42 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-12-18”

  1. Good morning everyone but Jo.
    Goon night Jo. Your weekend has already started.
    Storm is past. Chuck & Linda don’t have electricity (as of last night).
    Otherwise, everything is ok. Limbs and leaves all over.
    I turned the heat on for the first time this morning. Just three degrees (72 to 75), but there was a chill . It’s 55 degrees outside, coldest this season.

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  3. Morning all. Sports Day was nice. The most sunshine that I can remember. One of my students had had a polio vaccine yesterday and just wasn’t feeling well, so didn’t participate. Everyone else had a great time. Later I escorted a group of boys around . During the obstacle one boy went the wrong way and then just felt bad so ran off. His folks got him and talked to him. he was able to join the next event calmly. I put him in for the sportsmanship award as he was able to quietly return. That is very hard for a young guy.

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  5. Morning! Look at that seal up there…I just knew it had to be in Dj’s neck of the woods!
    Happy to hear you are ok Chas….so now the clean up begins….all’s well 😊
    It is 30 degrees here this morning and something we have not seen for the past 3 days is suppose to visit us once again….the sun!! People get a bit cranky around here after three days of snow, ice and clouds…but it has been a fun snowy break from “normal”!
    Coffee time with precious friends this morning….then a nice brisk walk with my neighbor later…. 🚶‍♀️

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  8. After having some chilly fall weather for a while, we were having an Indian Summer for several days, with very high humidity. Yuck. Hated having the air conditioning on in October. But today the temperature is only supposed to go up to 60 or so. Not quite chilly for us, but better than the warmth and humidity. (It is still humid, but the lower temperature makes it more manageable.)

    Speaking of “Indian Summer”, as I was using that term the other day, I wondered if it is now considered racist and politically incorrect.

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  10. Main painter had a doctor’s appt yesterday afternoon so he left the sidekick to finish up on south windows. He’s sloppy, rather than tape off window detail he just paints all over, smearing paint over the glass that he has to scrape off later.

    Two of the double hung windows in the dining room were painted “open” and are stuck and won’t budge. He knocked a ceramic cross off my wall inside and broke it. He’s kind of like a bull (or a sea lion) in a china shop. Main painter told me he’d never use him again for a painting job.

    So they’re clearly not finishing up today as they’d thought they would (I didn’t believe them when they told me that anyway) — they still have several windows + back sliding door and garage door to do. Maybe by the end of next week. Maybe.

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  11. A beautiful day here. Frost on the ground, ice on the water, birds in the air, people doing chores. Eleven year old is splitting firewood for me, seventeen will be hauling hay this afternoon. So that is covered for now.

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  12. Kizzie:

    https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lets-choose-a-new-name-for-indian-summer

    Actually a pretty interesting article
    ___________________________

    Let’s Choose a New Name for ‘Indian Summer

    IN THE FALL, EVEN AS trees turn red and orange, sometimes temperatures spike, from the crisp and autumnal 60s, up to a summery 80 plus degrees.* In North America, since at least the early 1800s, people have called these autumn spells of warm days and hazy skies “Indian summer.”

    Think about that phrase just a little bit, and there are a few questions that come up. First, why do we call this Indian summer? Second, should we? And, if not, what else can we call it?

    … after 200 years, we may want to use a term with less colonial overtones. There are many other options of what to call these late-breaking days of autumn warmth. …
    __________________________________

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  13. Sea lion or bearded seal? Speaking of seals, I have not seen any live ones here, but I have seen quite a few of their pelts on drying racks, and there are many different items made from sealskin available for purchase, for a considerable fee of course. The fur has a slightly prickly feel to it. The seal hunters have to travel to find the seals, using motor boats, and in the winter, skidoos. The Inuit here hunted the traditional way well into the 1950s, but it was the loss of most of their sled dogs to an epidemic in the 1960s that put a period to their nomadic existence and made them settle in the hamlet, which was previously a whaling port and trading post with a mission hospital and a doctor, who would travel from Inuit campsite to campsite with a guide and dog team.

    Now there is no doctor and no hospital, only a nursing station, which communicates via satellite phone and internet with the hospital in the capital, Iqaluit. Any unstable patients who need more care have to be evacuated to Iqaluit, and, if the small hospital in Iqaluit cannot provide all that is needed, the patient is flown to the national capital, Ottawa. Other parts of Nunavut evacuate to either Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and down to Edmonton, Alberta, or to Churchill, Manitoba, down to Winnipeg. It isn’t the best solution, not because it is expensive, but because the Inuit do not want to leave the north. Well into the mid-1900s, tuberculosis (TB) patients were sent out on the annual ship that visited each community, to be taken down to the TB sanatorium in Hamilton, Ontario. All too often, they never returned, dying away from their family and land. So some TB patients, rather than be taken from all that they knew, chose to walk out of their homes during a blizzard to their deaths. Now, TB can be treated in the community by antibiotics, but other conditions, such as cancer, cannot be treated here. The elders especially, who need the most medical care, do not want to go to die in a southern hospital or nursing home.

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  14. And:

    Is the term Indian Summer racist?

    _____________________

    IS THE TERM INDIAN SUMMER RACIST?

    … Wikipedia gives three theories of the term’s etymology:

    * That was when the Native Americans in the Northeast harvested their corns and squash.

    * Raids on European colonies by native war parties were generally though to end in the fall, so summer-like weather in the fall was associated with more raids.

    * Like “Indian giver,” it was based on the idea that Indians were deceitful: as false as summer in October.

    So, that’s one non-racist explanation and two racist ones. I doubt anyone really knows how the term came about, although this article (* the link in my comment above) seems to trace the phrase as far back as it goes.

    … If there’s a question about whether they’re hurtful or not, our approach is: say it a different way. In this case, we like “Second Summer.” …
    _____________________________

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  16. What do they call “Indian summer” in Europe?
    Phos: At Carolina, I took an anthropology course under Dr. Harry Holbert Tourney-high.
    He had been everywhere and done everything. We were allowed to shorten his name to Dr. Tourney-high. Somehow, we were talking about Eskimos I asked, “How did they get up there?” He said that they must have wandered up there. That was the answer, but I would have quickly wandered back.

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  17. Seal skins are still used today on mountaineering skis. The fur is so stiff and lays all one direction. The skins are applied to the skis to keep them from slipping backwards, yet allow one to glide forward when climbing upwards. They can then be removed when skiing downhill. The nap on the skins is amazing to feel.

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  18. Chas, I have had the opportunity to read a book about one of the northern doctors, called Sunrise over Pangnirtung. This doctor, Otto Schaefer, did some physiological studies of the Inuit, and found that they do not sweat except on their face and neck. Anhydrosis, the inability to sweat, is a real medical condition, and those who are have it in warmer climates are in constant danger of overheating and getting heat exhaustion, because sweating cools the skin. But in the north, not being able to sweat, except from one’s face, prevents one from losing body heat. There are remains of Inuit settlements that date back about 3000 years, so they have been here a long time, and those who didn’t lose too much heat by sweating would have been the ones who survived to have children. There is an actual physical reason that the Inuit find it too hot in southern Canada.

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  19. Re: Chas’ question about what they call Indian Summer in Europe, to summarize the link I put up, the British now use Indian Summer, but they formerly used the terms ‘St. Martin’s Summer’ or ‘St. Luke’s Summer’ or ‘All Hallowe’en Summer’, presumably because the phenomenon generally occured around those church calendar days. As, I said, I have come across the term St. Martin’s Summer – used as the title of an early 1900s British novel – but the other two terms I had never heard before.

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  20. We are having an all day fall day. The perfect chill remains in the air even into the afternoon. Because the storm cleaned up the atmosphere, everything looks bright and crisp. It is a good day for people to finish up their extensions.

    I considered wearing booties today but settled on black suede loafers with the kiltie fringe. They feel good for this weather.

    I got up at five so we could get to the office early. We have been able to use Art’s phone to listen to audiobooks on our commute so I am happy about that. For awhile we had nothing loud enough to compete against the road noise.

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  21. Chas, we’re in the 40s, 30s tonight . . . and that’s rather sudden. We had up to the high 80s, maybe even 90, last week! It has been a lovely October so far (though not much fall color yet), pretty much an extended late summer.

    By the way, those of you who like cardinals would have loved to be with me yesterday. I have long noted that we are in absolutely perfect cardinal habitat, and thus they are everywhere. The first time I walked a mile of local trail, I probably saw a dozen of them; that was mid-summer and the height of breeding season. (Cardinals have a longer breeding season than most songbirds. Not as long as doves–they pretty much don’t have an off-season in moderate climates, but doves aren’t passerines anyway.) We have a lot of trees and also a lot of lower vegetation, shrubs and bushes, and that means cardinals can safely breed and find lots of food to eat. And since they make multiple nests per season, if they can breed safely, then one can find lots and lots of cardinals around.

    At any rate, yesterday I walked a bit along the trail, which in some places is edged with a lot of low bushes, and every few steps I took, two or three cardinals would explode out of the bushes and into the trees beyond. At one point, I could see about seven of them. My first winter in Nashville, a winter flock of eight or ten males came to my yard multiple times (and I wasn’t feeding birds there), and this wasn’t all males but was the most cardinals I’ve ever seen. Now obviously I was probably seeing the same birds over and over in some cases, but the sheer numbers were amazing. Having gotten lots of good cardinal photos through the years, I was mostly focusing on other species, but I almost felt guilty about that! I did get a couple photos of them, including one with two males in it.

    Cedar waxwings also came out to eat the berries, and a few catbirds, and I saw three species of woodpeckers in passing (downy, red-bellied, and flicker). A kingfisher flew high overhead, calling as it flew, and the bushes also had winter-plumaged goldfinches and several scurrying warblers. (I saw at least three species of warbler, including a common yellowthroat–only my second sighting of the species and the first sighting was a mere glimpse.) And three times I saw groups of four mallards (the first two times exploding into flight); whether they were one, two, or three groups of birds, I don’t know. I did finally get photos of two males and two females that stayed to feed on the main pond.

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  22. Donna, are the birds storm petrels? Don’t ask me how I know they might be, since I’ve never seen them, but when I googled the term the images did seem to match.

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  23. Turns out, we were very fortunate WRT the storm. News reports say over 90,000 are without power in Guilford County (Greensboro). Several days before it’s all back.
    Chuck is without power.
    And some roads are closed.

    Liked by 2 people

  24. I sure hope we get an Indian summer. I thought that was more in November. We have had snow, cold and wind. We still have a lot of leaves on trees, but almost all are gold, including the tamarack trees, which are the pines that lose their leaves. We do have some wonderfully red and orange maples.

    The Indian’s I know do not mind the term Indian. We were told by the guide on our Washington DC vacation that the Indians in that vicinity prefer Indian.

    Which leads to this–why do people assume the racist view that all Indians, all blacks, all Asians, all women believe the same thing. Really? Not in my experience and not logically. This seems the height of racism to me.

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  25. From what I have heard (as of a few years ago, admittedly, but I have heard it repeatedly), the vast majority of American Indians prefer that term to Native Americans.

    Fifteen years ago or so, I had a black author who used the term “First Nations,” which I had never heard of. I googled it and discovered it was the term used in Canada for their indigenous citizens. I told him that and told him it was inaccurate and thus we couldn’t use it for residents of the U.S. He was just as insistent that we must. In his mind it was the newest, and thus automatically the most appropriate term. In my opinion, if American Indians don’t even want to be called “Native Americans,” then they certainly aren’t going to want to jump on the bandwagon of whatever other new term people might come up with for them, and it was simply inaccurate. I think I did what I often do in such cases, explained to my boss (with evidence) why the term was inaccurate, and then went back to the author to say my boss said we need to use this other, more accurate term.

    He also insisted on using the term “Caucasian,” which I personally despise. To me it brings to mind those hideous images from fifth grade social studies texts in which a white, blond person is identified as “Caucasoid,” a dark-skinned black as “Negroid,” an Asian as “Mongolian” (and you have to remember it isn’t “Mongoloid”), etc.

    I use African-American around people for whom it is their stated preference, as much as I can remember, but personally I don’t really like the term. First of all, Americans shorten everything, and to go from one-syllable, simple, merely descriptive “black” to seven-syllable “African-American” significantly bogs down a sentence. In addition, I knew lots of people in Chicago who did not fit the term: Africans who weren’t black, black people who weren’t from Africa, and Africans who weren’t Americans! If there is some need to mention ethnicity, “black” works; if there is some need to mention cultural heritage (i.e., in the same context in which you would call me a Scottish-American or a European-American), then “African-American” works (assuming the person is indeed both African and American). But it is far too complicated and far too likely to be inaccurate for everyday use, and so I don’t use it except, I suppose, to “virtue signal” with people whom I know to have that preference.

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  28. Roscuro, that is fascinating about the sweating. It would also be handy during winter when layered up and working hard. No sweat to dampen your clothing and cause you to freeze.

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  30. There are upwards of 1.3 million Indian Canadians. The First Nations, Metis, and Inuit populations number about 1.4 million. Although the First Nations of Canada are still governed under the 1876 Indian Act and hold Indian status cards, the term Indian is generally not used outside of those contexts for First Nations people, with good reason. It gets confusing.

    Generally, First Nations prefer to identify themselves by their specific nation – Mississauga, Ojibwe, Cree, Haida, Squamish, etc. – and the term First Nations is an attempt to capture the fact that there are many different nations. The term Inuit means people, and are what the Inuit call themselves. Calling them by that name is merely the right thing to do. As Paul said, “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.” (I Corinthians 10:32-33, ESV).

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  31. Cheryl – I saw that Atlantic article, and started to read it, a couple or so days ago, but put it aside for some other things I needed to read first. But I will be getting back to it.

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  32. Here is a good thought experiment to demonstrate why, when requested, it should be perfectly reasonable to identify the people of a nation by the term they call themselves. I have read and heard many times the argument that the term American could and even should be used to describe anyone from the Western Hemisphere, who lives in North, South, or Central America, and should not be solely used for the inhabitants of the United States of America. I have even seen debates about it online between people from the Americas both outside and inside the U.S. Those from inside the U.S. often end up saying, in some frustration, “What else can we call ourselves?” Americans may dislike political correctness, as per Cheryl’s link, but they should realize that calling a nation’s people by their chosen term is merely common courtesy, which is a quality that existed before the term ‘politically correct’ was ever used.

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  35. I dislike the terms ‘white’ and ‘black’ for people:
    First of all, the terms don’t even begin to convey the beautiful variations in skin tones that humans have.

    Second, I have never seen a person which is truly either the colour black or the colour white.

    Third, the use of the terms are based in a prideful prejudice that those whose skin colour was darker were inferior. Before anyone rolls their eyes and labels this ‘political correctness’ or ‘white guilt’ etc., this prejudice against darker skin colour exists outside of and independent to any history of slavery in the Americas. It was present in the Middle East during the Old Testament era (See Song of Solomon 1:5-6, which is interesting to connect with the story line of Exodus 2:16-21, 18:1-2, and Numbers 12:1). Those with darker skin colour in India are considered of lower caste, while high caste Brahmins are difficult to distinguish in skin tone from those of European descent. West Africans associated light skin with wealth, and for all their history of colonialism, I don’t think it was entirely due to the European influence. From the beginning, humans have associated darker skin with those who do menial labour in the sun, and lighter skin with those with the power and wealth to keep inside. Remember how, in the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura’s Ma always told her to keep her bonnet on because a lady kept her skin white? It is an unreasonable, nay, downright silly prejudice – which Laura rightly recognized in not caring if she did get tanned. But it exists, and like all sinful human tendencies, if allowed to take root, becomes a deadly weed that gives off corrosive poison.

    Finally, the terms ‘white’ and ‘black’ wipe out any other distinctions, as if identification by skin colour trumps language, culture, history, and even other physical characteristics like eye colour. The terms are a lazy descriptor to use when speaking about humans.

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  36. We had the letter Dd this week. There was a picture of a mallard to illustrate the letter. I showed my aide, Wendy, who had only seen white ducks. She was amazed and had no idea a duck could look differently. In fact there was a duck in a illustration she was coloring for me and she only colored the bill. I gave her the picture and told her to finish coloring the duck. She showed the cleaning lady who was there and they both couldn’t believe it. White ducks were all either of them had ever seen.

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  38. I have been called tubaab in West Africa, and now qallunaat. Neither term literally means ‘white’, but rather it refers to the fact that I, and others like me, are not of the tribe/people group whose mother tongue is either Wolof or Inuktitut. “Stranger’ might be a good translation for either term. Stranger is a good term, full of special significance for the Christian.

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  40. My life is different and interesting (at least to me) these days. On one hand, I usually cannot count on an evening or day being a certain way that I may have in mind. On the other hand, I have learned to be more flexible (an ongoing process throughout my adult life), and I enjoy the “interruptions”.

    Most evenings, at some point after dinner, Nightingale and The Boy go upstairs or out to their activities, and I can enjoy the quiet of the evening. But other evenings, like this evening (especially when it is not a school night), they are hanging out down here. I never know when that might happen, but I have learned to roll with it, and enjoy having them around.

    Right now, they are in the dining room while I am in the living room. Nightingale is working on making decorations for The Boy’s upcoming birthday party, and they are playing music. Earlier, I was out there talking to Nightingale for a while, then came back into the living room to read.

    Sometimes they end up hanging out with me in the living room, each of us doing our own thing but interacting with each other.

    Like I said, these are spontaneous times that pop up from time to time, probably at least once a week, sometimes more. Or they may be down here for a while after dinner, but not the whole evening, going upstairs for his bedtime. I enjoy both kinds of evenings – the quiet alone ones and the noisier ones with the company of my beloved daughter and grandson.

    It seems so odd to still be grieving and yet be able to honestly say that I am enjoying my life. That is a gift from God.

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