I just love this state house. this was taken Jan 20, 2012
this is the governors mansion. He lives upstairs, downstairs is open for tours.
We live in Maine – about as far away from Australia as you can get – but I guess it might have been a slow news day or something because they featured Gelignite Jack Brabham, of Australia. Jack Brabham was a legend in Australia as I was growing up. He was a race car driver and my father said that anyone who was speeding was doing a “Jack Brabham” stunt. He also said I was a Jack Brabham the way I drove. Well, you can imagine my surprise to see Jack featured in the Kennebec Journal of all places. About as good as the fellow in Holsopple , Pennsylvania who wrote to the Johnstown Tribune Democrat about how shameful it was of the Australians to kill off their national animal, the Kangaroo. What he did not know is that Australia does for the Kangaroo the same as Pennsylvania does for the white tail deer – they have a hunting season to help keep the numbers down to prevent starvation of all of them when food is scarce. We all know that Pennsylvania is far removed from the kangaroo hunt and Main is also far away from Australia and Jack Brabham. What is it with these people who live in the East? So how was he called Gelignite Jack? Well in the late 50’s they used to hold these Round Australia car trials. It was called The RedX trial and we waited on Taylor Street to cheer the cars as they came through Toowoomba, and I even saw the car that Gelignite Jack was supposed to be driving in. It was a race to see who could do the time trials from one point to another and the fastest set of times won. Jack won it and made a name for himself. It should be noted that they navigated by using maps and not a Garmin or some other Satellite guided electronic road finder to prevent them from getting lost. Some got lost anyway. He also entered another year and some hijinks took place when he set gelignite along the road so that when cars ran over it the explosion would seem like a flat tire or tire blow out. So the drivers would stop and inspect their cars and Jack would race ahead of them and beat their time. It made quite a story in the paper about Gelignite Jack. I see by the newspaper that he has been knighted to be now Sir Jack Brabham and his knighthood was a reward for his contribution to the sport of car racing.
For Christmas David wanted a pair of gloves from LLBean because he thought he was going to live in Snowflake, Az. That placement has fallen through (There is a God who hears a mothers prayers), and so we have a pair of gloves for him – but not from LLBean. We thought it counterproductive to travel 2 hours each way just to buy him a pair of gloves at the LLB outlet. Well, he now has a new group home to live in, and he wants the gloves sent to him. It has only been 24 hours since he moved in and he expects that the gloves should have already been on their way…………….I will admit that this is the instant age and of lightening fast speeds for just about everything, but Mom and Dad don’t move that fast these days. I just hope that he does not use these gloves in the stead of a pair of heavy work gloves such as he needs for the yard work that he and the crew have. These gloves were not made for hard manual labor installing water systems. Why would he need thinsulate gloves in the Phoenix Valley is beyond my imagination.
Sara called on Skype to tell us that Jacob had been to the school at 5.30am to meet with a man from Germany who has heard of Jacob through Dr. Berkowitz and the man has hired Jacob to work for him in Potsdam, Germany starting next year in February. This is both exciting and scary but it is Jacob and Sara’s journey and we wish them the best. The closest I will be to my grandchildren will be by Skype and perhaps one visit over to Germany to see them. Amazingly, Potsdam is in Brandenburg which is the German state where my ancestors lived – so if I go over to visit them, I will pay a visit to my ancestral home………hoping for some certificates to track the family back further. I hope that the Children get to learn German while there because there is power in knowing another language besides the one that is your native tongue. Trust me, I know this from my own experience.
We have now 6 reworks to do. This is quite discouraging because we have great difficulty keeping the books in focus, keeping them horizontal with the camera and keeping them steady while doing the digital imaging. I suspect that the tools we have to work with are quite primitive compared to up to date library equipment, but it is all we have and I suspect that if we did not have this, then we would either have to Photocopy each page or worse yet, hand write it all out or type it all out. Don’t quite know which is worse. Guess we will have to be patient, wait for the bubbles in the pages to settle, mash them down with bulldog clips and hope and pray that they come out right. Today we sent off a Rosewill shuttle (external hard drive) with 50 folders in it. That should make our supervisor happy - if it doesn’t then I just do not know what will make him happy.
Last night we helped teach a cottage meeting to Meredith. I guess we will just have to love her into the church since she does not seem to respond to formal teaching situations. That’s ok, some people take a while to get their act together and realize that Jesus meant what he said, and that they should take him at his word.”
Here in Sunday School I am the teacher of the New Member and Investigator class and the manual that we are using is entitled, “Gospel Principles”. It was the lesson manual for last year’s course of study for the whole church and I refused to read it………..and I could not figure out which lesson was to be read for which week anyway (but that is no excuse). I guess the Lord really wants me to read and study this manual and so I was called to do this teaching for this class. I have learned one more time that if I am asked to do something and I fluff it up, the task is presented to me in another format and I am compelled to comply – and complicity is not my strong point sometimes. My reward has been to have a young mother named Mary in the class. Mary loves the class and all that we do in it and she is eager to learn. She was my spiritual experience a few weeks ago and I am grateful. When we are obedient and do what is asked, we are immediately blessed and prospered.
We woke up to 6+inches of snow this morning. They said it would snow during the night and it did – amazing how the weather co-operates with the whim of the weather announcer on TV. The driveway into our apartment was plowed around 3 or 3.30am. I heard them come and plow it out. I also heard a plow truck drop his blade onto the road and it was a real racket – I thought he had crushed a car or something with his appended snow plow blade. In the parking lot next to our room, the plow man came and then he got out and hand spread the sand with a shovel into the expansive parking lot they have. It looks like more work than I would undertake to do. When we were leaving work this afternoon, a truck with a snow blade on the front hit a dip in the road as he rounded the corner and the blade dropped down and crashed into the pavement and then bounced back up. I am glad that the driver thought quickly enough to keep the truck on the other side of the road or we would have been history along the car in front of us.
Tomorrow is the Visiting Teaching Convention. I am going to it and it will be a great experience for us all. I wish that I had visiting teachers come and visit me on a regular basis but I found that one of them slipped on the ice of the last storm and broke her foot and the other lady is preparing to move to Alabama. I am going visiting teaching next Thursday to a sister who has 5 cats in her two room apartment – that is a little crowded for me but at least she has company.
You cannot ask for a better companion than a cat.
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