51 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-11-19”

  3. Thw shrew must be a present for the cat. And that car with the surf board seems out of place, unless it’s a family escaping winter and heading for the beach.

    While pondering that, enjoy some political cartoons. Once again, there is one that I don’t understand. It has Uncle Sam shouting or crying (mouth wide open) in front of a wall.

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  8. By the way, there’s a lot out of place in this garden, compliments of the granddaughters. In the upper left corner, you can see a princess leaning on the fence. The piece of wood just above it says, “Emersburg” (for Emily).and elsewhere out of sight is another that says, “Sammyville.”

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  9. Re: Pervious discussions on the Prayer Thread about atheism. i.e. How did we get here?
    John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
    2 The same was in the beginning with God.
    3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
    4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
    5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
    WE can accept that on faith.

    Or: We can, on faith, accept the only alternative: i.e.

    “In the beginning there was nothing, absolutely nothing. No atoms, no electrons, no neutrinos, NOTHING.
    No, not that. NOTHING.

    Suddenly, for no reason at all. (There can be no reason for something happening if there is nothing) there was this BIG BANG. It is the only possible explanation. Some skeptical scientists say that there are other bangs in the universe. That is easier to believe because there is already SOMETHING. But to be an atheist, you have to believe that (we?) started out with NOTHING.

    If you take it back to the absolute beginning, both concepts are difficult to explain. I choose John 1.

    This settles the atheism issue. Choose one or explain the alternative.

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  10. Chas, the other thing I’ve always wondered about, for those who believe in evolution is how and where did all this vegetation come from? Obviously animals would have needed to eat as they were miraculously evolving, so did the grass, wheat, flowers, trees, and vegetables miraculously evolve at exactly the same time? And speaking of eating, how did the carnivores evolve if they kept lunching on one another?

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  12. Morning! Time to bring back the Christmas music…we are living in a snow globe this morning! We have about 4 inches so far of the heavy wet snow…our school district decided to call it a day for the kiddos already as we are now predicted to get a total of 8 inches up here on the Divide. It is so beautiful and for the moisture we are truly thankful!

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  13. Linda, as I have walked around exploring God’s creation, I have often had cause to ponder how well it all fits together. Pay attention to a single small patch of nature that is left to go “natural.” The same little patch will be used for several different plants over the course of the warm seasons; each sprouting, growing, blooming, and dying on a fairly predictable schedule. (Spring beauty flowers will probably bloom in April, for example; they’ll vary a few weeks from year to year, but you won’t see them in July.) What’s more, the insects that pollinate them will come to adulthood at the same time, and the birds that eat the insects will nest at the same time, to keep the insects from multiplying too quickly and destroying everything.

    When I was researching butterflies to do a book about them, I was shocked to discover that butterflies and moths have five different ways they survive winter: they can overwinter (hibernate, go into diapause) in any of the four life stages: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or cocoon, or adult–or they can migrate and live out winter as adults in a warmer climate. Each species is predictable (this species overwinters in this form), but all four forms can see a creature through winter.

    Young animals are foolish and easily caught, and they are available in great numbers while predators need extra protein to feed their own babies. Leaves provide nourishment for the plant, food and shade for creatures; when leaves would wilt in the cold, and when we don’t need the shade anymore, leaves fall off and plants have a dormant cycle. Water has many astounding qualities necessary for life, such as being the only substance that is lighter when frozen (and thus rising to the top of a pond and insulating it). And so forth.

    Everything affects other things around it. I was amused years ago to see in two different settings (a tour and I think a book) mention made of the gingko biloba tree evolving before insects evolved, and thus not being something insects eat. Um, isn’t that backward to the theory? Shouldn’t it be a bad early model, and one that insects have plenty of time to learn how to eat? But life is nothing near so straightforward as “let’s have a rabbit.” It needs to breathe, eat, escape predators, reproduce, and much more–and it needs to do so in sufficient numbers to stay alive, keep plants in check, and provide its primary role in the food chain–but not such large numbers that it destroys its environment. And that is true for billions of species of plants, animals, and other living things. And that’s just this planet. We have an entire universe so finely tuned.

    As I’ve become a bit of a lay scientist in recent years, I have realized how finely tuned each animal is. Every bit of a woodpecker moves it toward its life purposes. Like a warbler or a duck, it flies, and it lays eggs, but just about everything else about the way it is built is different. Each bird’s feet, wings, beak, tongue, feathers, etc. are made to do precisely what it does best. And how is it that a cedar waxwing can survive for months on only fruit, and vultures can survive on only meat? God made each for its place in this world, and designed it perfectly for it. In a fallen world, everything doesn’t work perfectly, but it still works amazingly well.

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  15. The cartoon about China on the backside of the moon isn’t significant, except for the one showing China’s impact on our national security.
    China got to the moon fifty years after we did.
    And they went on technology they stole or bought from the US.

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  16. Oh, the Wall. That’s a rather depressing song saying we’re all “just another brick in the wall.”

    Nancy Jill- I never stopped playing Christmas hymns, and will just keep them on the MP3 player all year.

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  17. I remember that Pink Floyd song.

    Love the train layout, especially the dog and the surfboard 🙂 . And someone got a car for Christmas! Or maybe someone’s just filming a car commercial …

    I still remember when my cousin got a train set for Christmas and it was set up all around the bottom of the tree. My neighbors also did that one year for one of their grandkids. Why is that such a classic thing?

    Well, the district and teachers have 3 more days to hammer out an agreement before upending everyone’s life with a strike set to start on Monday. I’m hopeful that the liberal politicians (both governor and mayor) appear to be pushing the 2 sides to settle this thing before everyone’s sorry. But the union is gung-ho, I get the feeling they’d be downright disappointed if they don’t get to strike.

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  19. We have an especially annoying train set the children had out this Christmas. A larger train with Mickey Mouse noises. It was more interesting because of the INDOOR dogs. They were quite concerned the children were going to be attacked so were quite vigilant. Especially the old blind one who kept standing on the track only to be surprised when it chased him down. And then the other, visiting, INDOOR dog kept trying to pick it up. She is a large German Shepherd mix. Once she knocked it off the track and it chased her across the room as she ran with tail between her legs, looking terrified. I had them put it away as twenty year old thought it so cute that his dog kept picking it up to chew on it. I don’t think he noticed.

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  20. My Dad’s brother had an elaborate train set up in his basement. All of the cousins would stand and watch that train go round and round for hours! He had trees, ponds,bridges, houses, people, dogs, cats…you name it, it was on his train platform. Fascinating hobby!

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  21. My brother had a train set when young. He probably still has it packed away somewhere. Wesley never had one. but when very young he had a friend whose dad loved trains and had one taking up their whole family room. I think we got our train fix when visiting them. And we watched Thomas the Tank Engine.

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  22. Isn’t it kind of fun and amazing to think of a little boy with whom you watched Thomas the Tank Engine turned into a wonderful young man who helps look out for you?

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  23. Nancyjill, that is like what we saw at the friend’s house that would have been good in a basement but it took up their whole family/living room. The dad did a lot of woodwork so you can imagine that it was all very elaborate.

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  24. My friend’s dad next door to us also had a very elaborate layout in their garage, he spent hours out there putting it all together, refining it. Little trees, little people, little street signs and houses … We loved going over there when he’d agree to run the trains for us 🙂

    It’s still a going hobby for many, the guy who lived next door to me when I moved into this house used to put them together as a business and he’d go to all these shows where they sold the pieces — many of his clients were doctors and others with people who had money to burn as it wasn’t a cheap hobby.

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  26. The train exhibit is a favorite of ours at both the state fair and the biopark. We went to a special model train extravagaza a couple of years ago. It is definitely a hobby for those with money to spare.

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  27. My brother has a huge train set up in his basement. He also helps set up, paint, create for the train set up in a museum in his home town. The main industry in the town was the railroad and was where he worked. His first big painting was painting the walls behind the museum train exhibit. I was positively amazed, although I knew he had artistic talent. It is quite amazing how many people I know only really develop their artistic talent when they are retired.

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  29. The differing sizes of the vehicles in the photo are making me chuckle a bit. My dad, who did some drafting in his earlier career, was a stickler for perspective in art. You know those old paintings where things in the foreground and the background were about the same size? Those really annoyed him. 🙂

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  31. Hubby is a stickler for scale, too, but that is trumped by what the girls think should be in the garden. Ours is quite large, plus there’s a train running around the ceiling.

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  32. Karen @ 2:08 I’m the same way about perspective.
    Elvera has a painting in our “snack room” that has a covered bridge, country church, house and barn in the same picture. Realistically, that can’t happen. But it’s a nice picture.

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  33. We had a painting that hung in our living room forever (done by some Iowa relative way back when) and while it was good, we always laughed at the oversized owl in the scene. It’s wrapped and on the top shelf of the garage now, it was one of the many things that came out of my mom’s storage unit boxes when a worker and I cleared out the garage almost 2 (? I think) years ago (all the house projects run together in my head now).

    Good staff meeting w/pizza. Weird, though, as I’m often the oldest person in the room anymore …

    😦 How did that happen??

    I did learn something I hadn’t known before — the ERA has been revived and is within 1 state of being revived. My question: Is there really anything that amendment proposed that hasn’t already been legally enacted since? Maybe that’s not the point. ?

    Interestingly, I remember one of the arguments against it at the time (1970s-80s?) was that it would result in unisex restrooms. Done that already. Haven’t we?

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  35. It surely is quiet around here.
    I think I’ll watch them argue about the government shutdown.

    I think Trump should open the government and agree with the Democrats and Never Trumpers that it will be a 2020 issue. We know where they stand. Let the people decide.

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  36. More school strike drama, the dueling news conferences have begun.

    “Lock us in a room” pleads district head, asking gov to intervene …

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  38. Chas, I often see posters, Christmas cards, etc. that have eight or more different bird species happily sitting in one tree, and conveniently all the most colorful birds and only males. To me it’s simply too fake to be pretty. You might have three or four species (or more) in the same small space if you have a feeder or a tree full of berries, but cardinals won’t be all males, you’re going to have some goldfinches among them and they won’t be in their summer coats, bluebirds come to different food than cardinals do, etc.

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  39. We’re supposed to get a fairly large snowstorm this weekend, starting tonight. We went to the grocery store earlier, early enough my husband thought we might beat the rush (I suspected we wouldn’t). A couple of the cash registers were down in addition to the extra customers for a Friday morning, so we waited in line at the register. My husband joked to the older lady behind us, “It looks like these people didn’t hear the revised forecast, that we’re supposed to get seventy degrees tomorrow!” She laughed and said, “After all this, it sure better snow!”

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  41. We have at least 8 inches of wet heavy snow and it continues to fall…it is melting in as it falls and now is a frozen mess under the new fallen snow. The roads are a mess and cars are in ditches and sliding backwards on the hills. Better to stay safe and snug inside if possible. Daughter was told she could leave early from work as they knew we live up north where it is especially awful…but pretty 😊

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  42. RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A push for Virginia to become the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared its first legislative hurdle. … Its passage would mean the ERA has reached the threshold for ratification, but not by the 1982 deadline set by Congress. (posted 1 day ago)

    https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Virginia-Senate-panel-passes-Equal-Rights-Amendment-504158291.html

    “There is debate over whether the ERA can be revived and experts say a legal battle will likely ensue if Virginia were to ratify the amendment.”

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  43. Well, new proposal by school district was swiftly rejected by the union which also has declared talks are at an impasse.

    I managed to write and file the update before shooting myself.

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  46. Kizzie @ 2:05 – We support Trevor Johnson. He came to our church before he and his family left for PNG, and we’ve heard him speak at my brother’s church in So Missouri, near where he is from. We get his email newsletter.

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  47. We’re getting the snow, It started around 3:30PM. We went grocery shopping and the Aldi meat and bread shelves were empty. You would think we were going to be snowed in fro a week or so!

    When we got home there was a minivan that couldn’t get up the hill and slid back into our mailbox. It looks like the driver tried to talk to us since there were footprints on our front walk.

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  48. Got several hours of work done at school. A mom needs a village program on Monday. Almost ready for her. My aide had copied all of the materials for the term, so I just pulled things together.
    Then friends came over to bring me dinner and visit and then prayed for me. I know that I don’t want this cold to get worse. Now I am losing my voice and having coughing fits. Have to keep the throat coat tea on hand.
    They also rented the singles van for me so I would have a way to get around as my car is in the shop. God is good and His people are sweet.

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  51. Jo, I am often a couple days behind and get to read late posts like yours. You never know who’s really going to be last. Now I wonder if anyone will ever see this one?

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