45 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-9-18”

  1. Good evening JO.
    Good morning everyone else.

    I was laying in bed this morning waiting for time to get up, I started to thinking about a comment I heard on FoxNews last night
    Columbus, Ohio doesn’t celebrate Columbus day. They think this illegal brought a horde of aliens to their land. Disease and horses.
    Someone suggested that they should change their name.
    As I lay there, I was wondering what they could change the name to.
    All I could thing of was “Tonto.”
    But “Tonto, Ohio” doesn’t sound right.
    “Pocahontas, Ohio” has a nice sound, but carries too much political baggage.
    Can someone think of a good name for the denizens of Columbus, Ohio?
    I don’t know who the judge will be, but the winner gets a big “ATTABOY”.

    I think I can speak for the people of Columbia, SC, that they are happy with their name.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. From butterflies to box turtles.

    Chas- Maybe Columbus could change its name to Snowflake.

    There actually is a Snowflake, Arizona. It’s named after two Mormon leaders who founded it. Senator Flake of Arizona was born there.

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  4. I still have not gotten the pictures. It is probably too large a file. Perhaps if you sent just one at a time?? Or, I can wait until I am home.

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  6. Thanks to 6 for the Thanksgiving greetings. The healthcare team, government officials, police, social workers, and teachers had a Thanksgiving gathering on Sunday, which was thoroughly enjoyable. The RCMP supplied the turkeys.

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  7. Columbus may have been an intrepid explorer, but even his contemporaries questioned his treatment of the natives. Bartolome de las Casas was one of the men who went with Columbus to colonize the island of Hispaniola. He later became a Dominican friar and wrote of the atrocities he had witnessed being inflicted on the natives of the Americas by the Spanish in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. De las Casas violent descriptions of atrocities and slaughter perpetrated by the Spanish makes modern historians’ critiques of the same era look insipid by comparison. The protests of De las Casas led to the Valladolid debate in Spain (1550-51): https://mereorthodoxy.com/decent-indecent-age-bartolome-de-las-casas/. It is erroneous to assert that recounting the atrocities of Columbus and the conquistadores is somehow revisionist history. Their own contemporaries, whether from genuine moral indignation (Bartolome de las Casas) or from political motivations (the Elizabethans), were already criticizing them. In other words, the criticism of Columbus for his treatment of the natives predates by centuries the creation of a national holiday named after him, which was only made an annual holiday in 1937, some 387 years after the Valladolid debate.
    P.S. I first learned about Columbus’ very poor track record on treatment of the natives from a Christian homeschooling publication (not ATI) about his life.

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  8. Had a bit of a gruesome incident at 2:30 this morning. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and when I came out, I saw Heidi. Since she turned left going out of the living room, instead of right to go into my room , I figured she had to go out. But just around the corner, she started barking at something in the kitchen, in a corner of stuff next to a little cabinet. I heard a kind of trilling sound, which at first reminded me a little of a loud cricket.

    Turned out there was a mouse trapped in the corner made by a box and some other stuff on the floor, and was trying to hide between Hubby’s old thermos and an old glass milk bottle. Heidi was going nuts, trying to get at it. I don’t remember how I decided to do this, nor exactly how it came about, but I tipped the thermos a little, and the mouse went under it. Or maybe I purposely put the thermos on it? I don’t quite remember.

    But I quickly smashed the thermos down on the mouse, to kill it as quickly as possible. Then I pushed down on it more, hearing a crunch, to make double-sure it was dead. I felt bad, but I figured it was already injured and wasn’t going to make it out alive anyway. And I had never heard an injured mouse making that constant trilling sound, so I figured I was putting it out of its misery.

    Not a pleasant interlude in my night. Took me a while to get back to sleep.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. We had such a quick trip to Morgantown, WV, and back that I did not get any photos of the mountains or anything. I feel a little sad about that.

    Three days in a car with my brother was not very pleasant for me. He did enjoy driving the new 2015 Accord. I loved seeing my cousins who live in FL and had an even longer drive than we did. I still can’t believe their 70 year old sister died. She had retired from the FBI (special agent) maybe fifteen years ago. My brother and I were the only relatives except for immediate family on their father’s side of the family to attend so I am glad we made the great effort.

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  12. Seventeen year old daughter told me that we are not to talk to native Americans about Columbus because he killed millions of people. I explained to her that nobody has actually killed millions of people (though they may have been responsible for their deaths) and quite possibly, native Americans are unique individuals and each may have his or her own opinion on Columbus and it is a pretty broad brush to say that we should never talk to native Americans about Columbus. She got her info from a resident in the mental health facility.

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  13. Kind of like saying no woman would ever support Kavanaugh. Or no black person can be a Republican. Or no old white guy is ever nice. Or no Muslims should be allowed in this country. Or no Buddhists ever kill a mosquito.

    Liked by 3 people

  16. We woke up to a chewed-on bird head yesterday morning. We leave the back door open slightly so that the “outside cats” can get used to coming in at night so we don’t have to worry about them freezing this winter and we assume one of them had a feast on our kitchen rug. Maybe they are Canadian cats and were celebrating Thanksgiving.

    Liked by 4 people

  19. Morning!! We didn’t get the snow overnight due to the temps not falling below freezing…all we got was rain! But this weekend we are still predicted to get it and a high of 24 on Sunday…we shall see. At any rate it is a good day to stay indoors with coffee and book in hand….or a sewing project which is what I am doing right now 😊
    That turtle is hilarious…..great shot once again Cheryl!
    Kizzie that story is truly cringeworthy I have killed a mouse outside…Lulah cornered it against our front retaining wall….I picked up a boulder type rock and dropped it on it’s head….not a pretty sight but I sure didn’t want it scurrying around my house! 🐭

    Liked by 2 people

  20. Lots of rain here last night, but would not be surprised if the mountains got snow. Can’t see them through the clouds and fog. That will hinder the searches, but they have people on horses and mules and on foot searching as well as helicopters and planes and dogs. But fresh snow will cover any signs, or allow the searchers to see fresh tracks if she or the other missing person are walking around.

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  21. Gasp. I’m aghast at how brutal killers lurk among us in the guise of two pretty nice women.

    Or maybe I’m gasping because I’m an, ahem, older white woman who is propping up the patriarchy. Who can keep up anymore?

    Wonderful turtle shot! I love that one.

    Liked by 4 people

  23. Okay. Another old mouse story. Once upon a time, the pipe or hose running from the basement crawl space to the washer in the kitchen did not have anything sealing the opening in the floor for the pipe which allowed any wandering mouse to be enticed into the aromatic kitchen. One evening I heard a noise by the bed and a mouse had run into one of Art’s socks. I almost laughed MY socks off. Art grabbed up the sock, twisted it around, and went to the carport and . . . need I say more? Poor little critter. We got that space sealed. That is when I found out steel wool is used to seal such spaces. The critters will gnaw at it, digest it, and die from what the steel wool does to their insides. I prefer the quick mouse in the sock trick myself.

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  25. Up till two or three weeks ago, I could only take turtle shots at a distance. They’d congregate on a log the other side of the pond, beyond good camera range. But the pond has dried up quite a bit the last few weeks (either a seasonal thing or proof that the beaver succeeded in making a dam, I’m not sure which), and now the squirrels run around in the back part, and the water lovers are moved to the front part where it’s deeper and there’s still some water.

    This log is at the very front, right behind the grasses, and thus it’s hard to get a photo since grasses obstruct most of the view. Turtles are very skittish creatures anyway, so nearly always by the time I get the camera to a bit of a gap in the grasses, they have all plopped into the water. But after they did that several times, apparently some realized I was harmless, and now they sometimes stay when it’s just me. This day there were two turtles at this end, one at the other (and the other end really is impossibly to photograph without grass). A few days ago I saw five turtles on this same log, but they all plopped in. (These are painted turtles, I believe.) Another day I saw one large turtle on it. And now that the water is lower, the resident snapping turtle can often be seen, too. I’ve seen multiple species of turtle, but haven’t positively identified many of them. But the snapper is huge and can’t possibly be mistaken for anything else. (Not an alligator snapper, but even the common snapper can have a shell that’s a foot long and the turtle itself about twice that.) I sent AJ a photo of it, also, but these are far cuter, especially the little guy looking at the camera with buggy eyes.

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  33. Speaking of shots, I must remember to call for an appointment to get my polio booster. Apparently we are immune from the shots we had as children, but can still be a carrier unless we get the booster. We don’t want this polio epidemic spreading.

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  35. Ah, there’s the snapping turtle! I had seen it swimming in early morning, light too little to get very good shots. And then one day I was looking over an area beside the main pond, an area with trees and bushes and some puddles and such, and here was the turtle, pretty much going from one end to the other in a tiny little pond. I think it saw me and it scurried up and over the log you see to get into deeper water, allowing me to get photos that showed its tail and the claws on its front feet.

    But this shot gives a good look at its ugly head and at its shell. Several times now I have seen this fellow floating in the pond, a big oval bit of shell showing, and its head coming up out of water and then disappearing again. It really just looks like part of a rock above water, except that you notice it’s moving. It’s a large, well-camouflaged, powerful predator in the setting of a pond, eating fish and ducklings and pretty much whatever it can grab. Very different from the cute and “innocent” painted turtles!

    My first look at this fellow was actually in retrospect, looking at photos. I’d taken some pictures of turtles on the log at the back of the pond. Most of them were lengthwise on the log (you could see the head on one end, the tail on the other, and two of its legs). This one was too big to pose like that; it was draped over the log, its tail facing the camera and its head unseen. But that huge size and the spiky tail was a giveaway, “Honey, it’s a snapping turtle!” A few days later I was down there about sunrise, and I saw a dark blob in the water and saw that it was slowly moving. I didn’t know if was mammal fur or turtle shell that I was seeing, but I zoomed in on it and took a couple of photos. And when the head came up, I knew what I was seeing. Now I know what it is when I see that same blob, but I think it is a pretty cool sight.

    As long as the turtle is in the water and I’m not. I wouldn’t want to meet him on land.

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  36. You know, I have to say one definitely negative aspect of our new home is the mail delivery. It comes any time from 1:30 or so (rare) to after 7:00 in the evening, probably later than 3:30 90% of the time, so the earlier times are probably when she has a substitute. I can’t even say what is the “latest” it has come, other than that we have checked it at 7:00 and had it not there yet, but we go by in the morning and it got delivered at some point the night before. On a Monday it usually doesn’t come till 6:00, and on a day after a holiday (like today) there’s no telling. It’s after 6:00 and it isn’t there yet. Occasionally we see the mail truck or the neighbors across the way have a flag up and we can watch for it to go down, but generally it’s just “It’s after 5:00–surely it’s there by now” (but of course it isn’t). Since some of my mail is business mail, that really is not a good thing.

    One can hope she is fairly close to retirement age and will be replaced by someone who does deliveries in business hours.

    I know there have to be people who are last on the route, but mail delivery later than 6:00 p.m. two or three days a week is ludicrous.

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  39. 7:30 . . . no mail yet. Linda, I have a package of cotton gloves coming (for treatment on my hands). Last week I had an editing-related package (with a check enclosed)–which didn’t come until after business hours on Friday, leading into a holiday weekend. We order a lot of stuff through the mail.

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  40. Kim, what this part of the country doesn’t need is wind and water now.
    We are ok here, but lots of people just east and south of us are still hurting.

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  41. We get lots of mail, addressed to our children who have grown up and moved out. Husband tried to forward it to them a couple of days ago but it all came back today. He took it to a different post office and she said the barcodes had to all be marked through, front and back. We tried again.

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  42. The mail came about 7:35. And since we have tracking, we can show the post office that mail isn’t being delivered by 5:00 (as they say it should be). My husband is going to approach it as perhaps the mail person has too much on her and they need more employees. But getting mail after dark is really not an acceptable option.

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  43. Post Office is going through some real downsizing, that may be part of it?

    https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story

    ________________

    Facing staggering financial losses, the Postal Service is looking at closing nearly 1,000 offices across the country.

    The post office has been struggling with a sharp decline in mail volume as people and businesses switch to e-mail both for personal contact and bill paying. The agency is facing a nearly $7 billion potential loss this fiscal year despite a 2-cent increase in the price of stamps in May, cuts in staff and removal of collection boxes.

    Post officials sent a list of nearly 700 potential closing candidates to the independent Postal Regulatory Commission for review. More may be added, but the current list of candidates can be viewed at the commission’s website. …
    ___________________

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