Janet has a powerful message for us today.
Archive by Author
Two Are Better Than One
26 DecFrom my Heart
Louise Gibson
People need people.
It was imbedded in our soul..
Make reaching out to others
your foremost God-given role.
So simple, so painfully simple.
Two are better than one.
Two are more effective,
and,oh, so much more fun.
Friendships blossom over shared labor.
And we accomplish much more that way.
Open your heart to another.
See how it brightens your day.
Two are better than one for walking.
For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
for he has no one to help him up. Ecclesiastes 4:20
Two are better than one for working.
Two are better than one, because they have a good
reward for their labor.Ecclesiastes 4:9
Share this:
Christmas Blessings
25 DecOn the Porch
Onisha Ellis
The Three Wise Men is the most compelling image of Christmas for me this year. As I contemplate the gift of the Christ child, I give thanks. I pray that like the wise men I will seek him with my whole heart.
Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.
Thank you for being a part of our Old Things R New family
Share this:
Christmas Melancoly
24 DecOn the Porch
Onisha Ellis
Christmas wrappings pushed aside
Making room for a toddlers ride.
Colored papers bagged away
Must have space for Lego play.
A paper mess left in the floor
Disgruntled teen looks for more.
Share this:
My Colonial States Trip~Part 6
24 DecA Slice of Life
Bill Lites
I headed west back across the border into Maine toward my next stop in Bangor, ME to get a picture of the 31 foot tall Paul Bunyan statue. It is rumored that the Paul Bunyan myth originated in the early 1800s with lumberjacks exchanging many of their tall-tales across the northern territories, including in and around the northern Maine forest area known as The Devil’s Half-Acre. The story has grown to great proportions over the years, most usually with Paul Bunyan being accompanied by his faithful companion “Babe” the blue ox. Paul Bunyan was said to have wondered the woods displaying his bigger than life super-human strength and abilities.
While I was in Bangor, I visited the Cole Land Transportation Museum which houses an amazing collection of vehicles from bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks to a diesel locomotive and a WWII tank. This museum’s dedication to honoring America’s military personnel and the equipment they used in the various war efforts our country has been involved in was truly gratifying.
Before leaving Maine I wanted to be sure I experienced a New England lobster meal, so I had dinner at the Weathervane Seafood Restaurant in Waterville, ME where I had a bowl of New England Clam Chowder, as an appetizer, followed by a 1-pound Maine lobster. The chowder was excellent as was the lobster, even if it was a battle getting to the tail meat. I guess I’ve been spoiled with how the Florida restaurants split the underside of the Florida lobster tails for their guests, making it much easier to get at that delicious tail meat.
Having satisfied my Main lobster craving, I now headed west again thru the upper part of Maine and into New Hampshire to visit the Gorham Railroad Museum in Gorham, NH where I got a personal tour of the station museum, as well as a running history of the Grand Trunk Railway system, that pretty much put the city of Gorham on the map in 1751. At the end of the tour, Bob, my tour guide even gave me a homemade muffin his wife had baked that morning. Now you can’t beat that for museum hospitality can you?
Next it was west again to check out the Vermont Railroad Museum in White River Junction, VT which actually turned out to be an active Amtrak station. The station is also used by the Green Mountain Railroad to provide passenger excursion trains to Thetford and Norwich, VT. The station was built in 1937 as a Union Terminal to serve the Boston & Maine Railroad, the Central Vermont Railroad and the Rutland Railroad.
While I was in Vermont I planned to visit the Railroad Museum in Bellow Falls, VT only to find that the museum and most of its rolling stock had been incorporated into the Steamtown U.S.A. collection, run by the National Park Service and moved to Scranton, PA. Since by now I was headed south, I decided not to make a side trip that far west and continued toward my next stop at the Saratoga Automobile Museum in Saratoga Springs, NY. As it turned out, I got to the museum late in the day and the museum was hosting a huge auto show. All the cars were in an enclosed area where the admission ticket was more than I wanted to pay, since I wouldn’t have had time to see the entire display.
—–To Be Continued—–
Share this:
Cookie Party
22 Dec
My Take
DiVoran Lites
It’s so frustrating to have plans for a day and get up late, and then you have other things to do such as feed the cats and cut your hair before you take a shower. I felt I needed to bake a second batch of cookies for the cookie exchange that night because the hostess asked for three dozen. I haven’t baked cookies in a long time and didn’t know if I still could, thus a trial run.
Anyhow, until I drank my coffee that morning and had a good chat with my daughter, I was feeling frustrated. Finally, I gave up my own plans, which majored on writing and went with the flow of the day.
When I got to the party that evening four women were already there. We had good conversation. No one hogged the floor; no one regaled us with a rant or complained about her lot in life. We were simpatico and as Christians, we were one. That always feels so good!
My cookies were a variation of the recipe on the back of the chocolate-chip bag. I always experiment with every recipe I try, so I thought I’d go for a crispy cookie with lots of nuts instead of a chewy one. Having wondered for fifty years why I must always use brown sugar, I decided to Google the question. In the past, I’d buy it, use enough for one recipe, and have the rest of the box on hand for as many years as it took to turn into solid rock. (I know there are ways to overcome that.) I googled it and the answer was that it was brown because of the molasses added to it and that’s what made the cookies more chewy. I didn’t buy brown sugar. For various reasons, which I won’t go into right now, the first batch was light golden, and raised, and the second batch was crisper, flatter, browner, and not so sweet. I liked the second batch best.
An hour and a half into the party two other guests arrived with their cookies. It was then that we heard all about the vagaries of cookie baking when you’re older, there aren’t any kids in the house, and you’ve given up baking cookies. One woman expressed all my anxieties in a funny soliloquy. Few recipes she found used brown sugar and she wasn’t going to make cookies without it. Her first batch, in spite of two ovens and two timers, came out burnt and as hard as hockey pucks. She threw those away. I went home when the party was just getting started. I wanted to get to bed early so I could get up today and write.
And guess what, here I am — writing. Oh, Happy Day.
Here is someone who had no plans for the day.
Ps. 118:24 – This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.
Share this:
How to decorate the perfect Christmas tree.
20 DecOur Christmas tree isn’t decorated yet. I will be thinking of Janet’s words when we do decorate it.
Share this:
A Servant’s Heart
19 Dec
From my Heart
Louise GIbson
The true spirit of Christmas is one of giving.
To give of yourself is the greatest gift of all.
To follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
we learn to develop a servant’s heart
in answer to our Savior’s call.
Jesus welcomes, “Come, follow Me.
I will make you a fisher of men,”
“Oh, yes, dear Lord, I want to follow you.
Life on earth is not he end!
The three Marys who served
The three most prominent women in the gospels
were all named Mary. The first was Mary of Nazareth.
God chose her to raise Jesus because of her servant’s
heart.
“For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;
for behold, “henceforth, all generations will call me blessed,”
The second was Mary of Bethany. She was His student.
Whenever she appeared in the gospels, she was at
the feet of Jesus.
The third was Mary of Magdala. Though successful in
business, she had deep spiritual needs in her life.
Jesus freed her from demons, saved her, and she
became His zealous supporter. She supported His
ministry from her own resources, according to Luke 8:1-3.
* Painting by DiVoran Lites
Share this:
My Colonial States Trip~Part 5
17 DecA Slice of Life
Bill Lites
The next morning I planned to start the day with a visit to the Maine Maritime Museum located in Bath, ME but they didn’t open until later in the day and as the poem by Robert Frost goes, “The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.” So I just kept on trucking up US #1 toward Owls Head, ME and the Transportation Museum there. This is one of the best transportation museums I have ever visited, where many of their over 150 transportation vehicle collection are from the pre-1920s era, and they all operate as originally designed. I got my first ride in a 1915 Ford Model T, and it ran like a sewing machine. What a thrill that was!
I would like to have stayed longer in that museum, but I headed north on US #1 again toward my next stop at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, ME. This museum is Maine’s oldest maritime museum and is designed to preserve Searsport’s unique maritime and shipbuilding history. It is laid out as a 19th century seafaring village, with thirteen buildings, housing a collection of archival items focusing on the maritime history and life in New England during the early 18th century.
Now I was headed for Bar Harbor and Acadia Nation Park, located near the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, at the northeast edge of Maine. It was a beautiful day and the drive around Acadia National Park was breath-taking. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn, making the scenery that much more beautiful.
Next it was back thru Ellsworth, Maine and the long drive up US #1 thru Columbia Falls and Jonesboro to Calais and the Canadian border, where I was asked where I was going and what the purpose of my trip was. After I crossed the border into New Brunswick, for some reason, Greta wouldn’t recognize the motel address. It was after dark, and I didn’t have a map of the area, so I called the motel and the clerk told me which exit to take and then talked me into Fredericton, NB and to the motel. Wow, that was a life-saver, and what a relief it was! The next morning I visited the Christ Church Cathedral before heading out of town. The beautiful cathedral was built in 1853 and has continued to hold services right up to modern times. The front door was open and wonderful organ music was being played by someone on the church’s four-manual Casavant Freres Opus 2399 organ (which has more than 2500 wood and metal pipes). What a beautiful way to start one’s day.
I headed west to visit the Kings Landing Historical Settlement which is a late 18th century living museum, made up of almost 70 buildings, located on 300 acres, where period life of the “United Empire Loyalists” is re-created by costumed interpreters that bring to life the era with explanations of how the people lived, worked and played during that time in New Brunswick. As I walked toward the bridge, I was pleased to hear a mellow singing voice echoing across the water to me. When I arrived at the King’s Head Inn, there was the singer, sitting on a bench with his guitar, strumming more early British folk tunes for the people passing by. The village was very interesting but the usual transportation wagon never showed up and it ended up being quite a walk back to my car!
—–To Be Continued—–
Share this:
Christmas Miracles
15 DecMy Take
DiVoran Lites
Last year after I got HD lenses implanted in my eyes to replace my natural lens, which had grown cataracts, the surgeon, Dr. Tresplacious said I had the eyesight of a fighter pilot.
Well, I loved being able to see, especially colors. I told my friend, who had cataracts too, and the wonderful doctor removed hers. A month later she had to have a capsular haze removed. That’s when cataract material starts growing back. As far as I know it doesn’t often happen, but is not uncommon. She also had a shunt put in to treat the glaucoma diagnosed by this doctor. Essentially her eyesight had been saved.
My miracle is that I’ve gone a whole year without a capsular haze. Now it is happening to me, but the six months grace-time, tells me mine is growing more slowly. The scraping is a routine procedure. It doesn’t hurt because they have these great anesthetic drops they use.
In the doctor’s waiting room, I heard about another miracle. As a woman approached the chair next to mine, I admired her perfect appearance. I wanted to her how much I liked the way she looked. After all hadn’t Grandmother taught me to compliment strangers? This woman was a young seventy-five to eighty. Her hair was that beautifully striking black and white. She wore a white quilted jacket, black pants, and black pumps.
Of course, telling her how nice she looked started a conversation.
“This jacket won’t be warm enough when I go to the Northwest,” she said. She’s on her way to Washington State to be with her daughter and son-in-law. I asked if she had grandchildren.
“Yes, and I even have one great-grandchild.”
She asked if I had grandchildren. “They’re in college,” I nodded. “We saw them a good deal when they were growing up, but now they’re in college and it’s pretty much over. Can’t be helped, that’s just the way things are.
Then she told me about her miracle. He husband died on Father’s Day this year, and this will be her first Christmas without him. Even though I could see her heartbreak she kept insisting she was doing all right. No self-pity there. But here’s the miracle part. After her granddaughter had decided college wasn’t for her, she got a job at Disney. She needed a place to live until she could get out on her own, so she asked her grandmother if she could move in temporarily. They had a wonderful time together. Then the granddaughter got married, moved out and had a baby.
Next the grandson got a job at The Space Center and asked to live with her until he got settled closer to work. Now she has both grandchildren and a great grandchild on this coast instead of the other and sees them frequently.
“I expect my daughter and her husband will be moving here from Washington,” she said. Those are all the children they have.
We celebrated together. “Thanks for saying what you did about my appearance she said. It made my day.” Mine too.
You might like to look up Proverbs 31 in the Holy Bible and read it again. It’s a model of women for all ages.
Share this:
Old Things R New 