Spiritual Triage to Hat Hair - how did we arrive at this?

I teach a Sunday School class that sometimes turns into a type of Spiritual Triage Unit.  Last week our lesson was on the Millennium.  That term is used by many different philosophies and religions but none are as unique as the view of the LDS church.  To us the Millennium is a time of 100% commitment to carry out the requirements of Jesus and his Church.  He will reign on the earth for the Millennium and in the end, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ.  The buzz words are “will” and “every” and people wonder the why and how of such a statement.  We have to keep in mind that our “life” began in the pre-mortal period of our existence, and now we are in the Mortal period of our existence and the post mortal is the time when we will receive our reward for our obedience to the eternal principles that God himself laid down in the pre-mortal realm, and we all were there and we agreed to it.  The expectation that we will return to live with God is universal and the rules and laws to accomplish this are set down in the scriptures.  The vicissitudes of mortality get in the way and we lose our perspective.  One of my students literally fell apart when the question was posed “Is there something you would really really like to know?  Something you would love to ask God to explain to you?”  She dissolved in tears and triage had to take over.  It seems that her little daughter has had to have two open heart surgeries and this lady cannot understand why it had to happen to her little daughter.  It is the problem of suffering that has pervaded the philosophical and religious forums for centuries.  To help her feel confident in God and his eternal plan, I abandoned the lesson on the conditions expected in the millennium and concentrated on helping her to understand the love of God, the need for trials in our lives and the promised outcome for all of us who follow the teachings of Jesus.

It is not easy to teach a class that has one member hurting so much and responding in such a manner, but it is very spiritual in nature and if I was able to meet her needs of the moment, then the class was a success.

We got our results back this week and two folders failed.  Our triage at this point is to not be totally discouraged, but to go to it and re-do the work.  One was for out of focus and one was for blurring.  The out of focus I can understand, but blurring?  Well, we are working with stationary books – not working with the moving cradle and since blurring has to do with movement, then how did we move the book so that we got a failed folder for blurring?  The out of focus may be the last book we did before we decided to keep the surface of the book level with the camera, and we do that by passing a spirit level over the book every 5 pages and adjusting it to level, and by doing a focus every 50 pages so that the depth of field is within range.  We only had 4 days this week to work, so we only have 15 folders to turn in.  The most recent books have been only 200 pages whereas the big books have been as much as 800 pages.

It has been very very cold these past couple of days and the ice has built up on the river but not completely covered it over.  It snowed about 3 inches yesterday but not enough to cause problems. Today is expected to be in the 40degree range, so the ice does not have a chance to become solid from bank to bank under that condition.  In the paper today, they were bewailing the fact of no snow – nothing for the snowboarders to play in, no cross country skiing (too bad for those men  on the rolly blade skiis practicing for cross country on the roads of Gardiner), no ski lifts in operation, no people getting their snow playing equipment waxed and re-ground or whatever they do and so the ski shops are hurting, the ski slopes are hurting and no outdoor hockey games on the ponds.

At the Archives, they have had a massive clean out of obsolete documents.  I guess after so many years they have to reduce the holdings of non historical documents and so this was the week.  There were seven oversized wheeled garbage cans filled to capacity with hanging files and their contents.  These were all headed to the shredder.  I wonder how the shredder handles metal fasteners and hanging file metal pieces.  Perhaps it is a shredder that will eat just about anything – must be a heavy duty thing if that is the case – nothing like the namby pamby thing sold by Best Buy or Staples for home use!  It must have produced a massive amount of shredded paper and I wonder what they do with such amounts as big as this lot must have produced.

Peter, whose office is on the first floor (underground in this facility – our floor is the third floor and is at ground level), does his best to sneak into our room to see how far he can get before we become aware of him.  Yes, digitizing does become all absorbing – mind, body and spirit – and we do not detect him sometimes till he is well into the room.  He loves to play word games and the word today was sneak.  He asked if it was snuck, or sneeked or snack, or snickered or even snockered.  How did we ever get to snockered?  Such is the fun of word games. I can pretty much tell when Peter walks in the hall way because he walks on his heels - it makes a distinctive sound on the floor - much like someone wearing moccasins - but I think that the soles on his shoes are just well worn and perhaps thin but made of rubber like material....hence the distinctive sound.

The biggest problem of cold weather is Hat Hair.  I am going to have to get used to having Hat Hair for the next two months or so.  My hair is so thin already that to have hat hair for that period of time is going to be a trial I will have to get used to.

OurTrip to Pemaquid, Damariscotta, Wiscasset and Booth Bay.

 These are the rocks at Pemaquid Light house.  The sea birds were all down by the area where the waves were breaking and they were sitting there with their faces to the stiff breeze.  At least their feathers will not get ruffled that way.

 Just a lucky shot of Pemaquid light house with the sun behind the building and lighting the clouds as well.  I did not think that my Iphone would take this picture as it does not like to be pointed in the direction of the sun.  However, this shot gives the lighthouse a halo.

 This is the ocean side of Pemaquid with Bill Markham locked and loaded - well at least he was trying to make the binoculars work - but without the 25cents in the machine all we could get was a picture of Bill doing his best to see for miles.............

 Another view from Pemaquid light house looking out to sea. It was low tide so there were not any really heavy seas to produce spectacular ocean spray.

 these boulders prevent people from driving down onto the rocks to get a closer look at the ocean from the comfort of their cars.  Actually these rocks (more like boulders) are used all over the place in Maine.  They are from the Glacier Age and people use them for accent in their front yards.  One house not far from where we live has them to stop slide off's from invading their front yard when the weather gets really bad.

 This is a little inlet on the other side of Pemaquid..  You can easily see the high water mark and know that the tide is out for this shot.

 I love how the sun on the ocean looks like a silver pathway into the eternities.

 Wiscasset bay from the bridge going 10 MPH due to traffic.  I tried taking pictures going 40 MPH but they were too blurred.  Art the archiver says that Wiscasset is now a bedroom community tor folks who work in Boston.  Well, it seems a long way to drive daily just to have the privilege  of living in such a beautiful place like this.

 Some homes from the Wiscasset area.  I love the homes here.  They are so charming, but they are also very big and I am not in love with housekeeping that much to desire to live in one of these many roomed manstions.

 Another home in Wiscasset.

 Another charming Wiscasset home.

 This home could easily be in Lincoln Nebraska but it is in Wiscasset. Maine.

This home is definitely a New England Style home.  I guess they either had large families or lots of money or both to build such large homes in the 1800's and early 1900's.  It would be cost prohibitive to build a home like this at today's prices......and it probably would not look any where near as good.

We had actually started out on our trip on Jan 2 to go to Boothbay Harbor to see the little shops that they brag about being there.  We headed out to Rockland, Knox county, where they boast about being the lobster Capital of the world.  I guess you have to be there for Tourist season..........all the galleries were closed.  so much for seeing Andrew Wyeth paintings this trip. So we headed down the coast looking for Boothbay Harbor and saw a sign that said Pemaquid.  We veered off the road and headed for Pemaquid.  What a beautiful place.  It was all closed up but we could see the lighthouse anyway.  On the way back from there we turned down another highway and saw a quilt shop.  Stopped off and got some Lobster motif fabric.  I am going to have a Lobster pillowcase out of this mission experience.  They also had a darling little lobster stuffed animal on the display case and they gave me the pattern for it.  I know that the Lobster pattern probably would not sell well in Arizona...............but here I guess they would have lots of takers.
We got to Boothbay but did not see any shops.  Guess we will have to return some other time - preferably when it is warmer.  We ate at the Chinese restaurant there.....then made our way home by way of Damariscotta and then Wiscasset.  We took Rte. 9 home and found that it hooked into Rte. 17 in Augusta and was a much nicer ride than on the 201 from Gardiner to Augusta which is all torn up now by the road crews.
This was a nice trip and even though it was very cold the sun was shining and there was no snow and ice.

Fluffy hat and ice

It has been very very cold here lately and I was hoping that the Kennebec would be frozen over by now from bank to bank but instead there are small chunks of ice just floating back and forth in the tide.  The weather man says we will have snow tomorrow. I guess there are enough clouds in the sky to supply some pretty determined snow…………….and I guess we will go into the archives either way.  With it being so  cold, I am very thankful that we have a mission that keeps un in out of the cold.

I wear my Alpaca hat everywhere now that it is cold.  My hair used to be quite thick when I was younger but since then a lot of it has fallen out and now I need a had most of the time.  At least it makes people smile and that makes me happy.  There is way too much sadness in the world today.  So I do not know if people are smiling to see my fluffy hat or they are laughing at the bubblegum pink Michelin Man heavy coat that I have topped off with the fluffy hat.  Perhaps I look like an ice cream cone?  Who knows what is passing through their minds.

I have not written for a couple of days.  We went to a Verizon class on Tuesday night and on Wednesday night and when I got home I was too tired to write.  We have these Iphone’s and do not know how to get the most out of the subscription that we have.  At the class last night the young man showed us an application called Pandora that is a series of music etc. and as I type this I am tuned into the Kingston Trio Radio.  They have had a number of artists on this selection that really make my heart happy.  John Denver, Peter, Paul and Mary. The Kingston Trio, Simon and Garfunkle and I guess there are others that have not yet played.  One of the ladies at the first class has about 30 applications on her Iphone and her goal is to get more than that.  I am happy with the music from Pandora.  Now I can join the ‘hip group’ at the YMCA and have plugs in my ears and listen to music as I walk rather than hear the weight lifters grunt and groan.

We went to the YMCA today and there were lots of people walking on the track and a few Gazelles.  Each time we go to the YMCA we see different people.  There is a young man there who does Yoga in the corner.   I got to talk to him today and asked him if he was an artist.  He looks  like he could be an artist.  He asked me why I would think he was an artist and I told him that he appears to be a ‘peaceful soul’ like some of the artists I know in Prescott.  He told me that he does do some art, but that he is a person who does energy work and healing.  He is one of those quiet spirits but exhibits great strength in his exercising and he does not preen so I know that he is not a body builder or fishing for a sweet young thing in Nike togs.

January 2nd headlines

 This is Knox county court house.  we are currently doing the court record books of this county. this is the old building and is very ornate.  One cannot enter the building from the front door (shown above), but have to enter the building from the newer more modern building abutting this wonderful brick structure and shown below in the next picture.

this is the modern entrance to the Knox county court.  I imagine lots of sadness and anger passes through this door way.
In a recent blog I wrote about the things that are in the Knox Co. court records and I never thought I would ever see the actual building from which these records originated.

Today in the paper there is an announcement of the birth of the first baby of the New Year.  This is always a big thing – a new baby, a new year.  When Sara was expecting to have Ethan, they had just put up a new hospital and birthing room at Cedar City and one of Sara’s girlfriends wanted to be the first person to give birth in the new hospital.  I don’t know if she got her wish, but it seemed like a difficult goal to accomplish seeing that there are many babies born in Cedar City due to the high LDS population, that it was a neck and neck race to see who would be first.  I guess you have to have some goals in life and this was one of them for Sara’s girlfriend.

There are a number of noteworthy things about this first baby of the New Year as announced in the paper today.  The mother is 16 years of age and the father is 15 years of age.  Already there is a compound problem – unmarried parents and a new baby……..add to that the parents are way under age to become parents and what does a 15 and 16 year old know about the responsibilities of parenthood?  The problems are myriad and include but are not limited to the baby becoming a pawn in squabbles over who is responsible for paying for the upkeep and care and feeding of this child as well as schooling.  Too often these little babies, that are not put up for adoption, end up being abused, some end up being killed – one man threw his 2yr old daughter into the river while she was strapped into her car seat just to show the mother that he meant business or some other equally irresponsible explanation.  Often we see cases of shaken baby syndrome because the immature father wanted the baby to stop crying so he shook it – caused trauma and in many cases death of the infant.  And the list of problems that are ahead of these young parents and the baby are just beginning to spiral out of control and unfortunately the little baby is the one who ends up suffering the most.

Baby Ayla who disappeared on Dec. 17 still has not been found and still figures in the news.  One of the workers at the Archive was telling me that in her school district, it has been discovered that the middle school students have adopted the attitude of “friends with benefits” which is the theme of a recent movie.  How many more lives are now ruined I wonder?

We went to the YMCA this morning because it is a holiday.  There were many people there and I expect that what we were seeing were the hard-core exercise fanatics.  They certainly were a different group than the ones who inhabit the place at the 4 pm  hour which is when we usually go.  There was one girl there today doing exercise with her friend whom I have observed many times before this.  She was working out with a personal trainer there on a regular basis and I notice that she is very trim.  On our way home we had to come to a stop for a man crossing the highway.  He was shuffling much like Tim Conway shuffled in the Carol Burnett Show…..but it was not Tim Conway crossing the road.  I felt sorry for him not being able to walk at a reasonable pace and wondered what illness had brought him to this point in life – other than the fact that he did look to be quite aged.

New Years Pictures 2012

 I wanted to have something like we had at Prescott, so I put a red ribbon on the one and only lamp in front of our apartment.  It did something to liven up the place and make it look a little like Christmas.  That is Bill on the front stoop waiting for me to get done with the photo before entering the apartment block.  Our apartment is the second floor to the right of him.

 We had a doozey of an ice storm.  As you can see, our car was coated with ice and these icicle stalagtites are hanging from the rear view mirror on the passenger side.  You can also see that the car is coated with ice.

 This house is in Hallowell.  It appears to be suspended from the sky and just resting on the ground.  It has two rather small balconies and is rather unique among the houses here.

 This is one of the many swift moving streams in Hallowell.  It had lots of Ice and snow still on it - probably because the sun did not make it to this side of the road.

 This is Bill trying to figure out how to take a picture with the Iphone.  Man versus technology?  Technology wins!  We were on the rails to trails walkway, but down on the rails part.  The trail is in behind Bill next to the block wall you can see.  It is white because it is coated with ICE.

 Yay!  Bill survived the encounter with the Iphone.  It is good to be able to live to tell the tale.

 My beloved Kennebec River looking North towards Augusta.  The tide is going out and the river is glass smooth when the tide is on its way out.  It is usually quite rippled when the tide is coming in.

 Looking across the Kennebec at an adirondak across the way.  The reflection was perfect.  Note the Ice in the foreground.  A few days ago when it was quite cold, this ice extended across the river from bank to bank.

Looking south towards Gardiner on the Kennebec.

New Years Eve and New Years Day 2012

Today is the first of January, 2012.  The sky cleared to reveal blue – wonderful blue.  When we lived in Pennsylvania, I often wanted to go out and photograph the blue because there were many – make that mostly cloudy skies -  and we did not see a lot of blue during the winter time.  The sun is watery this time of year – not much strength in it, but enough to melt the ice in the driveway of the apartment.

On our way to church I noticed that the banks of the Kennebec are coated with ice…….and small bits of ice are floating on the surface and a few hitchhiking gulls are seen clinging to the ice floe.  Guess they get tired of swimming for themselves so to hitchhike on an  ice floe is a good way to get around.  There was a river in Johnstown that always seemed to ice over in the winter and when it began to thaw in the spring, sometimes you could hear the loud cracking noise as it broke up.  They tell me that there was a time here in Augusta that the river ice backed up the river and caused a flood.  Before we left the church for home, we went with another couple to visit an elderly lady in an assisted living home.  It is a magnificent mansion on the bank of the Kennebec River and has 5 floors including the basement.  In its heyday it must have been a magical place to live in.  It still has all the original flooring of polished hardwood and her room has a bay window overlooking the river.

At the Archives this past week, we were doing the Criminal docket of Knox County for 1905 and the following are some of the words that have jumped off the page at me as I stood there doing the records.  Lobster pilfering (apparently the thief hauled up the lobster trap and stole the Lobsters from inside it.  I am sure that the Lobsters did not come with their pincers held together with rubber bands like they do in the water tank at the supermarket today– ouch!).  An attack with a clam hoe; I did not know that they dug clams with a hoe – I would have used a shovel or something – that tells you how much I know about how they harvest clams. One man was fined for stealing Lobster Traps and the buoy that marked them even though the name of the lobster man was carved on the top of the trap.   Operating a house of ill repute and when it was not being used as such,  it was a gambling den.  There was one case of election fraud.  Seems like two men paid another man to not vote by giving him $5.00; I guess the vote was only worth $5.00?  There was a case of someone open for business on a Sunday and another person fined for having an unregistered dog.  Someone stole loads of copper wire (in 1908) and sold it to someone else while one person pled insanity and was committed to a mental asylum for the rest of his life.  There were assorted murders and rapes and other miserable conditions too numerous to mention.  I wonder how a judge steels himself against such a barrage of lies and misrepresentations by the criminal wishing to escape punishment for the crime committed.  How are things different today?  Not too different in my estimation.

We had a phone call from David.  He apparently is short of money again (as usual) and he is going to have to spend the gift cards he bought for us for our Christmas Presents.  It is easy for us to understand his thinking, but for someone who has not lived with him, it is pretty impossible to understand his way of thinking or operating.  We are just grateful that he even thought about us to buy us a gift card in the first place.

They threatened us with snow and Ice in the forecast for today but it did not come to pass.  So this afternoon after we had lunch, we drove to Hallowell and parked the car and went walking on the rails to trails walkway.  The Kennebec is frozen in lots of places around Hallowell and there was a lot of ice on the trail so we did not stay long on it but walked on the railway line.  We turned around and came back home.  Nevertheless, it was wonderful to be outside even if it was rather cool.

In the newspaper today there is a raft of items about the little girl who is missing from Waterville.  The authorities have now termed it a criminal case and there are a number of psychics who have offered their services.  One from California even drew a map of where they would find the body.  I just hope that the little one is still alive.  One lady in Massachusetts posted a note on the internet in the form of a poem that claims that the little one has been whisked away by family to keep her from the father who had sole custody.  When the police saw that note they made tracks to her door quick smart to check out where she got her information.  It turns out to just be an emotional outpouring from the writer’s soul and a wish for the safe return of the little one.  I hope she is found alive and well.

We are having a traditional Pennsylvania meal for New Years – Kolbassy (Sausage) and kraut with potatoes.  I guess there are some traditions that stick with us even when we no longer live in the area where we learned them.  I checked with Sara if she was having the same, but they have been invited out for dinner today and she reminded me that Jacob calls it Kielbassa.  Well, it just depends on which part of the country you lived in and what name it is called…………Kolbassy it is!