Category Archives: Reading

Words to Build a Life On

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Although I wrote this 8 years ago, it is still true today.

Grandma's Ramblings

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When I was a young girl just learning to read, my primary storybook was the Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible for Young and Old.  Originally published in 1904 it was the complete Bible story including the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Unlike most of today’s Bible Storybooks for children, this book was a continuous narrative of the Scriptures told in one hundred sixty-eight stories.  I loved reading about the Old Testament characters – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel and King David.  While other children of my generation read books about Dick and Jane that said,

See Spot run!

I was busy reading about the prophet Samuel who said,

Is the Lord as well pleased with offerings as He is with obeying His words?  To obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen to God’s word is more precious than to place offerings on His altar.

Today I am an avid and…

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Friday’s List of Funny Signs – for Laughter

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On a recent trip to Ludington, Michigan I saw some interesting signs along the way.

  1. from a restaurant: “Our fish come from the best schools.”
  2. from an ice cream parlor: “This is a happy place…if you are crabby, go home.”
  3. from the trail to the Big Sable Lighthouse at the life saving station: “Be prepared to go out, not to come back.”
  4. on a plaque in an antiques store: “4 out of 5 Great Lakes prefer Michigan.”
  5. on the door of an used book store: “Each time you read a book, a tree smiles, knowing there is life after death.”

Friday’s Quotes For Laughter and/or Wisdom – Robert Frost

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Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets.

One that I really love is “The Road Not Taken.” I feel the last
part of that poem in many ways sums up my life. Many times, I think I have
taken the “one less traveled by.”

Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference

Do I regret it? Never. It has made life interesting.

So here are a few of his quotes.  Hope you enjoy them.  If you have never read his poetry, I encourage you to do so.  I think you will enjoy them.

  1. Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
  2. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
  3. Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.
  4. Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
  5. The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
  6. If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.In three words I can summed everything I have learned about life…”It goes on.”
  7. Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.
  8. The best way out is always through.
  9. The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
  10. The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

Another list for Wisdom or Laughter

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In my reading I love to collect those one or two sentence phrases that make me laugh or make me think. Here are a few I hope you enjoy.

  1. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society…Mark Twain
  2. Why does a woman work ten years to change a man’s habits and then complain he is not the man she married?…Barbra Streisand
  3. The trouble with “A place for everything and everything in its place” is that there is always more everything than places…Elayne Bundy
  4. The reason they are called the opposite sex is every time you think you have fooled your wife, It’s just the opposite…Walter Winchell
  5. Before we work on artifical intelligence, why don’t we do something about natural stupidity?…Steve Polyak
  6. Three wise men – are you serious?…Author unknown
  7. You can learn much from children. How much patience you have, for instance…Franklin P. Jones
  8. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself…Tom Wilson
  9. If we’re not meant to have midnight snacks, why is there a light in the fridge?…Unknown
  10. I love being married. It’s so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life…Rita Rudner

Why Black History Month

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Because:

I heard of Paul Revere, John Hancock and Sam Adams, I never heard of Crispus Attucks, Salem Poor or Peter Salem.

I heard of Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. I never heard of Phyllis Wheatley.

A Black Poet?????

I heard of Alan Shepard and John Glenn. I never heard of Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson or Dorothy Vaughan.

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I heard of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr. James Salk. I never heard of Dr. Daniel Williams.

I could go on and on, but I hope you get my point.

I encourage you this month to do some searches on Google or at the library. Learn about some of these people – or others.

And read one or two of these books to better understand others different than you.

  • Red Summer, the Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America by Cameron McWhirter
  • Forever Free, the Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner
  • Wilmington’s Lie, the Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino
  • Life of a Klansman, A Family History of White Supremacy by Edward Ball
  • Never Caught, a story of George Washington’s pursuit of a slave while he was president, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Or, watch one or two of these movies:

  • 12 Years a Slave
  • 42
  • Glory
  • A Raisin in the Sun
  • Selma
  • Hidden Figures

My Own Personal “Rainbow Row”

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When we moved into our condo last spring my husband decided to work on the unfinished basement and create a place where he could fully enjoy his love of painting.  Before this move there was never a really good place for him to keep all his painting paraphernalia.  A place where he could also display his art work.

So – he began working and made a great “man cave.”

The Making of a Man Cave

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On a row, he decided to work on the second room in the basement.  Instead of putting up dry wall or paneling, he designed a mural – just for me.

A few years ago we spent several weeks in Charleston, South Carolina.  I fell in love with the city and especially loved the area called the Rainbow Row.  Paul bought me a tray painted with the colorful houses and it sits on a shelf above my kitchen sink.  Often I stand for a moment at the sink and remember that beautiful place.

Since we decided we would make this room a place where we could watch TV in the summer when the basement would be cooler than upstairs, he wanted to create for me that beautiful row of colorful houses.

These historic homes were built around 1740 and local merchants had their shops on the ground floor while they lived on the top floor.  At that time the houses were not the colorful ones we see today.

After the Civil War the area became a slum.  Then in 1931 Dorothy Haskell Legge brought the homes numbering 99 through 101 East Bay.  After renovating them, she had the houses painted pink.  Soon future owners began buying the house on East Bay and painting them in pastel shades.  By 1945 after most of the houses on this street had been restored.   Mrs. Legge was given an award from the Preservation Society of Charleston in 1992.

If you ever have the good fortune to visit Charleston, you must see this beautiful row of homes.

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I hope someday to go back and view these homes in person, but until that day, thanks to my husband I can enjoy the memories with my own Rainbow Row.  He is painting the concrete floor a grey/blue and soon I will have an easy chair to sit, read and remember!

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He has started a mural of the sea wall which is near Rainbow Row.  It is a work in progress as he will be adding sailboats to the sea.  This is still a rough scene but will be great when he is done.  Can’t wait for him to get that finished.

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A Time for Self-Assessment

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Dr. Tanya, at Salted Caramel, asked four questions about blogging.  She calls the questions “retrospective introspection.”  Reading your own work, she says, is sometimes called a form of narcissism but she thinks a better description might be self-evaluation or self-assessment.

With that in mind, I have responded to her questions.

Here are her four questions:

How old is your current blog/website? 

Do you ever look back at your site i.e. read through your old posts?

How long ago did you update your about page ?

If you were to start a new blog today, what would you do differently?

 

And my answers:

I started my blog in October 2014 but never really was consistent in regular posts until last year.

Occasionally I will look back for a particular blog when I am posting again on a similar topic.

Five months ago I updated the picture of me.  I was a redhead and after losing all my hair from cancer I still wore a red wig.  After turning 71 I decided it was time to go with grey so I updated my picture then.

I would be more consistent with my posts.  Since I became more consistent in 2019 my response has been much better – gaining more followers and getting more comments to my posts.  I would engage more with other bloggers.  Since I have started doing that I have made some great friends and have enjoyed hearing/seeing other places/countries and enjoying other viewpoints.

Check our her website at:  https://saltedcaramel670.wordpress.com/

Good Advice from the Apostle John

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In our devotion today my husband and I read the New Testament epistle 1 John.  Written by one of the disciples of Jesus the letter is, of course, giving advice about spiritual matters.

However, in light of today’s constant barrage of information from cable news, newspaper and magazines, twitter and Facebook accounts, I find his advice very timely and practical for our daily life.

His words:

My dear friends don’t believe everything you hear.  Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you.  

Oh, that we would all be careful and examine what we hear.  I see many people on Facebook sharing something they see that expresses their own view on a subject and they post it on their wall without ever checking to see who the post was from and if it is accurate.

Then, sadly, people begin repeating things they heard or saw as if it were true.

Let us follow St John’s advice and check for facts behind what we see or hear.

Something my husband says a lot applies here too:

Be careful of listening to half-truths.  You may have heard the wrong half.

 

I Cannot Live Without Books

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This sign hangs in my library/office.  And it is true.  As a young girl I discovered books and my love for them has never faded.

As a child, there was Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  Through Charles Dickens I met memorable characters such as David Copperfield, Pip, Oliver Twist and of course, Tiny Tim and Scrooge.

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As a teenager I loved the books by Grace Livingston Hill.  Hill’s books were romantic stories where the heroine was either a Christian or came to be a Christian in the course of the story.

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Then I found mystery books and loved Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson along with Agatha Christie’s detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

My favorite book as a child was Hurlbut’s  Bible for Young and Old.  Here I met characters like David, Daniel, Deborah, Ruth and had my first introduction to poetry through the book of Psalms.  As you can see, this book is well worn.  Although I do not read it now it sits in a favorite spot on my bookcase.

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When I had my own children I bought them more books than toys.  Through the years my collection of books continued to grow.  Even when our budget was tight, I always found room for a book.  One friend told me if I sold my books, I could get completely out of debt.  But there was no way I could survive without my books.

Last year when we downsized from a nine-room home to a five-room condo, I knew some books would have to go.  But how to decide what to keep, what to give away.  We donated over ten boxes of books to a local Christian school.  It was painful to part with them.

Now I am down to just three bookcases.  No room for more.  Yet I find myself still buying books.  Appealing to my husband to help me stop this obsession with books, he came home from local yard sales this week with more books he found for me.

My favorite category of books is biographies of the leaders of our nation.  From our presidents George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt to George W Bush to others who  like Henry Clay, Benjamin Franklin, Sojourner Truth, Marie Curie, Jeannette Rankin and Frederick Douglas played a big role in our history.

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Of course, I always love books on Christian beliefs.

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I am always reading at least two or three books at the same time.  Many books I read more than once.

Right now my stack of books to read include:

  • Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus by Lois Tverberg
  • Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw
  • America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laaura Kamoie
  • Daughters of the Church by Ruth A Tucker and Walter Liefeld
  • President Lincoln, the Duty of a Statesman by William Lee Miller

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I need to get through them because I have two books on order from the library.  Novels about the early history of Mackinaw Island.  And one of my favorite bloggers has written a novel, The Kirkwood Scott Chronicles- Skelly’s Square.  On order from Amazon  I definitely will put that one at the top of my list of books I must read.

Books are my friends.  They take me to places I will never be able to visit in person.  They introduce me to people whom I will never meet.  They challenge me with new thoughts and ideas.

What about you?

Do you love to read?

What genre of books do you like?

What is one of your favorite books?

 

 

 

 

 

Confessions of a Scrabble Addict!

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My name is Barbara and I am a Scrabble addict!

  • I must confess that I am constantly looking for new words to use in a game.  When I read a book I am on the outlook for new words.  As I glance through a magazine, my eyes just seem to latch on to new words in the articles or the advertisements.
  • During the commercials when I watch TV or wait at a restaurant for my food – or any other time I find myself waiting – I often write out a long word or a greeting such as “Merry Christmas” – then see how many words I can make from the longer word or greeting.  (My husband gets tired of finding these lists of words everywhere – in the desk drawer where we keep our mail – on the computer desk – on the end table next to my recliner.  I tell him I will stop – but I can’t seem to help myself.)
  • I actually “read” the dictionary looking for new words.
  • All my other hobbies take a back seat to the game – reading, writing, watching TV.  None of these are as important as getting my husband to join me in a game of scrabble.

I need help!  But……..

My husband is an addict too!

  • He also reads the dictionary learning new words.  He loves to take words he already knows and search to see how the plural or past tense would be spelled.
  • He recently started making a list of all the new words we find and use in our games.

Our daughter thinks we are nuts!

We take our Scrabble games seriously.  We have kept score of every game we have played since 2008.  Even the games we play with family or friends is entered in our book.

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We may have gone too far this winter!

With the cold weather we have been indoors more than usual the past few weeks and I think our Scrabble addiction has gotten out of hand.  My husband is now keeping a record of our average scores for each month.  We are in a serious contest to see who wins the most games for each month.

We play only Super Scrabble!

The regular size Scrabble board is 15″ x 15″ but we use the larger Super Scrabble board.  It is 21″ x 21″, has quadruple letters and words and twice the number of tiles as the regular Scrabble board.  Since we constantly try to increase our scores and take this so seriously, our games can last for two to three hours.  (But we are retired, it is cold outside, so who cares?)

Come on spring!

We really need warm weather to return so that we can regain some sanity and move on to other interests before our addiction overtakes us completely.

If you are addicted to Scrabble too, let me know.  We could start a Scrabble Anonymous Club.