Lift Up Your Hearts!

This morning I found a good illustration for why it is important to look at the whole picture when trying to determine "what the Bible says."

As choir members, we've all cringed when a conductor addresses "singers and musicians," but did you know that it has Biblical imprimatur?

Your procession is seen, O God,
the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary—
the singers in front, the musicians last....

— Psalm 68:24-25, English Standard Version

The King James Version is kinder, saying, "The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after."

The Scene:  A restaurant, where the "background music" is very much not in the background, and questionably musical.

She:  Even if I knew enough to appreciate the music, even if I could understand the words and not be appalled by them, I still couldn't stand the driving drum beat.  I just don't get the attraction of all that relentless pounding.

He:  It's sexual.

She:  You're kidding.

He:  That's what they say.

She:  Well, they must be right, because it gives me a headache.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen! He was OBSERVED by many in his resurrected state.

My serious Easter post is still half written, but thanks to my cousin Stephanie, who shared this from kevinfrank.net, I can give you an Easter chuckle to accompany your Easter joy.

Once upon a time, when my oldest nephew (now 24) was young, he took my cell phone and asked to play games. I replied that my phone did not do games. True, it had some very, very basic games on it (it was a very, very basic phone by today's standards), but I wouldn't stoop to using a phone for such purposes.

Fast foward.

I'm still of the opinion that mobile phones are not primarily gaming devices, but I have been known to acknowledge their usefulness for that function, primarily in two ways: Peak brain training, and the latest addition, Word Chums. I was introduced to the latter by my grandkids during their recent visit. As I find with most video games, there's a lot of silliness to it (competitions, and accessories you can buy for your character with game coins you can earn), and you have to endure a few ads. But the ad-free version is only $4 if you find them too annoying. (You still get the silliniess.)

Word Chums is basically a Scrabble game, but in a form I find much more appealing. Instead of having to spend several contiguous hours over a game board, you can make your move and go on living your life while your opponent(s) are thinking. Or living their own lives—which means there can be hours or even days between moves. I'm fine with that. This is a game for busy people, who can find odd minutes here and there to play.

It is also a game for scattered people. I can enjoy a game with family members in Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and I'm sure even Switzerland, though we haven't tested that yet. We can have several games going on at once, with different combinations of people, all playing whenever it's convenient to them.

In real Scrabble, there are huge penalties for guessing. Word Chums lets you play around with your letters to see what works, get hints, look up meanings. "Cheat" if you wish to call it that, but I'm not a purist. It makes the game accessible for the younger ones, and even us old folks are learning new words. Who know "qi" was a word? In my Scrabble days, if you didn't have a U, your Q tile was useless. I'm happy to add this useful word to my vocabulary. I'm told it means "the energy in everything." I took a boatload of physics courses in college and never heard of it, but who cares? It works very well in this game.

Somebody (Grant Woolard) knows how to have fun!  And I'm sure it was a ton of work, too.   (Thanks, Dawn.)

The Original

Our neighbor is selling the huge collection of antique and otherwise interesting tools (over 450) that once decorated the walls of his barber shop. You can see them all here. If you're interested in buying any of them, you can send an inquiry to the e-mail address at the top of that page. But that's not the main reason I'm posting this; the percentage Porter gets from helping with the sale doesn't begin to cover the time he's putting into it, let alone my own.

I post because I'm at heart a lover of museums. Even if you don't particularly care about tools, it's fun just browsing through this amazing assortment. True, there aren't any captions; I liken it to visiting a museum in a foreign country, where the annotations are all in another language. It's still fun, even if you miss some of the subtleties.

UPDATE 11/13/19:  As items have been sold, some of the links have broken.  I may get around to fixing them someday.  In the meantime, the link to the website still works.

The BBC's coverage of the 44th annual March for Life is lacking a little in credibility. Either that, or they have a phone line to heaven I wish they'd share.

After reporting that Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the march, the BBC added,

Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W Bush have also addressed the crowds, but over the phone.

I assume they mean that during their time in office these presidents spoke to the marchers, but I rather like this image.

Soon we'll be singing a new Gloria in church: Carl MaultsBy's Gloria in Excelsis. (Yes, that's how he spells his name, with the uppercase B.)  We'd experienced his music and his leadership before, at the ordination service for our bishop, Greg Brewer.  As with the piece we sang then, this Gloria is not easy for the choir, though it's singable and catchy and stays with you, so I'm sure it won't take the congregation long to learn what they need to know.

The syncopated rhythm is difficult for those of us who haven't grown up with it, and the alto part has some, shall we say, less-than-intuitive intervals.  Don't get me wrong; I really like the song and am looking forward to singing it weekly until Advent.  But I mention the difficulty to explain why I was poking around on MaultsBy's website, trying to find a recording.  If I had succeeded, I'd share it here.  Alas, I did not.

However, I did find something that rewarded my efforts.

MaultsBy's music may be difficult, but I can't say I find it frightening.  :)

I never understand how my brain works.  But because our grandchildren will probably enjoy the video, I'll confess that this song is where my thoughts went next.

My father was left-handed, and so was my mother-in-law.  Hence we were not surprised when Heather turned out to be left-handed, too.  I believe there are left-handers on Jon's side of the family as well, so it is a little surprising that only one of their kids (possibly two, it's too early to tell) joined the lefty club.  Probably they all are somewhat mixed dominant, anyway, as most of our family is.  I, for example, am strongly right-handed—scoring 24% on this left-handedness quiz—but nonetheless am left-eyed, left-eared, and have some other left-handed traits (the arm position questions on the quiz).

Be that all as it may:  To Heather, and Jeremiah, and any reader I'm leaving out (feel free to chime in with a comment), I wish you a

Happy Left Handers Day!

(And a Happy Birthday to my friend for whom this day was special long before there was an official Left Handers Day.

Thanks, DianaDR, for sharing this.  I've never had anything to do with Pokémon in any form, but with several nephews playing the game, even I can't miss the Pokémon GO phenomenon.  I enjoyed this video for both the fun of it and the views of one of my favorite cities.  I hope you do, too.

I rarely read Doonesbury anymore, as I've greatly cut back on my comic reading, and get too much political ranting as it is.  But here's one I can appreciate! (Click to enlarge.)

You remember the discovery from school:  that in a class of 23 people the odds of finding two students who share the same birthday are better than even.

We have ten grandchildren.  What is the chance that two of them share the same birthday?  (There are no twins, triplets, etc.)  Turns out it's not quite 12%.

Sometimes you beat the odds.

Happy birthday to two of my favorite people!

(You can play with the numbers here.)

You have until November 8, 2016 to weigh in with your opinions on the four newly-proposed names for the elements of the periodic table currenly identified by placeholders ununtrium (113), ununpentium (115), ununseptium (117), and ununoctium (118). The names, proposed by the discoverers of those elements and approved by the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), are, respectively:

• 113 nihonium (Nh)
• 115 moscovium (Mc)
• 117 tennessine (Ts)
• 118 oganesson (Og)

Nihonium is named after Japan, the home of the research group that first synthesized it. Moscovium and tennessine were synthesized in a joint effort by researchers in Russia, Oak Ridge (Tennessee), and Lawrence-Livermore in California. The last is not being left out. It already has californium (98) and livermorium (116), among others. Oganesson honors Russian researcher Yuri Oganessian, who led the team that synthesized ununseptium.

In case you missed it, ununquadium (114) was given the official name flerovium (after the Russian Flerov Laboratory) at the same time livermorium was named.

As I walked into a ladies' room at Animal Kingdom recently, I overheard a woman speaking to a small boy.

"No, don't go in there," she called, as he headed for the men's room.  "You'll have to come in here because you're with Grandma."

As they entered the ladies' room she admonished, "You'll have to pee like a big boy instead of sitting down, because we're not at home.  You'll have to stand like a big boy."

But there's more to peeing like a big boy than just standing up.  Soon I heard the grandmother's voice at a somewhat higher pitch from inside the stall:

"Point it down.  POINT IT DOWN!" 

If Today.com can broadcast this, I guess I can, too.

We've known Rebecca since before she was born.  Her husband, Erik, is the ultimate romantic, from his fairy-tale proposal to this incredible announcement of their pregnancy.

A few other people have been impressed by the video:  last I looked, it had nearly 20,000 views on YouTube since it was posted less than a week ago.

I was going to say I can't wait to see what they'll come up with when the baby's actually born ... but on second thought I'm sure that sleep will be 'way higher on the priority list than making a film.

Congratulations, Rebecca and Erik!