Saturday, May 31, 2008

Walking on a Glass Bridge: The Sundial Bridge

We had heard that it was complete glass bridge and you could drive your car on it. Well, not so. We drove up to Redding (About 3 hours away) and parked our car to walk on the glass bridge. It is made of foggy greenish glass squares but each square is supported by medal and the entire bride is held up by about 6 thick wires. The lake below the bridge was nice and cool for our hot bodies and we walked all the way across the bridge and below to the lake (about 1/4 mile). We sat around and soaked our feet in the pool while bathing in the sun.

It felt so good . . . as you can imagine.



Joy and Jill




Mom and Jill

Jenny and Christy

The Sundial


Cacey on the bridge

Cacey and Jill

We thought the daisies were pretty. There were tons of them.



Everyone minus Cacey and Joy


Cacey

Joy in the daisies

Christy smiling before really getting into the water




Mom sprained her foot. She had to use crutches everytime she walked. Christy sprained her ankle about a week before. They don't like to be tied down like that so they were hopping everywhere on one foot.




Skipping Rocks

Clark enjoying the cold water in the hot sun

Jill before getting really into the water


Clark



Joy

Clark and Jill

Mom and Christy

Joy

Joy and Cacey

Christy

Guess who's shoes?
(neat pic don't you think?)

Cacey

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Memorial Day

It seems like the last time we blogged was yesterday! Time goes fast . . . especially right now because we are busy, busy.

We have not forgotten about that fascinating tale we said we were going to post, but it is really vast and we keep gathering more records and getting more evidence and we have to keep editing it because there is so much.

You will soon find out what it is. Be patient. And if it ends up being about you, I guess there is nothing you can do about.

So Memorial Day went by and of course we enjoyed it even though people (who do not respect privacy) are busybodies and meddlers and happened to be
so especially on that Day. The poem below talks about what Memorial Day is about, why the poppy flower is so famously associated with Memorial Day, wrote the poem, etc.

This is a very good poem and we like poetry, so this is an especially nice one that sums up the meaning of fallen veterans.


By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem: Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient. It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible.

McCrae later wrote of it: "I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook. A young soldier watched him write it.

Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."

When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read: "The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.



This is not a poppy, but it was the only picture we could find with a flower! We are going to have to work on taking more nature pictures . . .

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Mexican Train

A friend of ours came over tonight. We had lots of fun and played Mexican Train afterwards (you play this game with dominoes). We laughed the whole time until we got so tired we did not laugh.. just smiled instead...

Ooh, a not so good drink?

we like to put our hands on our faces when we focus...

uh-huh... Jenny smiling at Christy...(I know you can't see Christy in the pic, but she is there. On the other side of the camera)

We like pictures that are natural and show our realistic expressions at the moment the pic was taken...

We must have been talking about something serious...

Mom, and Joy...


Mom talking to Dad...

a less realistic expression right?
(just kidding)!

Concentrating....

More concentration...
(see Cacey listening to the ipod in the background. -We love those things because you can put tons of music on them and we love music.)


picture of Cacey~She was thinking about something serious...Seriously!
you can see her profile against the black background, which gives the pic a pretty neat look.

Hey Jilly!

~Solitude~


“Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines.”
~Paul Brunton~



We all like to be alone, to be able to think and reflect on life in general. We have noticed that we like do this even more often right now (especially when we have a good book:).



“I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind”
~Albert Einstein~


I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
~Henry David Thoreau~

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
~Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854~


Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.
~Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun~


In solitude, where we are least alone.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage~


No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
~Jack Kerouac~


Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.
~Paul Tillich~




Interesting don't you think? And we dislike people who disrupt us, (we are thinking of certain people, who do not mind their own business and try to make it their business on how to live your life and [they need to practice solitude . . .]) in our solitude, for no reason at all.

Henry David Thoreau's books are interesting to read . . .



Interesting Judge

Hang 'em first, try 'em later.
~Roy Bean~


I know the law... I am it's greatest transgressor.

You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty.
~Roy Bean~



Judge Roy Bean rivals the reputations of Southwest bench and bar famous judges even more so then the famous "hanging judge" of Fort Smith, Arkansas, Isaac C. Parker.

A man who pretty much practiced a civil law form of justice being, "judge, jury, and executioner" all in one and who dispensed rulings between games of poker and drinking bouts. His only law book was the Revised Statutes of Texas for 1876 of which he ignored the laws he did not like.

But, he inspired respect for the law with his two six-shooters and creative punishments and sentencing such as the use of the bear-and-stake method for sobering up drunks.

Some legends cite Bean as being a "hanging" judge, but there is no record that he ever sentenced a man to be hanged.

A typical start out in his barroom court went, "Hear ye! Hear ye! This honorable court is now in session, and if anybody wants a snort before we start, step up to the bar and name your poison."

"It is the judgment of this court that you are hereby tried and convicted of illegally and unlawfully committing certain grave offenses against the peace and dignity of the State of Texas, particularly in my bailiwick, to wit: drunk and disorderly, and being Law West of the Pecos, I fine you two dollars; then get the hell out of here and never show yourself in this court again."

The Right to Privacy, To Be Let Alone


The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.
~United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas~


Hmmmm? . . .



Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?
~Jimmy Durante~

The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
~Erwin N. Griswold~


The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
~George Bernard Shaw~


Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have.
~Daniel Webster~

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

William Pitt the Elder


“Don't talk to me about a man being able to talk sense; everyone can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?”
~William Pitt the Elder~

(1708 – 1778)

The father of William Pitt the Younger, William Pitt the Elder was also Prime Minister of England from 1766 – 1768 . He was a commanding man and a natural orator having that gift of speech that great speakers have who are compelling and passionate, coupling their speeches with intense convictions able to sway their audience. He unfortunately suffered from gout early in his life, halting his career on and off, until his death at the age of sixty-nine.

He was an opponent of large and bloated governments like his son, (William Pitt the Younger), and understood America's war of resistance to England, stating,

“I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.”

“If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms -- never! never! never!”


Here are a few more of our favorite quotes by him.


"The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement." This sounds like our Fourth Amendment – The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects . . . equaling the right to privacy, to be let alone.


“So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain. . .”

“Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.”

Springtime . . .



. . . Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves is heard in our land . . .


Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A Few Of Our Favorite Poems

Dad quotes to us two poems. He always mixes them up. We don't know how he does it but we love it. We cannot duplicate it so we will just post both of them whole.

They are both by Robert W. Service

The Quitter

When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy to blow . . .
It’s the hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.


"You're sick of the game!" Well, now that’s a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
"You've had a raw deal!" I know — but don't squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit, it’s so easy to quit.
It’s the keeping-your chin-up that’s hard.


It’s easy to cry that you're beaten — and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight —
Why that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and battered and scarred,
Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.




Carry On!


It’s easy to fight when everything’s right,
And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It’s easy to cheer when victory’s near,
And wallow in fields that are gory.
It’s a different song when everything’s wrong.
When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it’s ten against one, and hope there is none,
Buck up, little soldier, and chortle;

Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't much punch in your blow.
You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind;
You're muddy and bloody, but never you mind.
Carry on! Carry on!
You haven't the ghost of a show.
It’s looking like death, but while you've a breath,
Carry on, my son! Carry on!

And so in the strife of the battle of life
It’s easy to fight when you're winning;
It’s easy to slave, and starve and be brave,
When the dawn of success is beginning.
But the man who can meet despair and defeat
With a cheer, there’s the man of God’s choosing;
The man who can fight to Heaven’s own height
Is the man who can fight when he’s losing.

Carry on! Carry on!
Things never were looking so black.
But show that you haven't a cowardly streak,
And though you're unlucky you never are weak.
Carry on! Carry on!
Brace up for another attack.
It’s looking like hell, but -- you never can tell:
Carry on, old man! Carry on!

There are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt,
And some who in brutishness wallow;
There are others, I know, who in piety go
Because of a Heaven to follow.
But to labour with zest, and to give of your best,
For the sweetness and joy of the giving;
To help folks along with a hand and a song;
Why, there’s the real sunshine of living.

Carry on! Carry on!
Fight the good fight and true;
Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer;
There’s big work to do, and that’s why you are here.
Carry on! Carry on!
Let the world be better for you;
And at last when you die, let this be your cry:
Carry on, my soul! Carry on!


Who Is The Greatest In The Kingdom Of Heaven?

And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, (the disciples)
And said,



Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea . . .


Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.





~Matthew 17~


Dictionary Note: The definition of despise used in this parable is to, loathe, to scorn, to look down upon with contempt, to sniff, to turn the nose up at, etc.