LIVING ... MAEDEANS STYLE

Frozen Bird Bath

2010-01-02T03:45:00.000-08:00

As the neighbors were leaving on their trip around 6 AM this morning, I noticed that the water in the bird bath outside was frozen. Naturally, I had to take a photo of it just as soon as it became light enough to capture. More frozen temps in the 20s are predicted for the week ahead.

Born Again American

2010-01-01T03:32:00.000-08:00

This might be a good way to start 2010. It is similar but different from last year's New Year's Day post -- Stand By Me

Blue moon over New Year’s Eve tomorrow night

2009-12-30T06:14:00.000-08:00

For the first time since 1990, this Thursday evening, December 31st, the moon on New Year’s Eve will become full for the second time in the month of December. According to folklore, that makes it a blue moon. But don’t expect it to be blue.

I found a Cybill Shepherd and Brice Willis video clip on YouTube from Moonlighting, but it was too erotic to reference on my “goody-two-shoes” blog, and it’s not really on the blog post subject anyway.

It’s sad to say, but I do not recall one single, solitary event from the year 1990. I glanced over the Wikipedia article on the year 1990, and that did not help me. I was 54 years old on New Year’s Eve of 1990 and may have gone to a party. That may have been the year when the fog was scary awful. If that were the case, I sure didn’t notice the full moon.

Ho Hum

2009-12-29T03:30:00.000-08:00

This is the twentieth post on weather and the subject has definitely run its course. I'm thinking that the low so far since we've been in Magnolia Springs has been 20 degrees, which I reported in January of this year. That was a surprise to me when it occurred. However, as you look at the record temperatures, it has been known to go much lower than that. I will continue to monitor it by going to Magnolia Springs Weather each day. If you are really interested, you can do the same. At this point, unless there's really something very different to report, I'm going to seek other subjects that are, at least, of interest to me.

An After Christmas Wish

2009-12-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

I received a Christmas book for free recently that I finished reading right after Christmas. This book is part of the Cedar Cove series by Debbie Macomber.

I would love to see one of those movies that comes out at Christmas that is based on this short book. I could just picture this book as a movie all the time I was reading it. I could even picture the character Linc being played by the guy who plays Raymond's brother on TV.

I suppose it would be classified as a romance novel -- fiction for sure, with a good combination of comedy and tragedy, which makes for a very good book or movie.

This will give you a teaser about the book to encourage you to read this very short book:

Book Description/Excerpt

Second 2009 Goldilocks Report

2009-12-26T06:29:00.000-08:00

Click on the weather record below to make it more readable:

This is only the second time you have heard from me this year in regard to the weather. That's probably because we did not think there was anything exceptional about the weather here in the spring, summer or fall. But, as far as Goldilocks is concerned, "It's too cold!" That will always be true when the thermometer dips to near freezing or below. You can count on it.

Perhaps we have not mentioned that we have had lots of rain, and now the temp has dipped to one degree above freezing during the night. The brisk winds we had yesterday died down to calm. I did not not actually release this post until I could get the total report for December 26 above. It's hard to believe, since I'm a Native Texan, that we're actually approaching 13 inches of rain for the month.

Did you notice? When you look at the Record High and the Record Low for this date, it will show a difference of about 66 degrees, so you will see ya never know around here.

We are not sorry about not receiving any type of freezing precip as much of the nation did for this holiday season.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Click on the image above to see this Christmas message.

Christmas Eve Gift

2009-12-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

Today is Christmas Eve -- a very low-key one in our house. But, because it is Christmas Eve, I thought about the tradition in our family that went back for so long I don't know when it began. I felt sure I had shared a story about Christmas Eve Gift I found on the internet or that someone sent me by email. The more I thought about it and surfed for that story and found it, the more I thought about how I had share it with others. When I discovered it was written in 2004, I realized I had not blogged about it because that was before my blogging days.

So, here it is... Christmas Eve Gift

I encourage you to read every word of it.

We continue to put blog posts on our two blogs to stay in touch with people on what is happening in our lives. If you want to check them out, please click on the links below.

wendellmaedeanTHEperpetualvacationers

LIVING... MAEDEANS STYLE (this blog). Also, Wendell is toying with his own blog, but he is not quite ready for the whole word to see it. Stand by...

Men’s Brain v. Women’s Brain

2009-12-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

I have Darlene to thank for the video below. She wanted to be sure I didn't miss it, so she sent it to me twice :) -- and I'm so glad she did.

This video by Mark Gungor has a serious side. It is part of a 4 DVD seminar called "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage." You can find out more by clicking on Laugh Your Way.

While you may balk at the $59.99 price of the 4 DVD set, also available is a 2-hour DVD called A Tale of Two Brains for only $19.99.

Now I understand why I have some bulges on my skull. Probably in times past my brain was near the point of exploding :)

Freedom for the Stallion

2009-12-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

MrTrashCan1 on You Tube has put this up. Hope it stays up. He says:

“How many people knew about The Hues Corporation before their number one hit, Rock The Boat? Well listeners to MOR radio did, because Freedom For The Stallion, from the year before, was their first hit, and while it only hit 69 on Billboard Hot 100, it charted big on Easy Listening.”

I remember it and even had the 45 RPM record. It was a hit as far as I was concerned and I still associate it with Dad’s going home at the age of 61. I was almost 37 when he died. An interesting tidbit about my dad (at least to me) was that I did not know his real name until I saw his Will. People called him Bill and W.A., but I always thought his first name was William. His name was Willie Almon Ellington (7-2-1912 – 10-4-1973).

Wouldn’t mind having this song played at my funeral. That’s how much I like it.

Remember ~ Honor ~ Teach

2009-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, someone mentioned that today is Pearl Harbor Day (the day of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941).

I am always reminded of my Uncle Matt (M.D. "Matt" Ellington ~ November 28, 1920 – April 13, 2003) on that day, and over the years I have been prompted to place a phone call to him and see how he's doing. M.D. was there on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.

So, this year I started looking for a letter M.D. wrote about his experiences that day. I don't know if it was printed by the Star Reporter, but I'm happy Uncle Matt's family was able to locate a copy of the letter he wrote:

MAY 25. 2001

Editor

The Sweetwater Reporter
Sweetwater, Texas 79556

Dear Editor:

It occurred to me the other day that this coming December 7th will be the 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There is not too many of us survivors of that day that are still around, so I thought that some of my activities on that day might be of some interest to your readers.

That day certainly was not a day of mirth but some things that happened that day are a laughing matter to me now; they certainly were not funny on December 7, 1941. As a matter of fact, I can't think of anything in my life that are worse than the things I saw that day.

I was born on November 28, 1920 in Sweetwater, Texas. I lived in Sweetwater until 1935, where I worked for The Reporter as a delivery boy and later as a printer's helper. In 1935, we moved to El Paso, where I graduated from Austin High School. Later, I moved to San Diego, California.

Due to a series of circumstances and decisions, too numerous to mention here, I wound up being prime "cannon fodder" for World War II. I was a member of Battery B of the 251 Coast Artillery, which was part of the California National Guard from San Diego. We were an anti aircraft outfit, originally equipped with 3 inch diameter anti aircraft guns. Six hours after the national service act went into effect on September 16, 1940, we were in the U. S. Army.

We stayed in California for a very short time but was ordered to Hawaii, in the fall of 1940. After our arrival in Hawaii we were stationed in a tent city at Fort Ruger, which was near Honolulu. However, about the time that the basic carpentry was finished on Camp Malakole, we were transferred to there. We stayed at Camp Malakole until the war started on December 7, 1941. During that year of peace, being in Hawaii, was fun and there were many things to do to keep us pleasantly occupied.

We had spent quite a bit of time in training and by December 7th, 1941, we were quite proficient with those old 3 inch guns.

There was a rule at Camp Malakole prior to WWII that if one got to the mess hall prior to 8 o'clock on Sundays and other holidays, that they would still be fed. On December 7, 1941, I woke up about 7:20 a.m., shaved and dressed and was on my way to the mess hall when the 1st Sgt. caught me and put me in charge of the regimental garbage haul off detail of the day and I was to report to regimental headquarters right after breakfast. Then I went on to the mess hall. When I was on the porch of the mess hall, I looked over toward Pearl Harbor and observed some anti aircraft bursts and other black smoke. I thought to myself, "Now isn't that just like the Navy to be holding target practice on Sunday morning." Thinking little of it, I went on into the mess hall to breakfast. I was eating a bowl of corn flakes when I heard automatic weapon fire and thought that one of the guards on duty, carrying a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), had accidently fired it. I didn't think much about it and went on eating my corn flakes. A minute or so later, I heard automatic weapon fire again but this time it was accompanied by holes in the mess hall roof. This put me into motion. I ran to the mess hall door just in time to observe dirt being kicked up by bullets and looked up to see the red balls on the bottom of the wings of the aircraft doing the strafing. However, I could not understand how they got there because I felt sure that the Navy was guarding the islands further out than the range of carrier based planes. That can be added to the long list of things people were wrong about on that day.

We scurried about doing such foolish things as firing 45 calibre automatic pistols at the strafing planes. About that time, I saw the first sergeant and asked him if I should still report for the garbage haul off detail. He said, "Keep shooting. Those damn things are Jap planes." We did get one 50 calibre machine gun into action but I don't believe that it damaged any of the aircraft. A torpedo plane that had already dropped its torpedoes was strafing us about the time that a fellow with the nickname of "Available Jones" and myself jumped into the back of a truck. "Available" observed the tail gunner on the plane as he shot a couple of holes in the tarp on the truck that we were in and said, "Boy, they have us coming and going." A junior officer ran up to a man firing at the planes with his rifle and yelled, "Do you have authorization to fire on those planes?!" Another fellow started arbitrarily firing his rifle through the roof of one of the barracks. I guess he must have thought that he might hit one of the planes without even seeing it. If anyone even thought of getting the big guns in action, I never heard of it. The big guns were not any good for firing at aircraft as low as those anyway.

After the strafing raid slowed down, some of us started filling sand bags on the beach, where the big guns were set up, thinking that the big guns, where they were set up, might be of some use in case of an infantry invasion across the beach, However, about that time some semblance of order returned to our location and we were ordered to move and re- implace our guns at a spot right near the edge of Pearl Harbor. "Talk about locking the barn door after the horses were gone!" All along the road when we were moving our guns toward Pearl Harbor, people lined up waving and giving us the "V" for Victory sign.

It has been well published what we saw when we got to Pearl Harbor that day and, believe me, none of it was exaggerated. What a mess! And even we didn't realize the extent of the death toll and damage until reports started drifting in, a few days later, and we hadn't even seen Hickam or Wheeler Fields. A few days later, I saw Hickam and Wheeler Fields and they were a mess. We were thoroughly battered on December 7, 1941.

After we had put our big guns in their pre-planned wartime places at Pearl Harbor, we started filling sand bags, laying in ammunition and other things in preparation for a water borne infantry assault from the Japanese. As history tells you, the anticipated assault didn't develop. I don't know how they passed up the opportunity, unless they figured that occupying the Hawaiian islands would spread their ground troops too thin. Either that or they had no idea how badly they would trash us that day. I am certainly glad that it didn’t happen because that surely would have changed the complexion of WWII. Pearl Harbor was an excellent staging area for our later offensive assaults in the Pacific.

After a few days, we decided that the Japanese were not coming back right away so we started cleaning up the mess that resulted from our beating and counting our blessings for the fact that our aircraft carriers were not caught anchored in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. This fact changed the whole tune of the battle for the Pacific. Battle groups were built up around the carrier, instead of the battleship. Come to think of it, the aircraft carrier can be thought of as a battleship having extremely long range artillery, in addition to its many other advantages over the battleship. Carrier battle groups were in the center of our strategy in the battles of the Pacific during WWII.

During the above mentioned lull, among other things, the men of Battery B were allowed to return to Camp Malakole and take care of sending their civilian clothes home or throwing them away because we knew that uniforms would be the order of the day for sometime to come. When I got back to our barracks at Camp Malakole, I walked through the mess hall and there my bowl of corn flakes was still on the table and was swelled up to where at least one bowl height of corn flakes stood above the top of the bowl. I don't know who finally cleaned up that mess because I never got back to it. I never got back to Camp Malakole again during the war and probably never will, even if it is still there.

Early in 1962 the 251st was ordered to Fiji to set up a perimeter defense around one of the air fields that served as a refueling stop for some of the long range flights over the Pacific. From there we went on to several of the war zones in that part of the world.

Truly yours,

M. D. Ellington

The title of this post is the mission of Wreaths Across America, where I first found this interview of a Pearl Harbor survivor.

You can find many more videos on Wreaths Across America and You Tube.

Dancing Lessons

2009-12-05T03:14:00.000-08:00

A friend of ours often talks to me about practicing dancing to get ready for the cruise we're going on in January.

With that in mind, I thought our youngest daughter's latest blog post was something that might help. It has two dancing videos on it. The first one looks this way on the blog post 1:19 and the second one is actually embedded.

Just click on CarlaCarlaCarlaCarla to see it.

That'll be the day when I can dance like that -- maybe when I'm in heaven or in a dream...

In Way Over My Head

2009-12-01T07:52:00.001-08:00

There are several reasons I wanted to blog something about a recent award received by my nephew, Scott Hatfield. I will approach this subject from the standpoint of a Christian who loves hearing that there is no reason to think the fact of evolution cannot be blended with my faith, while some feel it is tantamont to attempting to mix oil with water.

I have very little science education. The one course in biology taken in high school because I had to take it is the sum total of my education in science.

Having said that, I am simply going to refer you to Scott's knowledge, which he articulates so well.

I will warn you that it will take some time to listen to his comments on KYNO 1300 AM in Fresno , but those comments are so enlightening that it would be foolish for me to trying to accomplish what he does in this radio interview. The two segments can still be found on the link above. Listening to them will probably take up a half hour or so of your time.

The second part of this blog post is to direct you to the 2-minute award-winning video entitled Evolution: The Song, which can be found on Scott's blog at Major Award.

We Will Not Forget November 5, 2009

2009-11-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

I received a PowerPoint slide show attached to an email recently that brings it home better than any news coverage I've seen of what heroes all our military are.

It was placed on YouTube by the author, mking51_2000@yahoo.com with this information:

This was a PowerPoint show to share with my friends but not all can open PowerPoint files so I created this. I wanted to do what little I could to pay tribute to the 13 fallen heroes of Ft. Hood and the officers that stopped the massacre.

The Gift of Christmas Peace

2009-11-29T07:10:00.000-08:00

Tami Briggs, Therapeutic Harpist and founder of Musical Reflections, created this movie to bring peace to the holiday season -- with beautiful music, wonderful photos, and a lovely message of peace and hope. To learn more, see Musical Reflections.

Revisited ~ O CHRISTmas Tree

2009-11-28T20:27:00.000-08:00

Hope you enjoy this one like I did.

O CHRISTmas Tree

2009-11-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

Today is the day plans are for putting up our Christmas tree rather than getting out in the crowds of shoppers the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm still counting my blessings that I don't have to be in any store shopping for Christmas gifts. I had much rather be decorating a tree to get into the spirit of what Christmas is truly about, the birth of the Christ Child.

The video below with all the beautiful Christmas scenes should help you get in the spirit of Christmas.

I love this Charlie Brown Christmas video that gets right to the heart of Christmas:

Thankful

2009-11-26T01:00:00.000-08:00

Talking On The Phone

2009-11-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

Count Your Blessings

2009-11-23T02:53:00.001-08:00

I wanted to share one of my birthday cards with you. As far as I can remember, this is the first Birthday card that was also a Thanksgiving card. Many's the time my birthday has fallen on Thanksgiving Day, and I thought this was an interesting development. If you cannot read the card as it appears, just click on it and a larger version will appear.

I really like the kinds of cards Creative Communications for the Parish sells and highly recommend them to you.

Most churches I have attended have sung the Doxology typically after collection of the offering, which is a praise song, and goes ~

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
·Praise Him all creatures here below;
·Praise Him above, ye heavening host;
·Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Marlow UMC, where I have been attending church, uses a song I did not know for their Doxology. Not only is it a song of praise but it is also a song of thanksgiving. Below is a long version of the song as performed by Unhindered.

Give thanks with a grateful heart, Give thanks to the Holy One;
·Give thanks because He's given Jesus Christ His Son.
·And now, let the weak say I am strong; Let the poor say I am rich,
·Because of what the Lord has done for us.
·Give thanks, give thanks.

Libera

2009-11-11T09:07:00.001-08:00

This blog has posts that run all the way from the subline to the ridiculous. This one falls in the subline category. To me, they sound like I would imagine singing angels sound. You can find many more of their videos on YouTube by simply searching for Libera.

I have John Wiseman to thank for sharing this beautiful video of Libera.

Betcha...

2009-11-06T19:30:00.000-08:00

...I'll be as tall as you one of these days

unFISHING

2009-11-05T11:47:00.000-08:00

Yes, this made me laugh, Mary, and thanks for sending it.

I've been reading, reading, reading, and not blogging, but I could not resist sharing this one.

Down In The River To Pray

2009-11-01T21:05:00.000-08:00

I have a unique experience to share, but I also wanted to give you some personal background before I do.

When I was 6 years old, I was scared to death by a “hell fire and brimstone” sermon by a Baptist preacher. Mother had taken me to church because Daddy was working lots of overtime in those World War II days at a big plant near Fort Worth, Texas, where Convair (now General Dynamics) was building big bomber airplanes. This time of my life is still very vivid to me as if it were yesterday.

Truly, I did not want to go to hell when I died, and I knew for sure I was a sinner. Even though Mother was more the church-goer in those days, she relied on Daddy to tell me the story of Adam and Eve and how sin came into the world. Like I said, I knew I was a sinner condemned to hell.

I was not so sure I should make the decision to trust the sacrificial death of Jesus and his resurrection to save me from my sins, so I made a decision to try to be good for a year and then think about it again. Looking back on it now, I think it was a period when I became certain I could not be totally good on my own and had no choice but to accept Jesus to save me from my sins.

At the age of 7, I did just that, and I have felt saved ever since.

I tell you this story to make it clear that my family were Baptists, and I followed up that decision with being baptized by immersion (taken under the water in the church baptistry)and raised out of the water with the words of the pastor –“raised to walk in newness of life.” This was an act of obedience on my part, but I have no thoughts at all that this is what saved me. When I accepted Jesus, that second was when I knew I was saved.

I rocked along until 1959 after Wendell and I had been married before I became a Presbyterian. I knew I wanted to be something other than a Baptist, but I knew it would upset Mother, in particular, if I made the change so I did not “rock the boat.”

Wendell had been brought up in the Methodist church, but neither of us felt very strongly about which denomination to choose for our church, but a Presbyterian church near where we lived was our choice.

From there on, we joined Presbyterian churches until we moved to Meridian in 1978. There I joined the big Methodist church located in downtown Meridian.

When we moved to Jackson in 1981, a co-worker told me about Wells UMC, so I joined there, and, technically, I'm still a member there.

I have studied very little about the doctrine of the United Methodist denomination, so I was very surprised that the Marlow UMC I’m attending now has a history of baptizing people in the Fish River. It is a person's choice how they are baptised. So, last Sunday I witnessed four people from one family be baptized that way.

I like this church very much and plan to join it one of these days soon. They have been emphasizing their historic connection to the Fish River, and recently they have been using part of "As I went down in the river to pray" as their invocation at the beginning of their services. You probably recognize it from a fairly recent movie, but I think it is a very old song.

Something Old and Something New

2009-10-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

This blog features at least 5 or 6 books I’ve read, which shows that I’ve had more time to read since retirement, and I’m enjoying it immensely. In the past I have not been much of a reader and did not make time for it. Now I’m trying to catch up, which is silly, because I’ll never have enough time to read all the books I want to read for the first time and several I’d like to read again.

My reading of this book came about because I’m participating in a discussion study at Marlow United Methodist Church on Wednesday evenings that uses this book.

Confession time calls for me to tell you that I looked at this study as a way to become better acquainted with the minister, The Reverend Jake Brady, and some of the people at Marlow.

I really want to recommend this book to you for reading. It’s a very short book with a very important purpose – to give the true meaning of a parable most Christians have heard of from The Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 15.

Quoting from the book's jacket:

Newsweek called New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller a "C. S. Lewis for the twenty-first century" in a feature on his first book, The Reason for God. In that book, he offered a rational explanation of why we should believe in God. Now, in The Prodigal God, he uses one of the best-known Christian parables to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation.
Taking his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity, Keller uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable. Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.

If you have already heard of Timothy Keller, I do not need to tell you anything more. In fact, you have probably already read this book. If you haven't, here's a video to help you become somewhat acquainted with him:

The Prodigal God Trailer