Two is Good, Three is Best of All

 Two Boe men, both named Bryce;  there is a third in the generation between these two. We have a concensus that they have the best of all names.

Voices: Words that Shaped our Souls

A dear friend gave me a small daily calendar a few years before she died. I am one of those people that enjoy the pithy words of wise souls. Today's is from Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) Clergyman, author, and professor. "Think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; and...spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit, in God's out-of-doors." Today is Thanksgiving Day and I/we have so very much to be thankful for. Tomorrow a California Grandson will be with us for lunch and for that we are thankful. Actually our lives are bursting with blessings and our gratitude accompanies each one. Words are blessings. Thank you Bryce and Hildred for your kind comments regarding our little wedding photo.

1954 Faith, Hope, Love

We were optimistic about our future and thought that with enough faith and love we could turn our hopes and dreams into reality with hard and constant work. The sad state of affairs today that it all crumpled at our feet along with our carefully planned retirement.

Isolation and the Social Media Revolution

We all have lived through a few revolutions.  About the time we got our heads around Marshall McLuhan's premise of a Global Village, the reality is now  larger than life itself.  How then, can a person feel so isolated when the entire world and almost everything that has been discovered or learned, is right in front of our noses? 

The pioneering thinker about the media, Marshall McLuhan, coined the term, "the global village" in the 1960s to express his belief that electronic communication would unite the world. The advent of the internet over the past 10 years has paralleled the emergence of globalisation as a concept. Proponents and critics of globalisation have very different perspectives on the internet’s role.

To counteract isolation, the amazing social media have sought to plug into this lonely congregation; the creators of it become incredibly wealthy, it serves the needs for connection, while leading to more isolation and lack of personal contact. I think that talking face to face about an idea, with exploration of it from many angles, and listening politely to a different perspective without expecting the other face to agree, or your face to fall into dismay, amazement,  or rage, is a lost art.

Six Degrees

According to an urban myth, everybody in the world can be linked to one another through six other individuals. We all seem to be connected! So the title of the magazine can represent this six degrees of separation, the yearly average temperature in the Helsinki area, or a direction on a compass, up north and a bit to the east, like Finland itself…

I have a Google Alert on the words Finns, Finnish.  It gives me links to news events that have those words within the body or title.  Tonight through it I found a Finnish Magazine in English called Six Degrees: Finland's English Language Magazine.  Writer after writer had published small essays about their impressions of Finland. It is always interesting to read the expat view, even of a foreign country.  Foreign?  What a strange word when I grew up thinking I was almost a native Finn.  I continue to wonder why my ancestral mothers could not let it go once they had made the decision to emmigrate in the mid-1800's.

The Creation of Adam

 Coming home from church last night, I noticed above our driveway that the branch tips from our neighbor's elm and our front yard maple just touched.  Above that was a bright lovely planet.  In the dark before me was my own Sistine Chapel.

Little by little as the autumn days go by, I clean drawers, dish cabinets, and little places of my closet.  If I get a bit discouraged by life or circumstance, I open a door or a drawer and admire my efforts.  All the blue Fostoria glasses are clean and on clean shelf liner, a bit of sparkling beauty to feast my eyes on.  I find pleasure in the smallest, most insignificant things.

We have an in-house garage sale enthusiast.  He found a very clean, and as we discovered this morning, a good working electric meat grinder.  Up to now we have had one of the 1950ish pot metal jobs in its original box.  We no longer have to wonder if our hamburger is tainted with ecoli.  Chuck roasts went on sale and we now have 9 one pound packages of freshly ground hamburger in the freezer.

Truely Nature's Bounty

As I dealt with the cataract surgeries and my changeover to Windows 7 from Vista, my dear and capable husband not only drove me to the many appointments, but he also picked and processed over 70 quarts of pears.

The last of the magnificant crop is pictured in the old pail under the sturdy old pear tree.  All of the live trapping and humane society release of opossums, racoons, and squirrels was worth the bother.

I can hardly believe on this 1st day of November we still had these yellow beauties clinging to the top of the tree.