And talking about memories like the sterling silver Ken got me when he made Colonel, we did a lot of entertaining because he was a squadron commander.  We didn’t serve alcohol, so there was a lot of iced tea.

Becky called last night and said, “I’ve got a present for you.  Do you remember the penguin ice bucket you had when we lived in Beaufort? (1963), well I found a new one--never used--and I got it for you.”

We used the ice bucket all the time--since we served iced tea.  And of course, it wasn’t a new one that she found, just one that had never been used.  They must have been made in ‘56, because ours was a wedding gift.  So to find a new one that had never been used is rather rare.

I told Becky that I don’t entertain anymore, but that I would set it on my kitchen counter for a few weeks and look at it and “remember.”  And that when I got through remembering, I would give it back and she could sell it at an estate sale.  You can only put so many “remembers” on your kitchen counter and then you run out of room to cut up a tomato or slice chicken. 

At this point in life, I “remember”...because I’ve quit “doing.”  It is interesting that when you are in the “doing” stage of your life, you don’t realize you are making memories.  I’ve got a zillion memories.  They give me the warm fuzzies.  

I am a sucker for hand-carved walnut furniture.  Men used to do that kind of project--just like women used to crochet and make quilts.  Those things have gone by the wayside.

You can’t sell either for much in an estate sale.  (Which my daughter does.  It’s the largest estate company in Oklahoma last I heard)

You also can’t sell china, crystal, or sterling silver flatware.  Except for sterling weight.  Nobody sets a table anymore.  Nobody but a few of us old die-hards.  Everyone wants paper plates.

When Ken made Colonel in the USMC, he bought me the entire set of Gorham La-Scala sterling.  We did a lot of entertaining, but I used it everyday as well.  People said, “You can’t put it in the dishwasher!”  Well, you can.  I did it for fifty years.  

When my grandson David married Jennifer, I gave it all to them.  But I missed it, so when Becky got a sale with that pattern, I bought it.  There weren’t as many pieces, but it is just a memory of a time in my life anyway.  It makes me happy to look at it.  Which is what all of the hand carved walnut furniture does.  Some man carved those pieces for their wife.  Some things are just happy memories.

Abraham’s son Issac, blessed the wrong son because his wife Rebecca and youngest son Jacob tricked him.  Which caused a terrible rift between Jacob and Esau--with Esau trying to kill his brother.  Jacob fled to his uncle Laban’s home which was far away.

Jacob fell in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel, but Laban tricked him and gave him Leah instead.  Jacob waited and served Laban for years and years to be able to marry Rachel.

Then Jacob tricked Laban by breeding sheep that would be colored in favor of Jacob owning the sheep.  And when he had enough, he snuck off with his two wives and two concubines to head back to his home and face Esau.

 Laban comes after him and says that someone stole his gods.  Rachael was the one that did that.  She was sitting on a camel on top of the gods and claimed it was her time of the month and she couldn’t get down.

They all were dishonest.  I wonder how God feels when he is disappointed with his children.  I wonder what God feels when he is disappointed in me?  I really, really, really do not want to embarrass  God.  I carry His name; I am a Christ-ian.  Every one knows that about me, so when I fail, it must make God really sad.  But, he doesn’t give up on any of us.  He didn’t give up on Jacob. Hey you people out there, don’t give up on me.

  I helped Jeanette arrange her bookshelves yesterday.  Rather, I sat on the sofa and told her where to move what.  Doing a shelf like that is all mathematical. Your eye sees it all at once and some sort of balance is either pleasing...or not.  I think it turned out okay.  But I think in color, stacks, upright books, doo-dads and empty spaces.  Now we will see what she moves.  That is the real test.

I have six regulars in my Sunday class.  Two have Covid and one more is in quarantine.  All of them had their shots.  Another one just got out of surgery.  Kinda hard to teach with everyone sick.  I-phones are wonderful.  Everyone can get together on a group chat, and talk at the same time--which keeps the conversation going--until everyone can get well.  So far, I haven’t even had a sniffle.  Praise the Lord.

I was talking about Joshua Monday.  And his dysfunctional family.  First in line was Abraham and Sarah.  They knew better than God about Sarah’s ability to bear a child and took the situation into their own hands.  Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham and Hagar had a child, Ishmael--who became the father of the Arab nations.  War ever since.  Issac was born to Sarah--finally--when she was way past the age of bearing a child.  God did what he said he was going to do--He just didn’t do it soon enough for Abraham.  Bad results for taking things into his own hands.  It doesn’t work for us either. 

 I am all talked out.  

Joseph was the topic Sunday.  He is one of my favorite characters.  He lost everything, but kept his faith in God.

Seventeen, stupid and privileged, he was his father’s favorite and had no idea how that fact affected his brothers.  They hated him, tried to kill him, but the oldest of the twelve, Ruben saved his life by suggesting they throw him in a well.  Judah, another brother, said “No, let’s get some money out of this and sell him to Esau’s (their uncle) descendants. Take the robe dad gave him, smear it with blood, and we’ll say some animal killed him.”

Bad day for Joseph.  He lost everything.  His father’s love.  His beautiful robe, his family, his freedom and his privileged position.  He ended up in prison, betrayed, alone and in a country (Egypt) where he didn’t know the language, the customs, or any of the people.

He never lost faith in God. Even though he came from a dysfunctional family.  His great-grandfather Abraham, lost faith and sired a son that is the father of the Arab nations today. (Who hate Israel)  Later, Isaac was born--who gave the birthright to Jacob because his wife Rebecca tricked him.  Joseph’s father Jacob was a mess.  A lying trickster.  Who got tricked by his mother’s brother Laban, who gave him the wrong daughter to wed (Leah) and made him wait years to get his wife Rachael.  The things those people did were not God’s will, but somehow, Joseph found God even in the midst of it.  And as for his family...God uses flawed people. 

Ann and I didn’t go out to eat breakfast today.  She got food a a drive through and brought it over.  Jeannine called and asked what I needed at the grocery store.  Great friends.  With this kind of service I may never have to go out anywhere at all.

Amy Smith wrote and said my comments on Genesis were so interesting that she sent them to her college  kids.  I told her I had written a paper on the subject (over 60 pages---more complete) and Carolyn (Pryor Carolyn) had a copy she was welcome to reproduce if she wanted it.

So maybe the best thing I can do is stay home, let everyone else take care of what I need, and write!  But I don’t think that would be fair to my friends.  They are really good to me.

It has been bitterly cold here.  I used to wonder why the old-timers sat around and talked about the weather.  Now I know.  It is supposed to be back to sixty degrees Sunday, so we can get back to the class room at the church.  We’ve been teaching the lesson by phone.

If you quit going to church in the pandemic, it is time to get your groove back.  Broken habits are hard to reconstruct.  Fellowship on common objectives is important. 

Public Education isn’t perfect.  Ever since the federal government got involved with providing the money...they get to make the rules.  It works much better when locals make their own decisions about their schools.  Give them the money.  Let them decide.  Every area in America is different.  Their culture is different.  Oklahoma isn’t New York City or L.A. We have different issues.

My mom picketed against Fed funds, but only one teacher joined her.  One year later every teacher she worked with realized they had made a mistake on their vote for federal funds.  When the feds get involved, in anything--it seems like--things don’t go well.  Every rule the American public disagrees with concerning their local schools has been imposed by the Feds.

Teachers do their best to teach the subject they have a degree in, but when you have a room full of kids you can’t discipline--it is sometimes impossible.  One disruptive child stops everything.  And you have a room full of them.  Do people who send their kids to school think of it as free baby-sitting?  Sadly, some do.  Some think of it as a place to send their kids so that they can go to work.  School is free.

Private schools don’t take problems.  But the problem child is the one who needs to learn how to read, write and do arithmetic so they can get a job.  What are we to do.  Is there another way to educate the masses?  It’s a school, federal, parent, American problem.  The teachers I know are trying. 

 I called my daughter-in-law, who is a teacher, to find out what she had paid for child care per month for their son before he started school this year.  It was $900.00 per month, eight hours a day, four weeks a month. That adds up to $5.62 an hour for babysitting.

Teachers have 26 children in a room.  Multiply that by $5.62 for one child each hour, times 26 kids, 8 hours a day and they would make $1,169.00 each day, or $4675.84 a month. Or, for nine months, $42,082.56---Just for babysitting.  Starting salary for a credited teacher is $40,600 this year.  They would make more money as a babysitter.  They wouldn’t have to get a degree in English, math, science or anything else.  Or go in debt for four years of college.  They wouldn’t have to prepare lesson plans or teach anything.  Or deal with unruly students.  Babysitters can refuse to take your children.  A teacher can’t.  They have to deal with the bad egg.

My mother was a teacher, her two sisters,  their two daughters, my uncle (who was Oklahoma teacher of the year) Ken, me, my daughter Pat, my son Jon and his wife Jennifer and my granddaughter-in-law. That’s twelve.  I’ve heard every horror story about what was imposed on them by administrators--for which they weren’t paid.  Standing gates at ball-games, riding on buses at night to events, grading papers at home, substituting for sick teachers, unpaid, on their own time--and that is the tip of the ice berg.  Free Public Education is the best bargain in the world.  Teachers take the huddled masses and teach them to read write and do arithmetic, as well as counsel those who are mistreated, bullied and living in poverty.  They stay after hours to tutor a child who needs extra help.  I could go on and on.  As I said, I have twelve teachers in my immediate family.  I also have three engineers, and three doctors--those twelve teachers could have chosen a different occupation. You have to be dedicated to helping others to be a teacher.  They could make more money babysitting.

Today I am leaving the house!  Going to lunch at a little cafe in Luther with Pat.  I used to go to lunch with her in “Jones”.  If you are ever in Jones, eat at Rooster’s.  The catfish is to die for.

Luther is a little town also; her new library job has changed towns, so we will learn about another small town cafe and what their speciality is.

Once when I went to Jones, someone had told me about their brother who lived there, was in a wheelchair, and had to have constant care.  So I took a plate of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans.

When I got there, the man wasn’t sick, in a wheel chair, or in any way in need of care and never had been.  I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me.  Come to find out his brother had been “losing it” for a year.  I didn’t know.  I was certainly embarrassed.  I can only imagine what he thought.  I left the plate of food and trucked it out of there.

I finally tried making chili yesterday and got to share it with Jeannine who lives across the street and brings me food all of the time.  I’ve never been able to make decent chili.  Becky told me to triple the tomatoes.  Yep.  That was it.  I now can make chili!  And not ashamed to share it.  Jeanette brought me Fritos she had found at a grocery store.  Have any of you tried to buy Fritos?  They are scarce.  And everyone needs junk food every now and then to eat with their chili.

Just when I thought that wind farms were going to be a miracle energy replacement for burning carbon fuels, the front page of the Oklahoman today spelled out the problems that have come with a wind farm that is failing.  The blades are breaking, the casings for the generators have burned up, and all the underground wiring has to be replaced.

And the company that made all the parts has gone bankrupt so that all replacement parts have to be individually manufactured.  It is a money disaster.  Surely, the problems that have emerged can teach a lesson in how to do “wind energy” better.  Eventually we will run out of oil.

Water power is another clean source, but building dams kills fish.  The Oregon salmon run has almost been completely wiped out because the salmon can’t get past the dams to their breeding grounds.  I watched a documentary on China’s dam building experiments that have shut off down stream fishing in Laos and Viet Nam.

I guess there are consequences for everything we try to do.  And they are unforeseen.  I am glad I am not in charge of all of that.  I wouldn’t know what to do...before, or after.  I pray that there are people who are trying to solve our problems with nature and our world.  God bless them.  I hope they don’t give up on trying.

I lost track of the day.  I have a sequence in which I do things and as Ken would say, “When you are coming in to an airstrip to land, if you skip a step getting ready to bring a plane in, you will land wheels up.”  I must have landed wheels up today.

Ann brought breakfast and we ate it here at my house.  We are both nervous about a horrible stomach flu that is rampant in Edmond--as if Covid wasn’t enough. Jeanine just brought supper, so I am fed for the day.

Tonight and tomorrow is supposed to be 50mph winds.  Single digit temps.  Sounds like fun. 

I did go get my hair done.  Some things are worth taking a chance on getting the flu.

We are doing my class by phone again Sunday.   I am so much like all of you are.  I want this crazy stuff to be over.  I wonder if we will ever go back to normal.

 

The weather today is perfect for January!  I am going to get out of this chair and walk the dog.  Or let the dog walk me.

A friend of mine with Covid has just been sent to a nursing home.  I called her last night to see how she was doing and she said someone had already stolen her money.  She is miserable. and I feel so sorry for her.  Sometimes all you can do to help someone is pray for them.

When I get to that point, will one of you who love me come shoot me please.  People in those places just lie in bed and count time from one bad meal to the next bad meal. 

Food is so important to people who are living solitary lives.  Becky came by last night and gave me a container and said I could eat it for breakfast.  When I opened it this morning, it was shrimp, lemon, garlic and pasta.  I had pizza instead.  I’ll eat the shrimp for lunch.  I’ll eat almost anything for breakfast, but the garlic stopped me.

Everyone in the Bible class has decided to do the lesson by phone again Sunday.  We are down to six people.  Two of them have Covid, and one just had surgery.  Most of the others on the roll are so far over the hill they don’t go anywhere.  They should call us the “Trail’s End” class.  It is an important thing we all keep trying to do together.  Fellowship.

 I cut my left thumb to the bone last week.  Do you have any idea how many times you use your left thumb to hold something that your right hand is doing?  Well...I have found out.  An opposable thumb is a wonderful thing.

It was a comic episode trying to stop the blood with just one hand.  I cut an artery, so blood was spraying every where.  I finally was able to do it by holding one end of the bandaid in my teeth and pulling it around with my right hand. 

It needed three stitches, but our hospitals are overrun with Covid cases.  A woman in my Bible class is in the hospital here and she said they don’t have a bed for her and people are lined up in the hall in wheelchairs because they don’t have anywhere else to put them.

I thought I could stitch it up myself, but I didn’t have a clean needle.  I knew if I went to an emergency room they wouldn’t have time to do it for two weeks at least.  They would say, “You cut your thumb?  Poor baby.” So I have been keeping it pulled together with tape. 

It’s been a week and it is finally starting to heal.  I’m  going to be more careful from now on. 

I’ve changed KFC day to Monday.  And maybe Friday, too.  I don’t eat enough protein.  I’ve started rolling bean, tomato, spinach, and Mozzarella cheese up in flax tortillas and nuking them for a few minutes.  I have to keep inventing ways to eat protein.

I didn’t realize that I was a picky eater until my kids left.  Now, I don’t cook big meals because there is nobody to eat them.  One at a time burritos is easy.   (“is” is the proper tense for the word “one”, but it sounds funny)  

I have to force myself to eat eggs.  My friend Jeanette made me a quiche and that was a delicious way to eat eggs.  (I have three people who bring me something to eat at least once a week)  I don’t buy milk because I won’t drink it.  I eat cereal dry. But when you are raising children, you cook for your family.  So I ate a lot of things I didn’t like.  Now I don’t.  

I’m glad I didn’t have to leave Egypt and live on manna.  That would have been very boring.  Breakfast, lunch and supper.  (Or dinner if you are from up north.)  Forty years the Israelites wandered around in the desert eating manna.  It would have been easier if they would have just done what God told them to do.  You would think people would learn from the past, but history just keeps repeating itself. 

I have written over 2500 blogs.  I’ve told you everything I know at one time or another.  When I sit down to write, I always think, what can I say that you haven’t already heard me say.

I finished my paper on Genesis.  Comparing it verse by verse with known strata.  I have always said that we have only two things that we have to go by about the beginning of the earth:  The Bible, and strata.  And since they are both true, they must agree.  I’ve written about it before.  Go back and find it if you want to read it.  Type “Genesis” and it will come up. 

Someone told me the other day that the dinosaurs lived “after” the time of Adam and I was so dumbfounded that I didn’t have anything to say. No reason to correct them concerning strata evidence.  The ice cores show 66 million years of “nothing” to speak of in strata after the dinosaurs lived.  Unless something lived in water, it didn’t survive.   Then God speaks, creates new land animals and then...Adam.  In God’s image.

They also said that carbon dating wasn’t true.  Give or take a few years I might agree.  Since the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago I doubt the time line is off much.  Every living thing is made of carbon...hence...oil.  

Some people you can discuss an idea with.  Some people you can’t.  I find that difficult.  I want everyone to know the Biblical account is true and how you can know that it is true.  Faith that is not based on truth is blind and useless.  We base our faith on God’s word being true cover to cover.  

 I have been plowing my way through Joshua, Judges, and on to Samuel one and two.  And am really glad I was born in this time and don’t have to do all the rituals, sacrifices and meetings the Israelites had to deal with.

I was talking to a Biblical scholar the other day about the Hebrew language and how it affected the words in the King James Bible.  The conversation turned to Genesis, and they said that death came through Adam because he was the first man to die.  They went on to say that you couldn’t use carbon dating because it wasn’t accurate--since the first person on earth was Adam.  I contended that he was the first Spirit filled man.  

I said that Adam’s death in the Bible referred to spiritual death.  Adam had the breath of God, (the Holy Spirit) and that after he sinned the rest of the history was about God’s restoration of his HolySpirit to us through the sacrifice of Jesus.  And they said no--the Bible was talking about Adam’s physical death.  

Adam wasn’t the first to die, Able was.  At least I know when my end of the conversation is over.

 I have difficulty making small talk anymore with anyone.  

It has been a year since the attack on the Government in D.C.  There have been hundreds of arrests, people are in prison, and the Republican Attorney General gave one of the most inspiring speeches I have heard this year on the subject saying that those arrests were low hanging fruit and the arrests will go all the way to the top...to those who planned it and paid for all the  airfares to get people to arrive there at the same time, to attack the Capital.  I was surprised at his speech.  But I told Carolyn that it reminded me of Churchill and Roosevelt’s speeches during WWII.

It sounds like they are trying to find out who planned it.  Military gear, and equipment, coordination, etc.  There are nuts out there, but something that none of us could have imagined happened.  I didn’t think democracy was so fragile.  It doesn’t matter as much who did it, just that if it was done once, it can happen again.  There are enough crazy people in the world to try again.  It would be sad if every election ended in a war no matter who won.

We have always believed that our Republican and Democratic leaders would do the right thing. Ken took an oath to support the President of the United States.  He served under every president from the time when he was 18 until he was removed from on-call duty at the age of 65.  He served under all of them and never questioned their party.  We are Americans.  We can do better than this. 

Freezing again.  My friend Jeanette had a broken water line outside.  It is not a good bet that you can find a plumber in weather like this, but she found one.  God is good.

If you are going to be a plumber for your living, settle in a place where it doesn’t freeze.  Can you imaging working in freezing water in sub-freezing weather!!  R E S P E C T.  

And those people on highway 95 out of DC.  Stuck in freezing weather for over 24  hours with children, no food, water, running out of gas.  Some on their way to hospitals.  That must have been agony.  I lived there for three years.  I can’t imagine being stuck in the car with my children for twenty four hours. That would have been agony!  Especially on Highway 95. 

But we don’t think much about starving, cold people stuck in third world countries with nowhere to go and no hope.  How blessed we are to live in America.  Even when things go wrong, we have hope.  Even when the supply chain breaks down, we know someone somewhere is going to fix it eventually. I tried to buy Fritos yesterday.  You can’t find them.  Nobody around here has them stocked.  And haven’t got a reason for it.

If all else fails, fry potatoes.  That’s what our grandmothers did.

I really like to teach the book of Hebrews.  It is a letter to Christian Jews explaining that their life of rules, sacrifices, holy days and methods of receiving information from God--has ended.  With their acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah, their world has been turned upside down.

The Jews were elite.  The people of God.  His special group.  Now, salvation was open to everyone.  Open to people that the Jews didn’t like.  People that they had always considered inferior.  In addition, all of their rituals were no longer relevant.  Jesus changed everything.

God tore open the veil to the Holy of Holies, and now the whole world had access to God through the death and atonement of Jesus’s sacrifice.  This was almost an impossible thought for Jews who were used to one high priest going into the Holy of Holies once a year to offer sacrifice for their sins.  Now, anyone could personally ask forgiveness in Jesus name.

The writer explained that Jesus would forever more be the high-priest for the entire world.  The Levitical tribe was no longer necessary.  God was now open to every one.  Anyone could go straight to Him through Christ.

This was a big problem for Jews to wrap their mind around.  And the writer(s) of Hebrews does an excellent job of explaining it.

We are three days into 2022, and I have actually accomplished something.  I cleaned up all the paper, books, cards, etc. on the floor around my chair!!  The floor is my desk top.  I open mail, write checks, etc. and throw the residue on the floor to deal with when I get up out of the chair.  And then don’t do it most of the time. . It was a mess

Maybe I am a paper slob, but I can’t ever decide at the moment what to do with stuff like that.  However, now it is done.

The beautiful December with record high temperatures has gone.  Yesterday it was 15 degrees with wind temps at minus 5.  Brrrr....

I taught my lesson by phone.  Five of us were on a call.  It worked out well.  None of them wanted to get out in the weather.  We had snow as well as the cold.  Everyone chimed in.

I covered the four topics of Hebrews that the writer was trying to get across.  1. Angels aren’t how God is going to speak to us any more.  God’s Son is who speaks now in his Word. 2.  There was rest in the promised land, but now rest will come when we go to heaven. 3. No more Levitical priests.  Jesus is our High Priest.  4. Faith is what is necessary.  No more sacrifices.  Jesus is our once for all sacrifice for our sins.