picture. Mr. P has voiced his displeasure. After all, each Christmas there has been a check sent northward to help with grandchildren’s Christmas. His biggest disappointed was the size of the photo. I figure is nothing else, the H can hang is MDH’s nursery.

    A very wise woman once taught me to say. “I don’t know. I ain’t in it and I ain’t gonna get in it”.

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  9. Kim, I’m glad I took photos myself at older daughter’s wedding August 2016, because it’s the only reason I have any–and maddeningly, no photos seem to exist of the bride and her mama. I made the mistake of handing my camera to the photographer and asking her to get some of me and the bride, and apparently she doesn’t take photos with other people’s cameras or something, because no photo ended up on my camera but she took one or two with her camera, and they didn’t end up in the wedding photos when I saw them online. I think she was just thinking I’m the stepmother and therefore irrelevant, so she took no photos that included me during the preparation and none at the reception, and that really saddened me. We did at least get photos of my husband and me with the couple (and just my husband with her). Next time I’ll hand my camera to someone other than the photographer and ask her to get some posed shots and some candid shots that include me, because I have none of either from my daughter’s wedding except the group photos on the platform after the wedding and one photo of both mothers (and I think there is one of me coming down the aisle to be seated). But I don’t have any photos from the wedding that I didn’t take, either, because we didn’t get the typical “here are a couple of our wedding photos” for Christmas last year, as I expected we would, nor have I been given access to the digital photos. . . . I wanted to put a photo of our family including new son-in-law in last year’s Christmas letter, but was limited to putting one of the couple from the ones I took, and further requests this year have still not gotten me the requested photos or access to the lot itself. The good news is I took some lovely photos myself; the bad is that I’m not in any of them.

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  10. We got all the photos digitally from our son’s wedding (thankfully) and we made a wedding photo book for the grandparents for Christmas.

    Can you ask for a copy of the digital photos?

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  11. Janice, those are indeed greens in the background–that is our lawn, blurred out. An American goldfinch in winter plumage goes after flowers from a coneflower seedhead. Not at all the “typical” goldfinch shot since it doesn’t have the bright yellow plumage in winter. This is a bird that waits till late in summer to nest since most birds (even seed eaters) give their nestlings insects and this one insists on giving them seeds, and thus it needs to wait to nest until seeds are at their peak. That’s how fond it is of seeds, and how much it is associated with them.

    Interestingly, by the time its young are foraging with it, the goldfinch is beginning to transition into its duller winter plumage. So in this bird, “breeding plumage” is almost not true, because it doesn’t molt into bright fresh plumage and then find a mate right away while it is at its finest. It is bright yellow when the summer leaves are out and it is actually fairly well camouflaged in a tree of green leaves. But it would be extremely conspicuous if it stayed bright yellow in winter, and so it doesn’t. But the cardinal, just as bright red as the goldfinch is bright yellow, stays red. The indigo bunting, another vividly colored bird, loses its blue over winter and becomes a less conspicuous olive, like its mate. But indigo buntings don’t stay here over winter–those other named species do–so I see the males only in their finery.

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  12. Cheryl – I read your comment on Michelle’s blog. I understand your concern on that particular story, but I would still encourage you to at least start reading My Utmost for His Highest. You may not agree with everything he said, but you may glean some good things from it. You may find there is more to agree with than to disagree with, but you won’t know unless you give it a try. It’s been a long time since I read it (I plan to start again in January), but I remember that it was deep & challenging, not an easy, “feel good” read.

    Every Christian writer or preacher makes mistakes, or is “off” in one or two areas, but can also have a lot of very helpful teaching.

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  13. Michelle nailed it.
    Mary told him.
    The sequence, I infer from the use of personal pronouns “we” and “they”.
    Paul, on his second journey, picks up Luke at Troas Acts 16:15. Goes over to Phillipi and leaves Luke there: 16:40.
    In Acts 20:6, Luke is with them again at Phillipi. Goes with them to Jerusalem. Paul in jailed for at least two years. Acts 24:27.
    While Paul was wasting away in prison, Luke was gathering information. You know the way of a mother when someone is intrested in on of her offspring. She had a willing/anxious ear and she probably told Luke more than he told us.
    Luke gives us a different perspective.
    When Paul is taken to Italy,, Luke goes with him, but ends his story there.
    I speculate that Paul was still in prison when Luke finished Acts.
    I suspect other disciples were as active as Paul, but had no one to chronicle their work.

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  15. Kare, at the wedding I took a lot of photos, and I tried (discreetly, staying out of the photographer’s way and making sure not to attract attention that would get people in the group to look at me instead) to get a photo of one of the other families (his side of the family) when they were being photographed, and the bride told me “We’ll share the photos,” and so after that I didn’t try to get any group shots, like, say, her with her grandparents. We did get a link to the online album last year, but since photos don’t have numbers or titles there is no way of saying “I want this shot.” The bride told me this year that she is working on downloading them, so hopefully I will eventually get them. In the meantime I asked specifically for one photo of the five of us and one of our side of the family; with those two photos and the ones I took, I pretty much have the whole event (although her photographer also got shots like her dad walking her down the aisle that I couldn’t get without being a distraction–it just didn’t seem right for the mother of the bride to be hanging out into the aisle with a camera, so I took one shot between people’s heads but it didn’t turn out well).

    Last year I took the shots I had taken–including photos of the courtship itself, since most of their dates happened at our house, by their choice–and I made a photo book of them. I have that book, and I offered the groom’s parents a shorter version of it (I was able to get them a free book if they limited it to 20 pages, so I told them to choose which 20 pages they wanted and I made them a copy of it to their specifications), and I gave a copy of the full book to the couple themselves. (They were very pleased to get it, and pleased I had gotten photos of some of their time together that they didn’t know I had, like the day they sat on the back deck–outside the window by my computer–and he strummed his guitar and they sang Christmas songs. I sent them a copy of the book digitally and let them choose the cover photo and what the cover said, and also told them to let me know if they wanted any photos removed from their copy–they didn’t–and then I got it printed for them. I had made a few shots sepia in my copy, and they wanted those restored to full color in theirs, so they got a custom-edited book of their courtship and wedding, and I think they were pretty thrilled. But no group family shots went into the book, since I didn’t have any.)

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  16. Kizzie, I think that law should require 8x10s.

    When KJ was a tot we used give my grandmother 10x13s of her and of the three of us because her vision was deteriorating. She had a lot of wall space, and only one child, three grands, and two greats, so plenty of room to put up the big pics.

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  17. Some of the best pics of our wedding were taken by one of the bridesmaids. We didn’t assign her the job, she just did it. She took backup pics while the official photographer had us posed, and lots of wonderful candids. She also gave us an album with those pics.

    This was all pre-digital.

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  18. Photos that are 5X7 are nice, until you have 10 grandchildren and too many framed photos. 😉 A frame for 9 is the norm. Not to complain, however.

    I have found that one of my daughters is the paparazzi, one does very little in the way of photos and the other is in between. My mother could not have cared less about photos of us or our grandchildren and for the most part did not display them. She finally got a desk that had a glass topper and slid snap shots or small photos under that.

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  19. Advent posting for today – speaking of Mary, her song is always an Advent staple: https://travellerunknownblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/magnificat-advent-december-20/. Luke specifically said about those opening chapters in his Gospel that Mary stored all the things she witnessed in her heart, so he basically cites his source.

    Home again. It was a long journey, but worth it. The house has changed somewhat since I saw it last, as my father has been preparing it for the coming of Second siblings family in the New Year, but the rooms are already looking very nice. We never fully finished the upstairs rooms, so they are finally getting the finishing touches, as they will function as Second family’s living quarters.

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  20. You know what today is? It’s the anniversary of the Secret Room. Some of the ladies have been going at it for three years over there.

    And it all started with a race to 200 talking about how cold it is in LA dog parks. Now they are over 5,000 comments.

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  22. Photos, I don’t worry about that one way or the other. I do print off pics once in a while, trying to keep up a pic of everybody on the side of the fridge, and when people do send me pics, I do try to display them.

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  24. And herein lies another argument for elopement? 🙂

    I’ll have to get back to the secret room, I’ve only popped in there a couple times and not for ages since then.

    Today’s more house stuff, but I made huge progress yesterday in the kitchen where things had taken a major hit. I also am shifting some small pieces of furniture around, in and out of other rooms. Today I’ll mostly finish getting the cards out. And I’ll plan to finish off decorating tomorrow, most likely.

    I put a suction-cup attached “sun-catcher” angel in my front window but am now concerned about putting something like that on that old, very thin antique glass. I’ll have to be very careful taking it off.

    And the people before me have 2 stickers, one for one of the global wildlife fund organizations at the bottom of a front window and the other, on the bottom of the glass in my antique door, saying we are armed for security, which this house is not (nor probably ever was) — and I doubt that would discourage any burglar anyway. I’ve tried getting them off, but no go. I’ll ask the window guys when they come back. They still need to install 2 replacement windows in the living room and I was hoping they’d do that before the holidays (I’m on “standby” pending cancellations), but looks like I’ll be waiting until January. I’ll give them a call after the first of the year, maybe I should go ahead and make a formal appt for that, though they’re probably now booked until March.

    Meanwhile, grumpy consultant has sent me another house mock-up using a primary color for the house that’s “less red” than his earlier version (though he says he likes the earlier version better). I haven’t looked at yet.

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  27. Kizzie, while I was reading Michelle’s book, I went on amazon to “look inside” some other books he had written (or that had been compiled by his wife, actually), and I found some rather bizarre stuff. For example, he believes that angels are made in the image of God, but do not have souls; animals have souls, but are not made in the image of God. We think with our hearts, not our brains (I “get” that one–he didn’t understand that Scripture’s use of the word “heart” is figurative, not the literal organ), and so on. Some was clear theological error, but those are the two I remember offhand.

    Michelle’s book has several instances of when he or Biddy saw a verse in their daily devotional and saw it as a word from God . . . when the verse in context was talking about something startlingly different from their “claim.” We can’t take any random verse in Scripture and take its words to mean anything we want them to mean. Most people who write or speak enough end up saying something bizarre, but overall I was simply unimpressed.

    What I came away with was a man uneducated in proper use of Scripture, but teaching many others, and himself dying too young to have matured in his understanding. Meanwhile his grieving widow (and the young man’s sister, too) spent the rest of her life compiling everything he said into books . . . without the advantage of a gatekeeper (publisher and editor) choosing what was actually worth publishing. Furthermore, Oswald and Biddy were married only seven years (with some further time for courtship in which she heard him speak and recorded what he had said), and she was his widow for 49 years. Since I don’t remember how long they dated, let’s round upward and say she had ten years worth of notes (and like any speaker, he undoubtedly reused his material when speaking to a different audience that didn’t hear him the first time). No one (especially a young man) says in ten years what is worth fifty years worth of books, and the irony struck me profoundly as I finished the book that here was a godly 80-year-old woman, mature well beyond the early 40s her husband made (he died at 43) . . . but investing her entire life into his writings. In other words, had she had a conversation with that same young man when she was 80 and he was 35 or 40, he probably wouldn’t have struck her as having the kind of profound wisdom worth 50 years of compiling books. And so it was sad to me, and not anything that made me want to read the results–like watching footage of a car wreck in which people die.

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  28. Chas, when I was about 20, I went to the wedding of a friend who had as a photographer someone who was a semi-professional, or supposed to be. He used the wrong film and all the photos had a yellow cast and a good percentage were blurry. In those days I had a cheap camera, but the photos I took that day were probably the best ones they had. Since then I have tried to get at least some good ones at most weddings I attend.

    At my own wedding, the photographer (who was just getting started in weddings, but had done some great outdoor portraiture, and I saw good photos she took at a wedding) missed some important shots. I warned her that we weren’t going to do a long kiss so she needed to be quick–but she was focusing back and forth between us and the pastor, and the kiss was out of focus. And I had invited the girls to be bridesmaids, but one was too afraid she would cry (it was, of course, a bittersweet day for them); I left the spots open for them in case they changed their minds, and had a lopsided wedding party as a result . . . but they agreed to handle the guest book, and so I had them on the program as “guest book attendants” and my sister and best friend as “bridal attendants” or something like that, and the girls wore the bridesmaid dress. At any rate, my future stepdaughters manned the guest book, in bridesmaid dresses, and no one got a photo of them doing so. 😦 (My niece got photos of the guest book itself, but not of the girls. That was fair–I asked her to do backup photography, and she said she wouldn’t do people shots, so I had her get pictures of the cake and flowers and so on, though she also got a few wonderful candids, especially of the children. But my main photographer should have gotten something of the girls.

    My daughter did in fact hire a photographer, and her photos look really good. But I tend to prefer to take candids if at all possible, and I got some really sweet shots the professional didn’t get (like the bride’s sister fastening a necklace around the bride’s neck), and I got some candid portraits of the bride that are to me as good as anything she got of her, and were shot with a mother’s love. I don’t like to be intrusive in my photography, rarely ever asking anyone to do anything in particular so I get a shot. (I did once hand my husband a baby so I could get photos!) I prefer just to watch for those moments the bride and groom catch each other’s eye or the baby reaches out to touch the mirror, that sort of shot. Posed family groups are also important for history, and so I like them too–but I don’t personally take them unless someone else has called the group together and I grab a shot or two, too.

    At my daugther’s wedding, beforehand they did “the reveal” in front of the church, where the groom sees the bride in her dress ahead of time and both can stop being so nervous and they can get some photos in advance. Well, I didn’t intrude by going out with the bride when she left the dressing room, but I waited five minutes or so and then I went out. But it was the photographer’s setting and not mine, and no way would I get in her way. At the same time, this was my kid getting married, and no one could say I was intruding as long as I stayed completely out of the way. At one point she had the two standing together, her head on his shoulder, and the photographer was zooming in from in front. She was obviously going to take several shots, and it was a cute setup, but I couldn’t get any photos without being in the way. And then I realized I could run up the steps of the church and get a different angle, and not be in the lens of the other camera, and I did that.

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  31. Kevin (and others) – Is there an interest in picking the bowl games, or are we done? If so, I’ll set it up starting with an important game from next week. I think Arizona and Purdue play each other next Wednesday, and that’s the only one that matters to me until the championship games.

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  32. I am about half way through Michelle’s book, and enjoy it all. I feel I have benefited as a result of having read Chamber’s writings in the past. I also understand that if some people find something they think is wrong in a spiritual sense, even if it is just a few things, then they discard a whole work as unworthy. It is their prerogative to do so. My brother is that way about Christmas music. Someone he knows told him about the concert we were attending. My brother decided to not go. I told him I knew he was sticking with his convictions and that is fine. We once took him to a Christmas program I felt sure he would like. It did not meet his standards. Now I don’t ask him to go to such things because of the criticism I hear that takes something away from my sense of joy.

    Cheryl, your feelings about this are true to what you have expressed many times here. But the extent of your comment seemed a bit severe because we all know how much work was put into this by Michelle and what it means to her. God is all about love and truth. I hope you can try to keep the balance God desires. I can see that you feel showing love is first revealing truth as you interpret it in the Bible. But all humans have some failings and are not perfect as God. I just pray that those who tend to discount others could learn diplomacy and inject love along with truth. I need to do that myself. Forgive me if I have said too much.

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  33. Kim, I understand that photographers don’t want others to intrude on “their turf,” which is exactly why I was being extremely discreet and careful never to get in the way, and for the most part I was taking photos of different people than she was (getting candid shots of the bride looking at the groom when she was setting up photos of the groom, for instance). Thing is, many photographers won’t let you have access to your work unless you buy the photos, and until our daughter said, “We’ll share the photos” I had no idea whether their photos were a package deal where they were buying specific photos or whether the photographer was granting them access to photo files themselves. But obviously no one can say, “You can only have photos of your own family at your daugther’s wedding if you buy them.”

    I can understand that a photographer might take a couple down by the lake, and the wife’s mother can’t come along and take her own photos. And sometimes a church has a policy that you cannot take photos during the actual ceremony, and that needs to be respected. But a photographer can’t go to a wedding of someone else’s family members and claim exclusive photo-taking rights. It isn’t her event; it’s ours. I don’t know if what we paid for the wedding covered the photographer or not, but we paid for the wedding, and she is there to help us by taking some photos of it. And if I were to say, “OK, now I need five minutes to get them into poses and take my own shots,” I would be slowing the whole thing down; I can’t do that. But reasonably, her taking photos can’t mean I cannot, anymore than the presence of professional photographers at a graduation means that parents can’t take their own photos. You just can’t get in the photographer’s way or distract her subjects.

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  34. go Boilermakers!

    I couldn’t afford a professional photographer. But I would have borrowed money if I had the presence of mind;.. We miss not having pictures.
    Though it wasn’t a big wedding. We were married immediately after the morning service. With no bridesmaids, etc.
    But we had hundreds attending. l

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  36. Janice, I will contact Michelle separately to ensure that I haven’t offended her by anything I have said. I thank you for speaking clearly; I do disagree, and I will explain why. BTW, I don’t think it’s a “balance” between love and truth that we need, like finding the right place between two opposites. An image I love is found in Psalm 85:10: “Lovingkindness and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

    First, for background, I myself have published a book on a writer and his writing, though my husband prefers I be semi-anonymous on here, and I have never mentioned the subjects of my books on this blog. I’ve been amused a few times, in fact, when I have joined in conversations on this blog about this writer or his books without ever saying I have not only read most of what he has written, but have done sufficient research on the matter to write a book for a major publisher on the subject. I have been in on discussions on which this author’s faults and virtues are stated, and even if I had publicly acknowledged having written the book, I would not be offended by such discussion. In fact, I have questions about this author’s theology that I myself would like to have cleared up, since I think he made some significant errors, and others it’s unclear what he believed (because people explain his positions in different ways). If someone told me that he couldn’t read him because he doesn’t like it that he rarely quotes Scripture, or he’s not really sure he’s a Christian, or whatever, I would happily get in on the discussion, but I wouldn’t be bothered by someone holding a different position than I do. So that’s my own take: as a writer about writers myself, I know that a biographer doesn’t expect everyone to like the same people or see the same things in those people, and I also know that discussion of those people (even discussion by people who dislike them) is still interesting to the one who has written about him.

    Second, Michelle specifically asked for feedback on her blog, and she didn’t ask for it in such a way that suggested she wanted only positive feedback. Had I read her blog post without her having issued the invitation she did, I likely would have chosen not to post anything. In fact, had she used any other example from the book than the one she did, I likely wouldn’t have posted, but she happened on the one that bothered me most in reading what Oswald had done with the text.

    I am not trying to talk people out of reading My Utmost for His Highest or his other books–and definitely not trying to talk them out of reading Michelle’s good book. But having someone attempt to talk me into reading them, it seemed fair to explain why I am not interested. Truth is, I don’t generally like devotional books (though I have in fact written devotionals for some and had them published), and the couple of times I have glanced through Utmost, thinking maybe I’ll pick it up and read it since my mom loved it so much and she gave me a copy, I’m not drawn to it. But I figured that after reading Michelle’s book (which is, as you said, a very good book), I would probably pick it up and read it. I have read many books because of having read about them in a biography or other book, and I truly expected that would likely be the case on this one. In this case, it worked the other way–but that is not because Michelle didn’t write a good book. She did. It’s because he came to life enough in her book that I could see I have serious disagreements with him, and a little bit of further research showed some of an even stronger sort, cementing my first impression. I didn’t, in other words, choose not to read him because of a few trivial things but because of fundamental disagreement on how he interprets Scripture.

    Janice, I once attended a conference with a friend. At the conference every evening they showed a film by a particular producer or director (the same man’s work all week), and the friend wanted me to attend one or two with her. I had never heard of any of the films and had no access to any reviews on them. (I didn’t own a laptop, and this was before the days of easy internet access.) I knew only that they were all rated R, and my policy is not to see a movie rated PG-13 or R without knowing why it has that rating, and to know from a source I respect (friend, print review) that the movie is not loaded with gratuitous material. That’s my personal standard, though I respect that other people have different ones. Well, my friend chose not to respect my standard. She said something snide about my fundamentalist upbringing, and she might have said she thought I was more mature than that now. Clearly she believed I was being silly. Well, I had not tried to talk her out of going to see the films, and it wouldn’t have bothered me if she had seen them–she answers to her conscience and to God, not to me, and I mean that. I’m quite OK with people having different standards and different tastes. Most of my own siblings don’t attend movies at all, and they are welcome to that standard. That too takes nothing away from my choice when I attend a movie.

    In short, I mean no offense to anyone who holds someone in higher or lower esteem than I do when I give my own opinion, nor do I say so out of lack of love. I do think that truth matters, and I do think that whether or not a specific writer or speaker is worth reading or hearing is a discussion worth having.

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  37. Calamity of the day around here: I was wielding the broom to try to take down a cobweb when, crash, broom hits the router, it falls to the floor but is somehow still “blinking” though when I tried the TV it wouldn’t come on.

    So.

    Cleared out a bookcase to move it aside so I could get to the back of the cabinet where TV is, plug looked loose, so I pushed it in, turned power on and off on TV and it worked again.

    Now I have books everywhere and a bookcase that’s out of place.

    And he cobweb is still there. It’s staying.

    I don’t trust myself to try that a second time.

    Anyone here ever use adjustable window screens that are essentially inserts you put in when you want to open a window, leave off otherwise?

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  38. DJ, our back “screen” door has a panel that can be rolled up and down, screen or window. Well, it isn’t a screen door even when the screen portion is the one that is open, since it’s too small a portion of the door to be such–but what it is works really well, allowing air in summer and sealing it off in winter.

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  40. I need new screens but with the work I’m doing to make my house prettier, I hate hiding the large casement windows behind screens. On the other hand, I need screens if I’m going to open them — to keep bugs & intruders out and dogs and cat in. (These windows are 63 (L) x 30 (w) inches so almost floor to ceiling.)

    Anyway, grumpy (historic house) consultant told me about them, said their the best way to go to maintain a historic look to your home, plus they are inexpensive and (he says) easy to store (which might be the biggest hassle).

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  42. Yep, that is what I got. But the description said it was good against cat claws. Reminds me of my growing up years before I knew about the other type of screens. Vintage for sure.

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  43. I have had a difficult time replacing the current screens as they are all different sizes to fit different windows. I liked the ones I ordered, not as invisible but they fit different size windows.

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  45. Yes, I need something that’ll withstand Annie Oakley.

    On these, can you choose to leave them in (for example, during warmer months when I open windows a lot?) ?

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  46. Grumpy is all about the look of your “historic” home, which I get, but I told him sometimes real life intervenes …

    He’s not buyin’ it.

    No permanent screens, no screen door. Period.

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  50. It is a love/hate relationship with screens…I prefer a clear glass view as I look out…but I detest flies, moths and “little meanies”..gnats! Now the gnats can get through the holes in the screens which is disgusting to me. In the winter we take our screens out and store them in the basement….I really enjoy winter ❄️

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  51. I hate flies too. So screens are just practical. But they do mess up the “look” of windows that are special. But whenever I open the windows, I’d need screens — not just for insect-proofing, but also to keep animals in. These windows are like doors when they’re opened.

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  53. Greece and Italy were that way about screens. And Germany. I suspect Okinawa was also but don’t remember. No screens but not very many bugs either. Perhaps they sprayed DDT or something.

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  57. I remember a hotel on Vancouver Island where we stayed that had no screens, they have no mosquitoes and very few other flying insects apparently. I found it so weird to have wide open windows and no screens.

    We usually put our screens up in spring and take them down for winter since it’s so much nicer to not have to look through them. But we leave the screen in the kitchen window so we can open it on warm winter days, just to get fresh air, to keep the squirrels from getting in.

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  59. Cheryl, I did not have the benefit of having read Michelle’s blog. Probably if I’d had time to do that I would not have felt as strongly about what you wrote.

    I am a rather slow reader as I have expressed before, and with eye problems I am not getting any faster. If I took time to read Michelle’s good blog then I probably would not be on here, too.

    I am glad you will check privately with Michelle about what you wrote. That sounds good.

    I am curious about why you don’t tell us about your book on here. Most author’s try to promote their work. I am interested to know more about it.

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  63. Most people have the fitted but removeable screens. Sounds like that is what Kare and NancyJill are using, they just remove them in the winter so it is easier on the eyes when looking outside.

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  64. Janice, my first book was published way before I knew you guys, and my second was published when I was single and living alone and felt like maybe I had said more than I should to identify myself on here (“here” being, in those days, World’s blog). When I married, I felt I might have a little more freedom to say things, having a man in the house. But when I ran it by my husband, he said he thought it was wonderful that I had this group of friends on here, but he wanted me to continue to be discreet and not identify myself more than I have done. As he is a fairly private person, I have chosen to honor him by not giving his name, the girls’ names, or any such thing on here.

    If you have my e-mail address, or if others on here have both yours and mine, I can e-mail you to tell you which books I have written, but in honor to my husband I can’t say more on here.

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  66. The new photo is of course a male cardinal singing on a telephone pole, rendered through the photo program I mentioned the other day, but one of the color ones instead of the “pencil.” I believe this one is “crayon,” though they look more like colored pencil to me. (I like colored pencil.) I like the way this rendering simplifies the colors in this particular photo so that you see the shapes more than the specific colors. (The background of the original was sky, but not so uniformly silver-gray as this.) What I really love about this photo is how wide open the fellow’s beak is. Male cardinals are shy birds, apparently aware how brightly colored they are and how visible they are, so they are harder to approach closely than many other birds and they make me quite happy for the zoom lens. However, male cardinals defending a territory throw all caution to the wind, and they find the highest and most open perch from which to sing, making no effort for concealment whatsoever–a stark difference from their usual behavior.

    This one has his beak so wide open you can see it isn’t really upper and lower parts of a single entity that opens like a pair of scissors or like our lips; there is a clear separation, two separate parts, and it makes me interested to be able to examine a bird in the hand and look more clearly at how it actually works. This is one example of how taking photos has helped me to see more detail of the natural world than I would see without them.

    Generally I try to avoid manmade objects in my nature photos, though it isn’t always possible. But this pole isn’t intrusive in the photo as a wire might be; it might well be a stump or a tree. It is only a prop for the cardinal to use to sing his heart out, but he kindly gave me an uncluttered background to take a nice clear photo.

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  68. When we visited relatives in Puerto Rico in the 1970s they didn’t even have glass on the windows. All they had were metal louvers they called “Miamis” that they closed when a storm was coming. The beds had mosquito nets. Otherwise, air and bugs passed freely in and out. Modern houses and buildings had closable glass windows, and some had screens, though. I remember a guest house where we stayed. The owner was proud of her screens and said that no one had mosquito nets any more. My parents just nodded to each other since we had stayed at my grandmother’s old house with mosquito nets.

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