57 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-16-18”

  2. Well I hope you can sleep it off Jo
    I don’t anymore.
    Good morning everyone else.
    A busy day for me today if you count sitting in a chair doing nothing all afternoon at the rehab center as something.
    It needs to be done.

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  3. Six, in the prayer thread:
    With as many people as you have, it would be good to have “find friends” if you have a “smart phone”.. Chuck was over at the rehab center yesterday afternoon. Linda was on her way to St. Thomas. Chuck said, “Linda just landed, it took about 30 minutes longer than it should”. She was out of contact when she was on the plane.
    I check it every morning to see if all my people are where they are supposed to be. It doesn’t take long.

    It can cause confusion. Once, I took Elvera to church and forgot about the phone and left it at home. Chuck & Linda got concerned that I had gone to church and left her at home.

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  5. What a perfect picture of Spring in the header photo.
    It is April 16th and 43 degrees in Pensacola. I wore a sweater to work today!
    Yes, I have here VERY early. Lot’s to get done.

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  6. Morning! Praying you feel better Jo and that sleep will indeed find you!! 💤
    I found myself awake for a bit in the night…it was good however. Elvera was mentioned in my talk with our Lord as was Chas. A friend had asked for prayer for her nephew last evening, therefore his name was brought up as well…I do believe there are times in the still of the night where much is being accomplished for His glory…He does love us so….
    Chas we have Find my Family on our phones…I tell them they can track me all they want, but Paul knows if he tracks me, then calls me while I am in a certain store and tells me not to spend money…he is in big trouble!! 😊

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  7. For those needing a morning laugh. Yesterday afternoon we went to visit with Miss M. We had made two or three meals for the Mommy and Daddy. I FINALLY got to rock her. She needed her diaper changed, and boy did Mimi get christened! I had it under my fingernails, and on my clothes!
    I had a long talk with DIL. She is feeling guilt from all angles about nursing or giving formula. I told her she was the mother and she would make the best decision for everyone. If she can and wants to nurse great. If she can’t and wants to give formula, great. God gave humans the ability to figure out formula for those who don’t nurse for whatever the reason is. I just want it to be her decision, not that anyone has coerced her. (Personally, I don’t think the nursing thing is going to work out for them, but I did remember a few tips to give her)

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  8. Good old common sense, can’t be overrated.

    I did too much in the house over the weekend and then topped it off with repotting those geraniums late yesterday and toting the heavy pots this way and that to see where they look best. My back is killing me this morning.

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  9. Linda in vacationing in St Thomas (I think) in the Caribbean. I am supposed to send out some boxes for her.
    I just called to ask PS or USPS?
    Years ago, I wouldn’t have called long distance for such trivia.

    :-)l

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  12. I’d feel too ‘snoopy’ to ever use ‘find friends’ (unless I could set it up to track a wayward dog who gets out of the backyard from time to time). But in some circumstances, like Chas’, I’m sure it’s quite useful and good to have.

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  13. I don’t know how to text.
    But I learned from Linda and just heard on TV that there was a tornado in Greensboro last night.
    I went to bed shortly after nine and the bad weather didn’t affect me. I’m just learning about it.
    I hear that some houses were destroyed with casualties.

    I don’t know what would to text. I talk on the phone.
    I need to cut grass now, then have lunch and go see TSWITW.

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  14. I think I told you that a few years ago now, a couple went hiking in the mountains of NC.

    They were reported missing. Then they were found in downtown Asheville.
    When Chuck lived with us, we had this rule.
    Everyone knows where everyone is supposed to be all the time.”

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  16. We got the ice that some of you have mentioned. It looks like a layer of light snow, but it’s all ice. Now it is raining, and we may get thunderstorms.

    DJ and 6 Arrows – After listening to Journey on YouTube last night, I saw another one with the greatest hits of REO Speedwagon. They had a similar sound, too. Wasn’t it called Power Rock, or something like that?

    I think my favorite band, which was not part of the Power Rock stuff, is the Eagles. And I liked the group America a lot, too.

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  17. Nightingale and The Boy are staying in a hotel up in Massachusetts for a couple nights (last night and tonight) for a little getaway. She got a great deal on it from Groupon. They don’t have any big sightseeing plans (which is good with the weather being what it is), but will be enjoying the pool. She was hoping they could spend a couple hours in Old Sturbridge Village, but it looks like that won’t be happening.

    Wikipedia’s description of Old Sturbridge Village:

    “Old Sturbridge Village (OSV) is a living museum located in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, in the United States, which re-creates life in rural New England during the 1790s through 1830s. It is the largest living museum in New England, covering more than 200 acres (80 hectares). The Village includes 59 antique buildings, three water-powered mills, and a working farm. The museum is a popular tourist and educational field trip destination. Costumed interpreters speaking in modern language help visitors understand 19th-century life.”

    More here, if you’re interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Sturbridge_Village

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  18. Linda, probably cheaper than buying them iPhones.

    I knew a woman at the dog park who had one on her dog, too — the dog had like 3 or 4 collars, he always looked bogged down. (she had some kind of shock collar on him too, he was a bird dog, purebred, and she took him out hunting.)

    I’ve heard the term arena bands — that was the switch in the very late ’60s, early ’70s from the nice-bands like the early Beatles to bands like Led Zeppelin and Who where the big arena shows along with the big sounds surged in popularity.

    I liked the Eagles too – – and America, they were the softer folk-tinged sounds of the era.

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  20. Ahhhh, grass mowing. My husband is busy snow blowing. He thought he was over that for this season, but the weatherman was right this time. 😦

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  24. We went to Sturbridge when we were visiting some friends in Connecticut. We loved it. My youngest wanted to get a job there. She enjoys dressing in period costumes, and even made her own from the Civil War era and from the Revolutionary period.

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  25. Mumsee, I admit I don’t get Idaho. You get colder weather than we do, and more precipitation, but you also seem to get spring earlier. Last weekend was the first green on trees and shrubs and the first daffodils. An extra-scrupulous homeowner might find a way to cut the grass, but it certainly doesn’t need it yet. (Give us another week and it might, with all the rain we got this weekend, if we get warm enough weather.) But we have it hovering right around freezing and some snowflakes in the air, so it’s definitely still in the earliest stages of spring here.

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  26. Have I told you all that Nightingale is dating a cop? He’s a detective in a city about 45 minutes from here, and was involved in investigating a case that got a lot of press coverage (a man threw his baby boy from a bridge, killing him). He’s biracial, but Nightingale jokes that his personality and interests are so white. (Not that that makes him better than a biracial person who seems more black.) I haven’t met him yet, but The Boy has.

    The only reason The Boy has met him is because Boyfriend helped Nightingale get a couch and bring it upstairs. She had asked him a few months ago if he could help her by going with her, in his truck, to get the couch (from an Ikea over an hour away) and carry it up. They had made plans to do that back when she first asked him, but the plans fell through, and then she kept working too much on the subsequent weekends.

    Knowing that she had last Saturday (the one before this past one) off, he suggested they go get that couch. What touched her about this was that she had not mentioned it in quite a while, but he had remembered.

    I’ll admit that I was disappointed that she didn’t introduce us while they were here, but I figure that meeting her son was a big enough event for him, and her.

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  27. Yes, Cheryl, we are preparing for our third shift of daffodils. The mountain lilies are fading. The cherry trees are getting ready as are the apples and pears. The willows are leafing out. It is a beautiful time of year. And the grass is growing but with so much snow and rain and hail and sleet, it is difficult to get it mowed as I don’t like to mow wet grass.

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  28. Do any of you watch “Call the Midwife” on PBS? It takes place in the early 1960s (late 1950s when the show started), and some of the main characters are nuns who are trained nurse-midwives. The show doesn’t usually present a strong faith angle, but does sometimes have matters of a person’s faith as part of the story-line, usually in a positive way, and of course the nuns are shown as believers.

    Today I watched last night’s episode that I had recorded, and was touched by one of the story-lines. A Nigerian immigrant, fearing he had small pox (he didn’t), was hiding out. It showed him praying for help, and then a young man with Down Syndrome happened to find him, and left food for him, then brought more food. Another time, he again asked Jesus to help him, and shortly after, the other young man let a nurse know where the man was hiding so she could get him help.

    I had to “rewind” (or whatever you call that with a DVD) so I could write this down. Talking to one of the sisters in the nuns’ chapel, where she’d found him praying after he’d been rescued, the Nigerian man told her of being set adrift by his fellow sailors. The sister replied:

    “We are none of us cast adrift, if we have faith. In the cross, we find our anchor.” 🙂

    I couldn’t help but give a firm assent to this. I felt cast adrift right after Hubby’s death, but came to find that “my anchor holds within the veil”. (I like that the symbol on our church’s logo is an anchor.)

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  29. What I wrote above, about having initially felt cast adrift after Hubby’s death, reminded me of something else. I had recorded and watched NBC’s presentation of “Jesus Christ Superstar”. There is a song sung by the Mary Magdalene and Peter characters, after Jesus’ arrest, about their feeling of disillusionment, and wishing they could start all over. One of the lines hit me right in the heart, because it was exactly what I felt after Hubby died, and I burst out crying as I sang along. (I used to have the double album soundtrack from the 1973 movie, and all these years later, still knew the songs by heart.)

    That line was, “This was unexpected. What do I do now?” Oh, my, how that hit me. And it kept coming back to me over the next few days. But as I said above, I came to know that God had not abandoned me, He still has a plan for me, and He has been helping me along this uncertain journey.

    Btw, many Christians have not liked “Jesus Christ Superstar” because it presents doubts about Jesus’ divinity, mostly from Judas’ perspective, and it ends with His death, not portraying the resurrection. What I found interesting about this production was that there was a bright light behind the cross, and the cross was slowly lifted up into the air and disappeared into the light, with the onlookers then kneeling in awe, and apparent worship. That seemed to me to be an indication that they were at the very least hinting at Jesus being God. I was quite moved by the presentation, and impressed by the talent in the show.

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  30. Back online. We were without power for eleven hours. After two days of ice pellets, we got a night of high winds with freezing rain, and, predictably, branches came down and power lines went out. By the time I got up this morning, the freezing rain had changed to rain. I got a few pictures of the ice coated trees, and the layer of ice over top of the several inches of ice pellets was thick enough that I didn’t sink in at all – it was like walking with snow shoes. It was warm and rained enough for most of the ice to disappear shortly afternoon. Then what did the weather do? It started snowing, which it is still doing. I have not seen the sun since last Wednesday, since it rained for two days before the ice pellets started.

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  32. I visited Sturbridge Village in 1982ish, with my college roommate and 2 year-old. We had a great time, but as I remember he was most interested in the farm animals. He’s outgrown that, now. 🙂

    I love reenactments like that one and Plymouth Colony as well.

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  33. On the bright side, we enjoyed each other’s company in those quiet hours. The neighbour came over to see if we needed anything – he knew we had a baby in the house and thought we might require some extra support. My father assured him we were fine, since there was plenty of water to bring in from outside and our wood stove in the basement was well supplied. Tiny Niece had the opportunity to play with my doll house, while Second and I chatted across the hallway between our rooms. I read to my mother another chapter of the book that we started. Second in law braved the slushy roads to pick up pizza for us for lunch. I played the piano for a while, and my father came up and said he was glad of the music, commenting it was as if we had our own radio station.

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  35. Speaking of music, Kim and Chas’ comments on how Elvis changed music yesterday had me reflecting on my music history lessons. Today, when I was playing the piano, I played an eclectic mix of classical styles that spanned some 200 years. I played a piece of Ragtime by Scott Joplin, and then I played a piece that was written originally for the harpsichord, a Baroque predecessor of the piano, by a French composer of the early 1700s, Francois Couperin. I couldn’t help but note the similarities of structure between the two pieces – something which my father had previously remarked on when listening to me play them. I know from my extensive background in the classical music that what was unfortunately termed ‘black’ music in the mid-1900s has as deep roots in European music styles as it does in African music. The R&B piece I linked yesterday, sung by Big Mama Thornton, was written by two songwriters who happened to be what is regrettably termed ‘white’ (I dislike using racial terms immensely – ethnic, cultural, and linguistic origins can be relevant, but there is, as my anthropology professor reiterated time and again, no such thing as different races of humans). Those songwriters captured the R&B spirit in the song, so it was an excellent fit for Big Mama Thornton, whose voice was well suited to the R&B style, to sing. Musically, that song had nothing to do with race, and the musical talent that created the recording came from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. That Big Mama Thornton saw less profit from her recording than Elvis did was due to the artificial construction of race. That Big Mama Thornton’s performance is more aesthetically pleasing to a trained musician than Elvis’ performance is because good music is good music, and poorly performed music is poorly performed music.

    The Scott Joplin piece I played:

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  37. The ragtime style of Scott Joplin and others of the late 1800s was the precursor of jazz, which was the precursor of R&B. The jazz of the 1920s & 30s became the big band style of the 1940s, to which such crooners as Frank Sinatra sang. Both Sinatra’s and Elvis’ music came from the same line, it is just that Sinatra came from the line a little earlier than Elvis did.

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  38. Incidentally, I feel about Sinatra the way I do about Elvis – I don’t see what all the fuss was about (both of them could make girls scream themselves silly). When it comes to the crooner style, I think Bing Crosby (who was a little older than the Rat Pack), Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. were all better artists than Sinatra.

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  39. It happened about 5 p.m. yesterday, but I didn’t know the details until Becky (oldest GD) told me. Her husband is principal of a high school.

    A tornado tore through eastern Greensboro and destroyed some houses and killed a man. One elementary school was destroyed and eighteen schools are still without power and there is no school in Greensboro.

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  41. I am enjoying listening to the youngest two. It is raining and hailing outside so they are inside. They got tired of Legos so got out their history books and a little calculator. They are figuring how long ago certain events took place. World War ll, the cotton gin, the telegraph, the death of Elizabeth the first, etc. They are laughing and giggling trying to trick each other. I love my children. This was not a parent guided activity. This is who they are.

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  46. DJ – I have a collection of CDs of love song-type songs which come from the 50s through the 70s. Sammy Davis Jr.’s “What Kind of Fool Am I?” is one of the songs. Every time I hear it, I marvel at what a good, strong voice he had. “Candy Man” didn’t do him justice. Did he have any other popular songs?

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  47. I’ve mentioned that CD collection before. It was the one my mom bought for my dad for Christmas, then he died three days later, having never played them. Mom knew I would like the music, so she gave them to me, and I have enjoyed listening to them periodically over the years.

    For what would turn out to be Hubby’s last Christmas, I gave him a CD of Bobby Darin’s greatest hits, because that fall we had seen and enjoyed the movie about him, “Beyond the Sea”. Hubby kept forgetting to take the CD with him to listen to it in the car. So when he died, he still had not listened to it, but I have.

    Sooooo. . .if anyone else in my family gets CDs for Christmas, I’m gonna make sure they listen to them right away, because not listening to CDs one gets for Christmas is obviously bad for one’s health. 😉

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  49. Chas, in my family, everyone who has a phone has a smart phone, except for me. I can text and take pictures with mine, but I can’t access email or internet with it.

    Does that mean I can’t “find” people and they can’t “find” me, either? 🙂

    Kizzie, I saw REO Speedwagon in concert once, going with my then-boyfriend, now-husband. I liked their music.

    I enjoy the Eagles also. And Don Henley’s solo hit, if I’m remembering correctly, The Boys of Summer. I really like the sound of his voice.

    I don’t know too much about the band America, or others around their time. Did they do Horse with No Name? That’s about the only title that comes to mind that I think might be theirs. But if you name some of their more popular songs, I’ll probably say, “Oh, I’ve heard of that one!” 😉

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  51. Yup, they did Horse With No Name. Among other songs, America did Ventura Highway, Tin Man, Sister Golden Hair, and Daisy Jane.

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  52. Kizzie, I agree with Nancy Jill, Dean Martin and Bing did not sound alike. Bing’s voice was richer. Dean’s was lighter. But they could both carry a tune, which is more than one could say for Sinatra 😉

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  53. Ah, Ventura Highway. Yep, I know that one. The other titles I don’t recognize, but I might have heard the songs and just not known what they were called. i’ll have to go to YouTube sometime and listen to see if I’ve heard them before.

    First when I read Tin Man in your list, I thought I knew that. Then I realized what I was hearing in my head was One Tin Soldier.

    Who did that one?

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  54. ‘Sister Golden Hair’ was “dedicated” to me by a former boyfriend in college.

    I always wondered why ‘Horse With No Name’ meant … ?

    I read once where Sammy Davis was somewhat disheartened that ‘Candy Man’ seemed to define him. He did a song about the blues that was good — ‘Talk To The Animals’ was probably regarded by him as in the same category as ‘Candy Man, ‘ but it was a commercial hit.

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