Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt: Colorful

Posted on August 16, 2008 by Barbara Harper

Theme: Colorful| Become a Photo Hunter

I was at a loss as to what to post today…I had a couple of ideas, but none that seemed very interesting to me. Then on my way to bed last night I spied this picture on the wall and realized it fir the bill in two ways. I almost came right back down and scanned it, but it was already pretty late.

This picture was taken more than 20 years ago to be in an ad for the company my husband worked for. As I recall he wasn’t originally supposed to be in the ad, but when they got ready to take the photo they needed someone, and he was there.

He makes a right handsome model, dontcha think? 🙂

He is with one of the main tools of his trade from that job, a scanning electron microscope (and all I know about it is what to call it! Though I was tickled once when on the TV show “Quincy” someone mentioned running something through the SEM and I knew what it was.) The photographer set up the colors to make the photo look science fictionish.

The picture fits the theme in another way because the bulk of my husband’s career in textiles has been in color matching. He makes sure that the color of the fiber his customer wants matches in fluorescent, incandescent, and natural lighting (that is it’s metamerism), running weather-related tests to make sure it doesn’t fade easily, tensile tests to make sure it is strong enough, etc. I told a little more about his job on an earlier photo hunt where the topic was plastic.

You can find more photo hunters’ entries at our hostess’s, TN Chick.

Book Review: It Happens Every Spring

Posted on August 16, 2008 by Barbara Harper

Gary Chapman and Catherine Palmer coauthored It Happens Every Spring, the first of a series, in order to illustrate through fiction some of Chapman’s teachings about dealing with seasons of marriage. I don’t think I have read any of Chapman’s books, but I have enjoyed several of Palmer’s.

The group of ladies in different stages of marriage meet in the “Just As I Am” beauty salon (though I love the truth of the song by the same name, I thought it was kind of ironic for the name of a place where people go to change something about themselves) which also has a tea room where the ladies chat while waiting for their appointments. Though we see glimpses into all of the marriages, the main focus of this book is on Brenda and Steve, a middle-aged couple whose children are grown and gone, one to the mission field and two to college. Brenda’s dreams of spending their empty nest years doing things together are dimmed when Steve finds a second wind in a new career and is gone from the house most of the time, even taking clients out to eat most evenings a week. They both know that they have problems, but they both withdraw and inwardly blame the other, until the resulting vulnerability of Brenda brings the marriage to a crisis.

I thought the subject was handled well and the changes in point of view illustrated how each other’s behavior looked and was interpreted by the other. The conflicts and feelings were realistically expressed and handled. The other ladies show a great range in ages and personalities as well as seasons in relationships. Even though in some places it seemed obvious that the plot was fitted around Chapman’s teaching points, overall if flowed well and the book was a good read. I am looking forward to the next in the series.

This book review is being linked to Semicolon’s Saturday Review of Books.

Poetry Friday: Richard Armour

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Barbara Harper

This is almost a repost: I wrote about Richard Armour about a year and a half ago, but I wanted to share these for Poetry Friday.

Some years ago I came across a poem by Richard Armour in a book that was a collection of quotes and poems about home and family. I just loved his poem — it was both sweet and funny. I began to research to try to find out more about Amour and to find the book this poem came from. It turns out he was a prolific writer who used to have a newspaper column called “Armour’s Armory.” He’s written about home and family, history, Shakespeare, and a lot of other topics. Unfortunately most of his books appear to be out of print, but fortunately you can find many at amazon.com for a dollar or two plus shipping.

I did finally find the poem I was seeking in The Spouse in the House. The book jacket calls his verse “playful” and “human as well as humorous.”

Here’s the poem that first intrigued me and started my search:

Teamwork

A splendid team, my wife and I:
She washes dishes, and I dry.
I sometimes pass her back a dish
To give another cleansing swish.
She sometimes holds up to the light
A glass I haven’t dried just right.
But mostly there is no complaint,
Or it is courteous and faint,
For I would never care to see
The washing job consigned to me,
And though the things I dry still drip,
She keeps me for companionship.

Here’s another:

Down the Tube

I’ve seen my wife with anger burn
At something that I never learn:
The toothpaste tube I squeeze and bend
At top and middle, not the end.

She scolds me, pointing out my error,
Makes use of scorn and taunts and terror,
But I forget and go on squeezing
The toothpaste tube in ways displeasing.

In larger things we are convivial:
What causes trouble is the trivial.

And here is a third relating to marriage:

Well, Come In

You can have your Welcome mats.
I ask for just a little more
When I come home from work, and that’s
A Welcome mate inside my door.

Big A Little a for the Poetry Friday roundup today.

Seen today…

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Barbara Harper

I just saw a headline for an article titled, “Your bag is boring.”

My immediate thought was, “My bag is not here to entertain you.”

🙂

Show and Tell and a decorating question for you

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Barbara Harper

Kelli at There’s No Place Like Home hosts “Show and Tell Friday” asking “Do you have a something special to share with us? It could be a trinket from grade school, a piece of jewelry, an antique find. Your show and tell can be old or new. Use your imagination and dig through those old boxes in your closet if you have to! Feel free to share pictures and if there’s a story behind your special something, that’s even better! If you would like to join in, all you have to do is post your “Show and Tell” on your blog, copy the post link, come over here and add it to Mr. Linky. Guidelines are here.

I wanted to show this cute little shelf set actually on the wall…and I was going to hang them up myself, but the places that are supposed to catch on the nail were in odd places (different heights on the back), and I thought I’d better wait for my husband.

These were on sale at My Rose Retreat in connection with Pink Friday a couple of weeks ago. I can’t wait to get them up!

I also wanted to show the progress on my cross stitch piece:

The area that comprises the shine in the window was 1 thread in only a half cross stitch. That certainly goes a lot faster! But I have never done that and wasn’t sure I’d like it –but I do.

I also wanted to ask for some opinions. I found fabric for my family room curtains months ago, but I’ve been held up starting them because I couldn’t find any trim here in town. Then just a few weeks ago I got some at a place going out of business, but I am not quite sure about it and haven’t had a chance yet to go to another town and explore. I am almost of a mind to skip the trim altogether.

Here are the two fabrics:

The pattern has long straight curtains panels topped by a valance which is done in such a way that you see a little bit of the lining. I was going to use the checked fabric as the main fabric for the curtains and valance and the toile as the lining of the valance that will show in places. But I thought it was too pretty to have so much of it hidden. But I don’t like using it as the main fabric for the valance (I am positioning these according to what I am trying to describe, though of course it would be gathered and cut to a pattern):

I thought about making a double valance instead, one with the toile, and a shorter one with the checked fabric over the checked panels, so that more of the toile could be seen all the way across:

And then I have thought about just using the checked fabric for the valance and panels and saving the toile for pillows. The place I bought the toile from had just enough for the valance and I was going to need more for the pillows anyway: this would solve that problem.

The trim shown is what I bought at the going-out-of-business place. It’s about the color of the couches in that room. If I don’t use it on the valance I can use it on pillows.

So — if any of my descriptions have made sense — what do you think? Trim, no trim, a different trim? Toile lining, toile valance, no toile?

And thanks for sharing. It is these kinds of (in)decisions that hold me up in getting projects done.

Booking Through Thursday: Gold Medal Reading

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Barbara Harper

I haven’t done a Booking Through Thursday for a while, but today’s question intrigued me:

First:

Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general?
Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both?

And, Second:

Do you consider yourself a sports fan?
Because, of course, if you’re a rabid fan and read about sports constantly, there’s a logic there; if you hate sports and never read anything sports-related, that, too … but you don’t have to love sports to enjoy a good sports story.
(Or a good sports movie, for that matter. Feel free to expand this into a discussion about “Friday Night Lights” or “The Natural” or whatever…)

To answer the second question first, I am not a sports fan in general. In fact, I have had to wrestle through some negative feelings about sports. I don’t have an athletic bone in my body and P.E. was always my valley of humiliation in school. Even in friendly church games I didn’t miss the rolling of eyes, sighs of exasperation, or the nearly knocking over of people (myself and others) by the more competitive who were trying to get the shot they were sure we’d miss (and then they’d wonder why I decided to just sit on the sidelines and watch…) And in small schools, sometimes the athletes and their fans form the “in crowd” and everyone else is just “out.” And any involvement in sports these days just seems to take over a family’s time and life.

But I did come to see that there could be many benefits to sports. There are the obvious physical benefits, of course, and the learning to work together in team dynamics, learning to win or lose with grace, learning to stretch yourself in various ways. My oldest son’s very first baseball coach was a teddy bear of a man with an encouraging style who always brought home spiritual illustrations: I can remember his giving out team trophies and reminding them that, as special as those trophies were now, someday they would gather dust in the attic, and encouraging them to “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

And there is just something about the Olympics that draws me, particularly the gymnastics and swimming at the summer games and the ice skating at the winter ones.

And, as the question indicated, I can enjoy a good sports story even though I am not generally a sports fan. One of the first I specifically sought out was the story of Pete Maravich after seeing clips of an interview with him on 20/20 that were being replayed after his death. I had heard several celebrities who professed to some kind of faith but whose lives didn’t reflect it, and my first impression of Pete was that he seemed thoroughly genuine. I found his auto-biography, Heir to a Dream, published about a year before he died. It told how he was groomed to be a basketball player (with a basketball tucked into his childhood bed at night rather than a teddy bear), his rise to fame, the realization that sports and glory don’t satisfy, and how he came to know the Lord.

Another favorite sports-related book was the biography of Eric Liddell, the runner made famous in the film Chariots of Fire. He was a believer and refused to run on Sunday during the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Because of that he missed the race he trained for and he was put into another — and won the gold medal and broke a world record. Just before the race, a masseur has passed to him a piece of paper on which was written 1 Samuel 2:30, “Those who honor me I will honor.” Eric later became a missionary to China. The Japanese took over the mission where he was stationed during WWII and he and other missionaries as well as children from the China Inland Mission Chefoo school were held at the Weihsien Internment Camp, where he later died of an inoperable brain tumor. The particular biography I read was not very well written, so I won’t mention it here as there are others which I am sure are better, but another book which tells of Eric in the prison camp is called A Boy’s War by David Michell, who was a child in the Chefoo school during this internment.

Other favorites were Comeback and When You Can’t Come Back by Dave Dravecky, the baseball player whose career came back but then ended after a tumor in his shoulder. I had seen an interview with him on 20/20 as well and was inspired to read more.

When it comes to sports films, one of my favorites is The Rookie with David Quaid based on the true story of pitcher Jim Morris.

When someone tells me I am doing something wrong…

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Barbara Harper

…what should my response be?

Well, my usual (inward) reaction is to think, “Who do you think YOU are?” or to think of their flaws. Not a very spiritual reaction, is it?

On the one hand we all know we are far from perfect, but on the other hand, we bristle when anyone points out an imperfection. Really, we should just be grateful it doesn’t happen as often as it could.

These days we feel that if anyone tries to reprove us about anything, they’re judging. But what does the Bible say?

As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear. Proverbs 11:12.

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. Proverbs 9:8.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise. Proverbs 12:15.

A wise son heareth his father’s instruction: but a scorner heareth not rebuke. Proverbs 13:1.

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. He that refuseth instruction despiseth his own soul: but he that heareth reproof getteth understanding. Proverbs 15:31-31.

A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool. Proverbs 17:10.

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him. Proverbs 26:12.

What if the reprover isn’t very kind about it? Though there are instructions throughout Scripture about how to rebuke someone in a right way, there is also throughout Scripture the principle that I am supposed to do what’s right regardless of what the other person does. In all of the instructions in Ephesians 5 and 6 about relationships, it does not say, “You do this IF he does that.” No, each person is responsible for the instructions given to him or her whether the other person fulfills his or her responsibilities as instructed. And in this, too, just because someone doesn’t correct us in a “right” way doesn’t mean we’re off the hook and can write off whatever they’re saying.

But what if the person really is judging? We just can’t please everyone. Wherever our convictions are, someone will always be more conservative, and usually in a heartfelt rather than a Pharisaical way, even if that might be what they sound like — usually they do have some reason for the convictions they have. Romans 14:3 does say, “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him” in regard to the disputations over eating meat, and we can extract that principle of not judging the one whose convictions are looser than ours or despising the one whose convictions are stricter than ours and apply it to other areas of difference where the Bible doesn’t give clear instructions. But Paul does go on in the rest of that chapter to make the case that sometimes we need to restrain ourselves even from something we might feel it is all right to do if it offends someone else. Paul says in I Corinthians 8:12-13, “But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

How unlike the spirit of many Christians in this age, in which the attitude is often, “If you’ve got a problem with something I am doing, it is YOUR problem and you’re being a judgmental hypocritical Pharisee.” And then often each side creates schisms by trying to drum up supporting opinions from others.

Christ did have harsh words for true Pharisees, but if you study out those instances in Scripture, it was a far different situation than what we have today when one earnest Christian approaches another about something in his or her conduct. The Pharisees were not true believers and were basing their acceptance before God on their excessive works, rituals, and rites that went far beyond what God outlined in the Old Testament law. It is totally uncalled for to name another Christian brother among their ranks just because he has a different view of things than we do.

So how should I respond if someone tells me I am doing something wrong? In meekness, not anger and defensiveness, I should assume they have the best intentions and examine what they say, bringing it before the Lord to see if it is something truly wrong, or if it is something that is all right, but I should refrain myself for the sake of that person’s conscience. If it is something I still free to do, I should still react kindly to the person doing the rebuking. Maybe they can accept that the issue is an honest and allowable difference of opinion; maybe not. But they are a lot more likely to if we handle the matter with grace (even though it stings) than if we react harshly.

If we’re truly in the right, we have the example of Christ to emulate in I Peter 2:

19 For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.

20 For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

25 For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

What shall we do?

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Barbara Harper

I am in the book of John for my devotions just now, and this morning I came across this passage, a conversation that took place when the people among the 5,000 who were miraculously fed came looking for Jesus the next day:

26 Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.

27 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?

29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

That last verse is one of the most precious to me. There is no other “work,” no ritual, no hoping the good things outweigh the bad that will make me acceptable to God.

No merit of my own His anger to suppress.
My only hope is found in Jesus’ righteousness.

For me He died, For me He lives,
And everlasting life and light He freely gives.

(Words and music by Norman J. Clayton)

Children’s Classics: Chapter Books

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Barbara Harper

The 5 Minutes For Books site us starting a monthly focus on children’s classics, and this month the topic is chapter books for 8-12 year olds.

My oldest son was my only avid reader at this age, and one of his favorite series was Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective. He was analytical and enjoyed figuring things out, so detective stories fit the bill for him. As far as I can remember they were clean and wholesome: looking them up now I see they’s updated the covers: I hope they haven’t “updated” the stories, because that usually doesn’t bode well. He read them in the mid-90s: I am not familiar with any in the series after that.

He read some of the Hardy Boys when he got older, but didn’t seem to take to them as well.

The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder is good for this age as well. We read one or two of them out loud together when we were homeschooling.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember as many of these books as I do the books for younger kids, probably because at this point he branched off into reading on his own rather than our reading together. For a while I tried to read everything he read, but he had a lot more time to read than I did then. 🙂

And though I was a voracious reader as a child, I don’t remember what specific books I read then, either.

But you can find others’ recommendations here.

And although the subject is classic books, and, though what is a classic is loosely defined, these books haven’t been around long enough to be called classics, I would highly recommend the Journey Forth division published by BJU Press. They are well written, wholesome, character-building books. Our absolute favorites were the Peabody Adventure series by Jeri Massi, and we also enjoyed A Father’s Promise by Donnalynn Hess, about a boy living through WWII, Medallion by Dawn Watkins, the Bracken Series by Jeri Massi, The Treasure of Pelican Cove by Milli Howard, and These Are My People by Milli Howard, about missionary Gladys Aylward.