BoyGeeding has just been introduced to paper football and he loves it. It was fun spending about an hour with him on Saturday teaching him how to fold one and flick it. I have to admit it took me a few tries to remember how to make a decent paper football. Later in the day, I wandered off to accomplish some chores and couldn’t find a certain cardboard box I wanted to store some stuff in. Lo and behold BoyGeeding bogarted it and made his own football stadium. What I love about this is that a good portion of his Saturday afternoon was spent using his imagination, paper, cardboard, markers, and a few straws – he was thoroughly entertained without any screentime or any toy bought at a store.
I mentioned WifeGeeding recently visited the Biltmore Estate. I’m certain a decent chunk of that place (along with similar mansions which offer tours) which is closed off are empty and unfurnished rooms. The place has 250 rooms in the house, including 35 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms. Surely, over the years, furniture was sold and sections of the house were simply closed off.
It’s been a while since I’ve been in a “Reply All” fiasco. It happened yesterday at the federal agency I’m associated with, and the “Reply All” went agency-wide with a plethora of folks asking to be removed from the list, telling everyone to stop replying all, ill-fated attempts at humor, and revealing way too much personal stress.
I heard back from Junior Miller and the tone of his email was so apologetic I felt bad that I pointed out his list was a repeat. But I did learn he came really close to adopting a rescue dog but someone else beat him and his new wife to it.
The lengths POTUS is going to keep his tax returns private raises questions about what could be in them.
I’d like to see a script with Mad Men’s Don Draper and New Coke. I can’t figure out if I’d like to see him advocating for or against it, or, him rescuing the company after the fiasco and slapping the “Classic” and “Original Formula” tag on the cans and bottles.
WifeGeeding is visiting the Biltmore Estate today with her mother and sisters. I understand I may sound hypocritical because of what I wrote about a couple of teachers taking a full week off before Thanksgiving and Christmas break and thus getting two full weeks off. I’ll just say this was her decision and the timing and amount of time off makes the comparison different. But as several of you stated, you ain’t got no problem with a teacher taking any time off during the school year.
Google will help you pronounce difficult words – When you look up a pronunciation, Google will provide an answer, and when you say the word into your phone’s microphone, Search will let you know if you said it correctly.
Mr. Rogers sure did have neat handwriting (see photo at the top of this post). I found that photo in the following article (it’s a long read) and provided a few snippits I found interesting. I didn’t like the mental image he gave me when he described a trip with him to his parent’s grave and him urinating behind a tree. But, I was amused to discover his email address was an AOL one with the handle “ZZZ143”. I felt like this article reveals Rogers’ spiritual side more than anything else I’ve read.
My Friend Mister Rogers – I first met him 21 years ago, and now our relationship is the subject of a new movie. He’s never been more revered—or more misunderstood.
A long time ago, a man of resourceful and relentless kindness saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. He trusted me when I thought I was untrustworthy, and took an interest in me that went beyond my initial interest in him. He was the first person I ever wrote about who became my friend, and our friendship endured until he died. Now a movie has been made from the story I wrote about him, which is to say “inspired by” the story I wrote about him, which is to say that in the movie my name is Lloyd Vogel and I get into a fistfight with my father at my sister’s wedding.
And so I have to start by mentioning that I have begun writing a story about Mister Rogers the day after two young men armed with assault rifles killed a total of 31 people in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
When I first visited the Neighborhood 21 years ago, one of his in-house writers, Hedda Sharapan, told me what had happened when he’d enlisted her to write a manual intended to teach doctors how to talk to children. She worked hard on it, using all her education and experience in the field of child development, but when she handed him her opening, he crossed out what she’d written and replaced it with six words: “You were a child once too.”
But as a correspondent he was emotionally forthcoming and intimate, closing often with the assurance that he kept me in his thoughts and his prayers—“And, I guess you know, each morning I pray for you; I really do”—and sometimes with ministerial ardor. “You are loved with a greater love than anyone could ever imagine, Tom. I trust that you’ll never ever forget that.”
He worked hard on his friendships; he prepared for his friendships; he took notes on his friendships; he even kept files on his friendships, and not long ago I found out that he’d kept a file on me — and in one of those boxes are the names of my wife, my dogs, and one of my nieces, who was facing trouble and for whom he prayed. There are also printouts of our correspondence and notes he took on our phone conversations, written on yellow legal pads in his eerily calligraphic hand.
Yet at the heart of the original creation is that Word (call it Love, call it Grace, call it Peace …) that essence which is lodged somewhere within each of us that longs for ultimate expression. If we choose to allow it to grow we’ll be given help. If we choose otherwise we won’t be forced. If there is such a thing as a “dark corner” of God’s nature then I think it’s God’s refusal to go back on the promise of “the creation’s freedom to love or not.”
In all the conversations we had over the years, I can remember only one about politics, when in the last year of his life he worried about the inevitable buildup toward the inevitable war in Iraq. In our correspondence, he limited political discussion to a single email about Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which came as an answer to one of my questions:
Last week I woke up thinking how I would like to go on the air and say something like “Whoever is without sin cast the first stone” or “The Lord’s property is always to have mercy” or some other outlandish thing, and then ask for a minute of silence to think about forgiveness for those who want it. In fact if our country could dwell on forgiveness for a while I think that would be the one real positive outcome of the pain which must be pervasive in the White House and beyond. I’ve already written letters to both the Clintons and the Gores saying that often “enormous growth comes out of enormous pain.” I trust that will be so for all of us. The attitude which makes me (sometimes physically) sick is the “holier than thou” one.
On the Musers radio morning show, Junior decided to rank the top five and bottom five people named “Jackson”. I was a little perplexed because back in October 2013 (5:09 mark) I called in asking him to do so and he delivered his ranking the following week, I just can’t find the audio of the latter. I tweeted the morning show about it and they briefly discussed it on air, but Junior said he is certain that he’s never ranked the Jacksons as he had to do research and would have remembered doing so. I’ve been asked to provide proof and haven’t had any luck looking at TheUnTicket.com and elsewhere, so I posted a request on the station’s subreddit. Someone stated they had the audio and thankfully he came through. I do love that someone referenced that this is the example of the Mandela Effect, which is basically when a broad range of people remember something a particular way but it turns out it’s incorrect. For example:
“Mr. Monopoly” has never worn a monocle. People appear to be conflating his depiction with that of Mr. Peanut.
In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter never said, “Hello, Clarice.” When Clarice first meets Hannibal Lecter, he simply says, “Good morning.” That’s it.
The Queen in Snow White never said, “Mirror, mirror on the wall.” The correct line is “Magic mirror on the wall.”
Ed McMahon never did a commercial for Publishers Clearing House, he endorsed American Family Publishers, and he never appeared on any doorstep to surprise the winner.
I’ll say this about Ambassador William B. Taylor who provided testimony yesterday at the impeachment hearing, he’s got a great radio or narration voice. Actually, he would be great as a stadium announcer.
When Daydreaming Takes Over Your Entire Life – For ‘maladaptive dreamers,’ the immersive fantasy worlds they generate gradually usurp reality — and going cold-turkey is an even bigger nightmare
The third annual Flat Earth Conference will start tomorrow in Frisco at the Embassy Suites. So, if you are looking to start an interesting conversation, that’s the place to be.
From the Ann Richards play, I learned there’s a tradition in which the outgoing governor dedicates a Bible verse to their successor. The tradition started in 1925 and you can view the complete list here, but here are few of the more recent ones:
Bill Clements for Ann Richards 1-15-91
Ecclesiastes 3:17 – I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.
Ann Richards to George Bush 1/17/95”
Amos 5:15(a) – Hate the evil, and love the good,
and establish judgment in the gate:
it may be that the Lord God of hosts
will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.
GW Bush for Rick Perry 12-21-00
Isaiah 40:28-31 – Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 31 but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Rick Perry for Greg Abbott 1-19-15
Matthew 20:25-28 – But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. 26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; 27 and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: 28 even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
