604 Prayer Job Jar for this coming week

The actual, physical ceramic jar hasn't come to my attention yet--I'm keeping my eyes open, though. This week, the jar includes:

For Paula, having surgery, a speedy recovery
For Shoe, doctors who have wisdom, kindness and skill, and staff who call back promptly
For Gayle, the perfect home buyer
For Highland School, continued blessings from God
For UALC, Gospel message for all 10 services
For Phil, a church home
For our neighbor Mary, as she prepares to move
For Esther, a man of her mother's dreams
For our family members celebrating birthdays, thankful that it is no longer the 80s
For those suffering loss and abandonment, God's touch through friends, family and neighbors
For those with dementia and Alzheimers, a joyful sense of God's presence that goes beyond a tangled mind
For school teachers, stamina, love, and understanding
For our President, wisdom, strength, faithfulness, love, purpose, sound judgement and right stewardship of his office.

603 Save Your Shoulder Pads and Get a Perm

The sweater I took to the dry cleaners yesterday still had shoulder pads. But hey. The 80s are coming back--I'll just leave them. The perm I got in February won't die. The 80s are coming back--I'll encourage it.

Today's Wall Street article by Noah Oppenheim says the children of the 80s are now arbiters of fashion and culture, and they are panicked and returning to the womb. I think that's a bit dramatic. They aren't that frightened of Bush or the terrorists. I remember well in the 70s everyone was doing the 50s. Remember Grease and Happy Days? We didn't even have Ronald Reagan--just high inflation and Jimmy Carter. They tried a few things to resurrect the 70s in the 90s, but all that awful orange, gold and avocado green was just too imprinted in our memories and no one would go for it.

Here's what's coming back to celebrate the 80s:
Big hair
Shine and glitz
Excess and greed
Glam
Duran, Duran
Loud, hard rock
Crocodile Lacoste shirts
A-Team
Dallas
Dukes of Hazzard
U-2
Whoopie's new one woman show

Christmas 1985

602 Lighthouse Allure

Everyone it seems, loves a lighthouse. There are numerous sites on the internet devoted to this topic. Here's one with an alphabetic arrangement so I've selected Marblehead, Ohio from which you can see Sandusky. I thought the lighthouse was no longer operational, but the information at this site says it is. It is a popular tourist spot and includes the light keepers house. In October Marblehead celebrates its heritage here with a fall festival. Below is one of my paintings of Marblehead done with q-tips and acrylic paints. It's a fun method--especially if you know you won't be able to get it exactly right anyway, so why not just dab on the paint?

Picnic at Marblehead

601 Esther’s Middos Touch

“I’m looking for a girl with good middos,” the yeshiva boys of my youth would say. The teachers beamed, proud that their students were looking for girls with strong values — family, respect, and modesty. Problem is, nine times out of 10, those boys were punning on the Hebrew word middot, which also translates as measurements — as in 36-24-36.”

Esther’s story continues.

Esther is on my blog roll under “writers.” I think she is good--actually very good--and will be famous some day, and then I’ll sniff and say, “Oh her? Yes, I knew her back when she was tossing things over the transom, shopping her novel. I practically discovered her, you know.”

600 Current Events Word Quiz

Have you ever noticed how many words or phrases you know, but don’t know exactly. . . so you sort of skip over them and glean the meaning from something else in the sentence? You know what an OCLC is, but do you know what the original acronym stood for? Or HTTP or JAMA?

Here’s some words and phrases from the November 16 Wall Street Journal (or ads). Try to answer all before you check Google or click on my links.

1. What is the main ingredient in Pease Porridge?

2. To what does Pandora’s Box refer?

3. Who were the Bickersons?

4. What does the acronym FICA actually stand for?

5. Geographically, where is Hibernia?

6. Just what exactly is ozone?

7. Can you name the seven deadly sins?

8. What is Tom Jones (the singer) real name?

9. What is bling bling?

10. Echo boomers are younger than Gen-Xers, but what other name generally applies to this demographic?

I didn't give myself a point unless I could stake my reputation on the answer, so I only got 10% right. I knew #1 because I'd seen it recently on TV; although I sort of knew #5 and #9 because they are used so often, I wasn't positive. For #2 I had the story a little mixed up.

Links to the answers.

1. recipe and story
2. Blame the woman
3. marital mayhem drenched in caustic wit.
4. If you're a wage or salaried employee, you pay only half
5. Ptolemy’s map
6. and a list of what we don’t know about it
7. Among the recent advertising muffs have been a campaign that focuses on the seven deadly sins
8. married at 16
9. The Silvertones "Bling Bling Christmas" earliest use
10. high-tech, big-ticket industries

599 Israel tops in Technology Awards

The November 15 Wall Street Journal had a list of its award winning technology innovations. Among the "Overall Winners," Israel was listed in two of the top five. So for it's size, it is outperforming even the United States. Given Imaging Ltd. developed a pill-shaped video camera which screens the esophagus for disorders, and InSightec Image developed Guided Treatment Ltd. a device that destroys tumors using ultrasound waves together with magnetic resonance imaging.

No Arab countries, most of which have third world conditions with billionaires and donkey transport side by side, were listed.

598 Our wildlife

For several days a doe and fawn frolicked in our back yard in October. They came very close to the house. They are both looking to the west--there are two heads in the photo.


Doe and fawn in our back yard 

Twice (April and November) I've blogged about deer on the interstate west of Columbus. Reports are that 201 humans were killed in 2003 as a result of collisions with deer--up 27% from the previous year. Sixty of those deaths were motorcyclists--and they weren't wearing helmets. Seatbelts weren't worn in many of the vehicle accident deaths. In 14 of the 147 accidents involving cars/trucks, the deer struck by one car flew through the windshield of an oncoming car.

Our backyard deer are beautiful, but dangerous on the highways.

597 A Cook Book with Memories

Some of the 50 or so people a day who pop in here may like to cook, or maybe enjoy a good warm memory while browsing ingredients. Over to the lower left are some links to writers who blog. PJ Parks has been compiling a book of family memories and recipes in fits and starts, and it has finally come together and will be ready for distribution in December. Details about costs and shipping are here. Sounds like it would be a wonderful Christmas gift for that person who has everything. Also, if you need writing done, PJ is available for hire--has done some great non-fiction and historical writing.

596 Jack be Nimble

Jack Stephens, The Conservator, one of the few conservative librarians out there (223:1, making librarians more liberal than Hollywood actors which are about 93:1) is busy digging out interesting tid-bits on Wikipedia, Cuban dancers and media bias. Check it out.

595 Cats and the Litter Box

Lotza Spotza 

Today's WSJ evaluates self-cleaning, automatic cat litter boxes. The author begins: "Even cat haters can agree that felines have one advantage over other house pets: They bury their business."

No, not all cats. Ours doesn't. She has two peculiar elimination behaviors. 1) She backs up as close as her legs will allow to the sides of the container, which means everything coming out, goes onto the floor, and 2) she never rearranges the litter when she's finished, choosing instead to stand on the edge of the box and paw at the air. She looks pretty silly, especially if she's very careful and continues this for a few minutes.

The first problem we solved by having a cat litter box that looks more like a small trunk or storage box--sides are about 12" high. There is no solution for the second problem, except to get there as quickly as possible with a scoop and air freshener. In all other categories she is the perfect pet--beautiful, loving, frisky, and she can tell time--an hour before breakfast or dinner, she will remind us not to forget her.

She's also one of the few adult cats you'll see who is not overweight. She weighs 7 lbs, 3 ounces, and has no droopy abdomen and doesn't look like a small fat sausage with toothpick legs, like my grandkitty.

594 Medical information for and by women

The Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association is the only peer-reviewed medical journal to focus on the critical issues affecting the health of women, and is distinctive because it champions women in medicine as authors, researchers and scientists.

The Fall 2004 issue is about women and aging and includes articles on dying at home, nutrition, exercise, alternative medicine, retirement and health,and elder abuse among others. It is online and the articles are in pdf format. Although the description said some articles are restricted to paid members, I didn't find any that I couldn't access.

Update: When I went back and read the editorial in the Summer 2004 issue, I see the journal is in financial trouble and may have to cease. The editorial reports that this comes at a time when critical health information about women is being withdrawn or is disappearing from other sources like CDC, NIH and FDA.

593 Lutheran Churches Columbus Ohio

If you are browsing the internet looking for a Lutheran church in the Columbus metropolitan area, or one serving Upper Arlington, Hilliard, Dublin or North Columbus, you probably won't find the largest, which is Upper Arlington Lutheran Church. So I'm blogging about it today to help you find it.

Upper Arlington Lutheran Church is one congregation with three locations, The Church on Lytham Road, 2300 Lytham Road, Upper Arlington, 43220; The Church at Mill Run, 3500 Mill Run Drive, Hilliard, 43026; and Hilltop Lutheran Church, 12 South Terrace Avenue, Columbus, 43204. This wouldn't be nearly as confusing if we'd originally chosen a spiritual name like Trinity or Lamb of God instead of a city's name, but that's how the New Testament churches did it. Here's an earlier story when we had just two locations.

Upper Arlington Lutheran Church in suburban and west side of Columbus, Ohio, offers a variety of worship styles, five times on Sunday at Mill Run, four times on Sunday at Lytham, and one at Hilltop. There is a wide variety of teachings and Bible study throughout the week, with Sunday morning and Monday evening being the heaviest schedules, with Sunday school and "Outfitters," for deeper study of theology, the Christian life, parenting, etc.

This large Lutheran church in the Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area has a Vacation Bible School that will knock your socks off--something like 2500-3000 kids are enrolled and teachers are drawn from all over the city for what must be a logistical nightmare for the planners, with morning, afternoon and evening sessions. Every adult who works in this program, even those who sell the t-shirts, are checked and screened and have references.

There is a very large nursing home ministry that offers Bible study and communion at local facilities, and offers regular training and support for members of those ministries. I couldn't even begin to count the liaisons between the church and groups like Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, and International Friendships. If you can't find a ministry to serve in at UALC, you just haven't looked.

I'll put in a plug here for something that's relatively rare in churches, and that's an established Visual Arts Ministry. UALC has probably the finest gallery space in metropolitan Columbus, and is currently booking shows for 2006. It has an annual Members All Media Art Show (MAMAS) during Advent. But this ministry is miniscule compared to the music ministry which frequently features a full orchestra, and has separate choirs for the different locations. The Christmas choir offerings are usually over sold and are fabulous. We have a new music director this year, formerly at Karl Road Baptist, who looks very promising.

This Columbus area Lutheran church offers unique opportunities for urban ministry through its contacts at Hilltop Lutheran, including a food pantry, clothing store, elementary school mentoring and volunteering, and programming useful for a community not in the suburbs.

Upper Arlington Lutheran Church, a large Columbus area church, has regular print-on-paper publications, The Cornerstone, which primarily focuses on scheduled events, and Crosslinks, a full color, glossy monthly magazine (access through the main web site), with general content articles of interest to visitors and members. [discontinued] Both are available in PDF files.

I'll cross post this at my other blog, Church of the Acronym, and then I'll check Google to see if "Lutheran Church Columbus Ohio" will finally bring up the largest Lutheran church in the city. It's worth a try!

592 Applesauce Pie

Years ago, maybe around Thanksgiving, Phoebe Timberlake and I were strolling through the marble/terrazo halls of the elegant card catalog room at the University of Illinois Library. We had become acquainted in library school--although we had first met when she worked in university personnel and I worked in the Russian language center because our offices were in the same building. Phoebe was telling me about "applesauce pie." It sounded sort of revolting--I'm a big fan of apple pie, and I don't want it overcooked. Today I saw a recipe for it, and thought it looked pretty good. Sort of like a custard. Also since it only needs one crust and I can probably substitute Splenda for the sugar, it will be lower in calories than my usual decadent creations. It was also nice to remember a librarian friend I haven't seen since 1966 (who went on to become quite successful in the serials field).

APPLESAUCE PIE
1 3/4 cup applesauce
2 eggs slightly beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbl. flour
1 cup milk
1 tea. vanilla
pinch of nutmeg

Combine all ingredients & mix thoroughly. Pour into unbaked pie shell & bake 25-30 minutes at 350 or until filling doesn't giggle when the pan is moved. Serve with sweet whipped cream.

This recipe was submitted to Collectors Newsletter #275 November 2004 by Nancy B., Eatonville, WA. You can read this newsletter online, or subscribe to text only, as I do. I thoroughly enjoy the reader-contributed stories.

I thought I'd add a few super-duper links to the U. of I. Library, but they are ugly and utilitarian, with no need to physically ever visit the campus.

591 Ten Suggestions to Save the Democratic Party

James K. Glassman has some suggestions for the party which include Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and P. Diddy. Read all the suggestions here.

590 I'll pass on this offer

USAToday has an offer for a commemorative front page, framed $69.95 or $19.95 unframed. The headline, "Bush calls win 'historic'." Obviously, not the opinion of the paper. Just Bush's words.

I watched their "Politics" page during the campaign. If it had even been 45% Bush, 55% Kerry, I would give the paper credit for trying, for making an effort, to be balanced. But it was more like 30% Bush and 70% Kerry.

We'll never know how many of these framed or unframed front pages they sell. I'm guessing that unlike Bush, it won't be a winner.

589 Wine Words

People who write for a living have specialties. They find ways to use the English language that would never occur to people outside their own field. The lingo that librarians use in their own publications is obtuse, overblown, obscure, and laced with computereze; not only does it keep outsiders from knowing what we talk about, it keeps other librarians cowed into silence.

But people who write about wine--now they can take the most ordinary words, make them sound terrific, and you still haven't a clue--at least if you're like me and know nothing about wine except that $3.99 a bottle probably isn't going to impress your guests.

In the Wall Street Journal Friday, I think, there was an article about which wines go with what foods. The writer actually subjected her/his family to the same meal several days so they could try different wines and be fair and balanced in their evaluation. My own wine vocabulary would be limited to taste words like acid, tart, sweet, sour and fruity. But, no. That's not how it is done. I wrote down the "wine words" used in this article.

clean
fresh
vibrant
lively
exciting
simple
richer
crisp
enliven
hints of
gravitas
clarity
balance
dramatic
clash

And the phrases, where one word wouldn't do.

not up to the task
clashed with
good counterpoint
didn't intersect
didn't engage
long, lovely finish

Wine vocabulary sounds much better than "mono- and cross-language domain-specific retrieval" or "data mining and knowledge discovery."

588 Do we really need more labels?

I think my regular correspondence is down to two people--a friend from high school and a cousin. Everything else is e-mail. But no one has told the organizations that ask for money and send you gummed address labels as a trade that correspondence is flourishing, but not by land.

Today in the mail I received labels from the University of Illinois. They are going in the drawer with the labels from Easter Seals, UNICEF, Tauck World of Discovery (have no idea, either), our bank, Doctors without Borders, Arthritis Foundation, Lung Association, Christmas seals and two that have had the identity label removed and I don't know the source. We've only lived here two years, don't contribute to any of them except the U. of I., and they've found us anyway. They've started adding little labels you can adhere to your calendars. But even that will have limited usefulness as people go to the hand-held digital calendar devices.

Assuming I live another 25 years, I think I could use up this current supply, if I never move, and if I use them on Christmas envelopes. But I sure don't need any more.

587 Scott Peterson, OJ, and the Rest of the World

When I heard the verdict "guilty" on both counts yesterday, I just sighed. Yes, he's probably guilty, but I didn't think they proved it, although I admit I only skimmed it when it would come on the news. Where is the motivation for a serially unfaithful husband who had never shown any obvious cruelty to anyone who knew him? Circumstantial evidence and wildly flagrant media hype. Our justice system has not served well.

I immediately told my husband, that if Peterson hadn't been drop dead handsome and from a well-off suburban family, with a story to tug at the heart strings (baby Conner, 9 mo. pg sweety wife) to keep the cable channels busy (selling ad time), this would have never been a story. If OJ had killed his black wife instead of his white wife, the washed up football player/quasi entertainer would now be in jail for life instead of playing golf (while he looks for the real murderer) and it might have been on the news one or two nights.

I think it was around the time of the Peterson murder that a poor black man murdered his wife, who'd had numerous restraining orders, here in Columbus. In the daylight. In front of numerous witnesses. Downtown street corner. I believe he got less than a year. Can't imagine what the charge was to make that poor, screaming, terrified woman's life so cheap.

586 Piero Fornasetti plates

As my husband got ready to leave the house for exercise class (with 50 women), he had a stack of magazines with him. He gives them to one of the moms of a high school boy who wants to be an architect some day, and it helps clear the clutter from his office. "I haven't seen that November Home yet," I said. "Nothing in it." "Well, even so, I want to look at it."

So I was leafing through it at lunch (I'm still eating Laura Bush's prize winning, election predicting cookies I baked two weeks ago), and on p. 28 I found an article about Piero Fornasetti porcelain dishes, which apparently appeared on NBC's "The Apprentice 2."

We have two Fornasetti plates given to us by Bill and Alice Adelman in 1965 as house warming gifts in Champaign, IL. To tell the truth, I was a bit put off by the odd face of "Julia" the 19th century woman who appears in various states of dress, hair and body parts. We have the one with a clock through her nose, and the one where her face is the moon (or maybe the sun). At 25, I just wasn't too appreciative. Julia's face moved around to various cabinets, and I think once I even put her into a garage sale. She was just too wild for Columbus, Ohio in the 70s. When we moved here, the plates were put in a lighted, glass door cabinet, and now her haunting face looks out at me every day. After 40 years, she's kind of grown on me.

585 College vs. Cottage of Straw

You've heard of the strawman? Apparently, I own a straw cottage that some educators have tried to huff and puff and blow down, but I didn't notice it until yesterday when it came up on a search.

Here’s what I wrote in February about the dollar value of a college education.

“I thought I would die of a broken heart when BOTH my children decided not to go to college--actually, refused is a better word. I was the third generation in my family to go to college--and I was on the faculty at a fine university. OK, I thought. A few years in the market place and they'll come around. Didn't happen. So we spent the college money on a summer cottage--no kidding--and eventually they'll reap the benefits of that since it has appreciated from $53,000 in 1988 to about $200,000 according to our latest tax assessment.”

But here is what Joanne Jacob’s gleaned out of that paragraph for her education blog and titled the subject line, “College vs. Cottage.”

“Norma's kids skipped college, and the family is richer as a result. The college money went to buy a summer cottage, . . “ Nothing about my dreams, hopes and fears for my children--just a sharpened pencil and a bank book.

In my blog I went on to estimate what the dollar cost of a college education at a state university would be worth in 45 years had I invested it and held for them--far more than the $600,000 life time advantage an education is supposed to provide, and she quotes that.

“Say we had invested $20,000 (the cost in the mid-80s of a state university education) in the stock market for 45 years, until their retirement age. Would they have that $600,000 to cushion their golden years? No, they'd have $1,604,000 using the conservative figure that over time, stock investments level out at about 10% a year, even factoring in the wild ride of the 90s.”

Sixteen people weighed in. Most missing the point (as did the people who e-mailed me directly). I never said I was talking about anything except the dollar value the “experts” apply to a college degree. One reader said, “well college costs more now. It was a state university.” How does that change the formula or argument?

Another said, “if you’ve got a college degree, then you have more to invest.” Obviously, one of the things, in theory, you obtain with college, is the smarts to invest wisely (a huge leap, I know), but I think that is factored into the $600,000 advantage college grads have over high school grads.

Another reader said, “what about all the other things gained by college--appreciation of the arts, flexibility, portability of skills, etc.” even though I’d said at the outset I was not addressing anything but the $600,000 figure that is PROMOTED as one of the primary advantages of a college education.

Someone else said, “why didn’t she put the money in the market instead of a cottage.” Wow. Some people don’t get the point do they?

After reading through all the comments, I realized many of the commenters hadn’t clicked to my blog to read it, and if they did, they didn’t actually really read it or understand it. It is terribly threatening to educators to suggest some of their favorite theories need a second look (and since I was one, and admit I was wrong, I can say that).

Strike two against a college degree. Causes faulty and incomplete reading.