Lift Up Your Hearts!

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same god?

Of course they do!

Are you nuts?  They most certainly do not!

Wait.  Stop.  You're right.  You're both right.  You can say almost anything and still be right if you don't define your terms.

This question keeps making the news, with fervent opinions being expressed regardless of whether or not the speaker knows anything about Christian or Muslim theology.  There's no shortage of commentary, for example, on whether or not Wheaton College should fire a professor they believe is deviating from the statement of faith that she signed when she was hired.  Personally, I think that's Wheaton's business, not mine, and I don't know enough about the specific situation to have an informed opinion.  I will say that I respect Weaton a lot, not the least because they come under attack both for being too liberal and for being too conservative.  They must be doing something right.  But the issue of whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same god is at the heart of that controversy.

Just what does that phrase mean, worship the same god?

Does a Christian worship the creator of the universe?  Absolutely.  Does a Jew?  Certainly.  A Muslim?  I'm sure a Muslim would say he does.  So would a good many (though not all) pagans (old-style; I'm not too familiar with the writings of new-style Pagans).  And, I venture to say, so do many who call themselves atheists (I was one), whose passionate admiration of the forces of nature (and science, their prophet) is as ardent as anything I've seen in church.

Do we all agree on the basic characteristics, let alone the details, of whatever/whoever caused this world to exist?  Absolutely not.

On some issues, and in some situations, we can all stand on the common ground and make progress together.  That's not the same thing as saying that we're basically in agreement, or that the differences don't matter.

It's Christmastime, and a group of happy vacationers is on an airplane bound for St. Petersburg.  We know they all share a hope that the pilot has gotten enough sleep the night before, and that the maintenance crew has done its job correctly.  We watch them eat together, and wish along with every one of them that the baby in seat 20B would stop crying.  But as we listen to them discuss their vacation plans, we begin to realize that there are some big differences in what they believe about this "St. Petersburg" that they're heading toward. 

The art students in 14D and E have packed boots and heavy coats, and are eagerly discussing their upcoming visit to the Hermitage.  The family in row 15, with their bathing suits and sunscreen, is looking forward to time at the beach, and the children hope to talk their parents into a side trip to Disney World.  Up in first class, a middle-aged couple is wondering how life has changed in their tiny hometown in Western Pennsylvania since they've been gone.  And the writer in the back of the plane is absorbed in visions of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

The passengers have a lot in common.  They are in the same airplane, and have many of the same interests and concerns.  They all know they are going to St. Petersburg.  The plane is, indeed, going to St. Petersburg.  But somebody—maybe everybody—is in for a surprise when the plane lands.

Commonalities matter.  So do differences.  Above all, truth matters.

The Martian  by Andy Weir (Crown, 2014)

Our Christmas present from the library:  we made the top of the wait list for The Martian.  It was worth the wait and with one exception ranks as one of the best books I've read this year.

The exception?  The profanity is even worse than in the movie.  Unlike the movie, there's sexual innuendo, but nothing graphic.  There's no violence at all, unless you count all the explosions that happen.  Still, definitely NSFG (not safe for grandchildren).  Which is a pity, because I know one, maybe three, who would love it.  (This conundrum is the only drawback I know to having early and eager readers.)

That aside, The Martian is the perfect engineering nerd book, yet perfectly engaging for less technical folk.  It's also incredibly well-written, and I'm picky that way.  I'm guessing Andy Weir aced both the Math and the Verbal sections of his SAT's.

Having read the book, I can enthusiastically endorse the movie, which is remarkably, though justifiably not completely, true to the book.  So go ahead, watch the movie.  But don't stop there:  read the book.  There's more to the story.

C. S. Lewis called it chronological snobbery:  the idea that present ideas and attitudes are superior to those of the past simply because they are more recent.  Historian Paul Bartow calls it historical presentism and has written an important commentary ("The Growing Threat of Historical Presentism") on its contribution to the fracturing of American society and the disintegration of civil discourse.  (H/T Lenore Skenazy)

James Madison’s fears of mob rule and majoritarianism is a well explored topic. Suffice it to say that in Federalist 10, he wrote to the citizens of New York that “measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

This overbearing force today comes in the shape of tyrannical college mobs who demand any affiliation with people they don’t like be permanently removed. ... Not surprisingly, these mobs have neither a factual or nuanced historical understanding.

All of these protests of historical occurrences are symptomatic of a deeper, more grievous problem, that of historical presentism. This is defined as the application of contemporary moral judgments or worldviews to the past. Any trained historian knows that this is among the easiest traps into which one can fall.

The task of the historian, or the modern university student for that matter, is not to descend from on high and mete out judgment. ... When one studies the past, it is meant to be a deeply introspective experience. The goal is to enter into conversation with historical figures, to understand their world as fully as we can, to learn from them, and to let them challenge our worldviews.

These are dangerous times for the study of the past. Historians can no longer afford to sit idly by as uninformed or misinformed tyrannical mobs seek to stamp out the history they do not like. It is a threat to the preservation of the past. It is a threat to free speech. It is a threat to proper historical understanding.

It is a threat to the very existence of civil society.

It's also very bad manners.

My grandparents lived in Daytona Beach all their adult lives.  Both arrived in 1915; my grandfather was originally from Western Pennsylvania, and my grandmother from West Virginia. My great-grandparents, John Stansbury Barbe and Minerva (Kemp) Barbe (Minnie) were very active in Daytona Beach:  She was a hotel owner and busy with all sorts of community affairs, from business to politics to schools, and he was at one point mayor of the Town of Daytona Beach (before it became a city).

My grandmother ran the hotel for a while, but by the time I knew her had retired from the business and was living in my favorite place in all of Daytona Beach:  431 North Grandview Avenue.  Sadly, both the house—now a business—and the neighborhood have changed, but at least the building's still there.

What more could a child want?  It was a big house with lots of places to explore, a cellar that was sometimes visited by poisonous snakes, a picnic table and my grandmother's amazing flowers in the back yard, and an outdoor shower that we sometimes shared with lizards.  (Living in Florida myself now, lizards are commonplace.  But they were an exotic treat for a child who lived in upstate New York and only visited every other year.)

Why the outdoor shower?  Not because there were no indoor facilities, but because the house was a mere two blocks from the ocean and the incredible beach; the shower was an easy way to wash off the sand and salt from our frequent swims before entering the house.  It was also an easy walk from my grandparents' home to the Bandshell and Broadwalk (not "boardwalk").  As a child I was completely oblivious to the seamier side of life in Daytona Beach, though I understand now why we were never allowed to go to the Broadwalk without an adult.

Then there were the people.  My Florida relatives were different from most of the folks I knew back home, which thanks to the presence of General Electric, had a higher-than-normal population of engineers and other intellectuals.  My grandfather had worked for the Post Office and retained an intense interest in collecting stamps—if only I had managed to figure out how to enjoy his enthusiasm without feeling obliged to share it!  My uncle was a fisherman, and I loved it when he'd let us fish with him off the Pier.  My cousins were much older than I, and therefore very cool, especially the one that could be counted on to do dangerous things like set off firecrackers in the backyard (not sure how my grandparents felt about that...), and the one who was at first a lifeguard (very high coolness factor to a young girl) and eventually worked for NASA in exotic places like Grand Turk Island and could tell us stories about the astronauts (even higher coolness factor to a young nerd).

Because of their former hotel business, my grandparents had made friends from all over who still came to visit them.  They even had a maid who came occasionally to help with the housework—no one else of my acquaintance had a maid—and what's more, the maid was black, which made her even more exotic than the lizards to one who was growing up in a town where "cultural differences" meant that some of your friends' parents might have come from Italy or Poland.  I wish I had been more curious as a child to hear the stories of all these different people.

My grandmother was a wonderful cook, especially when she was cooking fish that had been caught just hours earlier, and most especially if they were fish that I had caught.  We hardly ever ate at restaurants—in those days few ordinary people ate out, even if their grandmothers weren't good cooks.  But when we did, for special occasions, more often than not it was at a place called Kay's, at 734 Main Street.  It was a "family restaurant" with what you might call ordinary American fare, though my taste buds recall their fish as anything but ordinary.  And definitely on the extraordinary side was a drink they called a Tiny Tim.  When I knew it, the restaurant had Dickens-era decor, and one of their specialty mixed drinks they called a "Dickens."  The Tiny Tim was a non-alcoholic version of the Dickens.

We all liked the Tiny Tim so much that we had it whenever we could, and eventually I begged the bartender to give me the recipe:

• 2 packages Bartender's Lemon Mix
• 4 packages Bartender's Lime Mix
• 1 package Bartender's Coconut Mix
• 3 gallons water
• 3 quarts pineapple juice
• 1 quart orange juice
• 1/3 quart lime juice
• 2 small cans grapefruit juice
• 1/2 quart cherry juice
• grenadine for color

Unfortunately, that didn't help much, though I'm sure it was only because I didn't try hard enough to find the ingredients that were not readily available at the grocery store.  It occurs to me that all my efforts were BI (Before the Internet).  Maybe I should try again.  Anyway, I'm putting the recipe online for anyone who wants to check it out.  I'm not hurting Kay's by giving away trade secrets:  sadly, the restaurant went out of business, thanks in part to the neighborhood's change from family-oriented to one that catered to bikers and other tourists.

All these memories were triggered by a lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.  There, Porter ordered their Frozen Iced Mango drink:  "Mango, Tropical Juices and a Hint of Coconut Blended with Ice and Swirled with Raspberry Puree."  It came with a strawberry, a slice of lime, and a slice of lemon as well, which may explain why despite the different ingredient list, it tasted more like a Tiny Tim than anything I've had in years.  Whatever it was, next time we visit the Cheesecake Factory (which seems to be about once a year), that's what I'm ordering to go with my Avocado Egg Rolls, which is the reason for going to TCF in the first place.

At Thanksgiving, my sister (thank you!) alerted me to the massive fraud going on in the olive oil business.  I did a bit of investigating, and discovered a few things I knew, and a few I didn't.  Since I've only recently come to appreciate extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), I don't know much, though from research into other products (such as honey) I know that "made in..." or "imported from..." on the label doesn't necessarily tell you the source of the important ingredients.

I didn't know that when buying EVOO you should look for a harvest date on the bottle.  Not a "best buy" date, but a harvest date.  I'm so used to super-processed oils that I didn't think about olives as fruit, and the importance of freshness to minimally-processed oil.  Then I noticed that the bottle of EVOO in my pantry had no harvest date at all.

I'm still using oil from that bottle, hoping its likely adulteration won't poison me.  But I did find a brand in the grocery store that not only has the date, but is more local as well, being from California.  We'll see how it tastes—not that my palate is good enough at this point to tell the fake from the real thing.  But it is one of the brands that passed the test (California Olive Ranch).

Last night a 60 Minutes report confirmed the problem and provided a credible explanation:  the Italian Mafia has found a lucrative, legitimate business they can leverage by nefarious means into huge profits.  Nor is olive oil the only food they have their dirty fingers in.  The show is definitely worth watching (under 15 minutes), if only to see the olive oil experts testing the wares.  But if you're in a hurry, you can read the transcript.  And here's an extra that was not part of the show:  How To Buy Olive Oil.

Ohh, looking at that bread drizzled with fresh olive oil ... now I'm hungry.

I've reached the end of the first year of my 2.5-year 95 by 65 project, and I'm thrilled.  It has given structure and focus to my work, helped me set priorities, and provided joy in activities that I have in the past seen as distractions.

In 2015, I completed 25 of my 95 goals.  Others I'm well on the way to finishing, and still others I haven't even started.  Some of those I completed were one-time events:  check it off, done!  The completion of most, however, hasn't gained me any time, since it has been the catalyst for creating new habits.  That's a good thing:  it's part of the point behind the 95 by 65 project.  But hasn't left a vacuum to fill with work on the remaining goals.

If there's any downside to this project, it's that I have enough other goals to create a new 95 list.  Some of them need to be done anyway, even if they're not on the list.  The others I'm thinking of accumulating on an overflow list.  I don't want to distract myself from working on this one, but after all, Goal #31 is "Create another goal-oriented project for when this one is over."

Completed  In Progress

To Live

1. Create 95 by 65 list—Completed 1/24/15
2. Create the Leon Project—Completed 1/12/15
3. Create/tweak/finalize/codify 60 family recipes
4. Develop and sustain a system for making bread regularly [I know what to do, and have all the equipment, but need to make it a habit.]
   
5. Develop and sustain a system for making yoghurt regularly [Again, I know what to do, and have all the equipment, but need to make it a habit.]
6. Experiment with making kefir
7. Finish Janet's birthday 2009 recipe book
8. Go through all recipe books, digitizing what looks good, getting rid of all but essentials/favorites
9. Complete a biking challenge (details to come)
10. Complete a swimming challenge (details to come)
11. Walk/run the equivalent of home to Hillsboro, NH—Completed 12/16/15 [But I haven't stopped; I'm now working on the much longer trip to Emmenbrücke, Switzerland.]
    
12. Design 5 Life Playground stations [I'm nearly done with this, it just needs some tweaking.]
    
13. Develop a stretching plan and execute at least 3x/week for a month
14. Execute 50 pushups nonstop on the higher bar at the park [This was sidelined by an injury, but I'm slowly coming back.]
15. Find a GPS distance tracker that works for me—Completed 11/11/15
16. Practice deliberate relaxation twice a day for a month—Completed 5/16/15.  [Frustration:  This is definitely a habit worth keeping.  But I lost it in June, during my month in Switzerland, and haven't managed to reclaim it.  My hope is to revive the habit in 2016.]
    
17. Reach my desired weight goal [Ever. So. Slowly.  Not giving up.]
    
18. Run nonstop 3 times around the park trail then participate in a 5K race (any speed) [Barring injury, I should be ready for the 5K soon.  I could probably do it now, but have some other interim goals I want to meet first.]
19. Declutter and organize phone
20. Declutter blog template files
21. Declutter computer
22. Declutter garage
23. Declutter marked items in Janet's room
24. Declutter my office
25. Declutter our filing cabinets (with Porter)
26. Declutter sewing supplies
27. Develop a quick system for travel prep and packing
28. Recycle collected ink cartridges [I know this looks easy, but I'm trying to do it in a way that I use the credit I get for recycling them.  I miss the easy 1 cartridge = 1 ream of paper days!]
29. Research and purchase food processor—Completed 1/30/15.
    
30. Set up identification system for files to grab in an emergency
31. Create another goal-oriented project for when this one is over
32. Create an herb garden
33. Get a working back porch sink

To Love

34. Attend 15 live performances (e.g. music, drama, lectures) [Just one more to go!]
    
35. Convert our Christmas card system to postal + e-mail—Completed 12/5/15
36. Refrain from negative speech for 1 day. Do this 30 times. (Since sometimes negative things must be said, this will include recasting negative things in a neutral or positive tone.)  [This is so much harder than you'd think.  I've managed six days so far.  It has at least increased my awareness, helped me clarify what I really mean by "negative," and inspired me to hold my tongue on occasion.]
37. Share at least 20 meals with others (home or restaurant, but not counting multi-day visits or shared meals already in place)—Completed 8/13/15 [But of course this continues.]
    
38. Try at least 5 new restaurants—Completed 4/10/15  [Clearly I set this goal 'way too low; I'm up to 18 now.]
39. Visit Universal/IoA four times—Completed 5/15/15  [Dr. Doom's Fear Fall, fish & chips and butterbeer!  We did not renew our passes, but were then inspired to get annual passes to Disney World for this year.]
    
40. Watch NCIS LA from the beginning—Completed 10/23/15
41. Watch Unbroken—Completed 4/24/15.  [Worth watching, though it doesn't do justice to the book.]
    
42. Join in the choir trip to Austria [This had been planned for 2015, but fell through. Will it happen at all?]
    
43. Visit a country I've never been to
44. Visit a state I've never been to—Completed 4/9/15.  [Missouri—St. Louis.  Great visit with family.  New museums, new restaurants, and a genealogy breakthrough.]
    
45. Visit with all immediate family members at least once per year [Complete for 2015.]
    
46. Visit Arizona
47. Visit either Costa Rica or the Gambia
48. Visit King Arthur Flour—Completed 2/12/15
49. Keep up a 10 posts/month blogging schedule for 20 months (not necessarily consecutive) [Modified from "two posts/week" to make record keeping easier.  Twelve months complete so far (60%).]
    
50. Send at least 4 care packages to each of our freshman nephews [25% done]
51. Write an encouraging note each month to someone other than family  [12/12 so far.  This turns out to be one of the more challenging goals, not because it's hard to write the notes, but because I have to remember before the end of each month.  I didn't give myself any leeway with this one.]
    
52. Write at least 10 letters to political officeholders  [Only one so far.]
53. Write at least 5 notes of encouragement to each nephew
54. Write at least 75 physical letters to children/grandchildren
    
55. Join Google+—Completed 12/10/15
56. Join Twitter—Completed 2/9/15

To Learn

1. Finish chronological Bible reading plan—Completed 7/29/15
   
2. Start and complete other daily Bible reading plans—Completed 11/25/15 [I'm currently on my fifth plan (of varying lengths) since beginning this project.]
   
3. Achieve 40,000 DuoLingo points (average 1,000/month, split between French and German)—I'm 'way ahead of schedule on this one—Completed 11/3/15  [This was successful in establishing the habit; I'm now over 45,000 points.]
4. Listen to all of Pimsleur German I—Completed 5/30/15  [The next step is German II, but I haven't started yet.]
   
5. Complete George MacDonald reading plan (50 books, 14 completed in 2014)  [60% done]
   
6. Read 130 books (new or old, print or audio, any level)  [55% done]
7. Read 26 existing but as yet unread books from my bookshevles  [35% done]
8. Read The History of the Renaissance World
9. Read the Koran—Completed 4/14/15
10. Complete 100 Great Courses lectures—Completed 12/30/15
11. Experience all 37 of Shakespeare's plays (attend, watch, and/or read)  [30% done]
12. Learn sufficient Javascript and/or jquery to know if it will work for creating my GTC website
13. Make 30 museum visits  [40% done]
14. Set and attain BrainHQ goal
15. Set and attain Khan Academy goal
16. Set and attain Memrise goal
17. Set and attain Sporcle goal

To Leave a Legacy

18. Copy LPs to CDs
19. Copy tapes to CDs  [Porter is working on this]
20. Convert WRL memorial PPT to video
21. Complete conversion of bits PPTs to videos
22. Create 20 new GTC shows
23. Create a form of GTC independent of YouTube and useable offline
24. Create scent bits
25. Make new family bits (was just "for Heather," but now Janet needs some, too)
26. Print bit back labels for Heather
27. Genealogy:  clean up, expand, and document the lines I currently have in my family tree
28. Enter unentered genealogy data
29. Publish revised editions of Honor Enough volumes 1-4
30. Rocket boost genealogy work by end of January 2015 (40 hours of work in segments of 1 or more hours, over 2 weeks)—Completed 2/1/15 [I made great progress, but I need to make a habit of steady progress.]
31. Update Phoebe's Quilt and print in "final" form
32. Create one photo album with Picaboo
33. Digitize photos
34. Digitize slides
35. Organize photos 2007-2011 (subgroups 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010)
36. Organize photos 2012-2016 (subgroups 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)  [I've done most of 2015 and a good part of 2014 so far.]
37. Research and purchase scanner suitable for prints and slides
38. Rocket boost photo work (40 hours of work in segments of 1 or more hours, over 2 weeks)—Completed 8/29/15  [As with the genealogy, I made great progress, but I need to make a habit of steady progress.]
39. Make (at least) 2 baby blankets—Completed 5/14/15.  [Two new grandbabies!  Hooray!]

Onward to 2016!

It's no secret I love Chick-fil-A.  I've never worked there myself, but friends who did in high school found it a good, supportive place to work.

I love that they are successful while maintaining their Sundays-off policy, even though I'm frequently frustrated on road trips because Chick-fil-A is my favorite fast food restaurant and we're often travelling on a Sunday.  If Chick-fil-A can do it, more companies could if they tried:  I grew up with most businesses closed on Sundays, and that's still the case in Switzerland, where store hours are much shorter than here.  You learn to adjust.

These things wouldn't matter much if the food weren't good, but their Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Spicy Chicken Biscuit are the best I've had anywhere—and that's not for want of trying elsewhere.

If I've ever tried their cole slaw, I don't remember it, which may be part of the reason they're taking it off the menu.  But some people like it as much as I like their spicy sandwiches, so I'm pleased to report that the company has done something else right:  When they announced the end of cole slaw as an option at their restaurants, they published their recipe, so we can make it at home.  (Click to enlarge.)

I wish other companies would do the same when discontinuing products.

Happy New Year, everyone!

And Merry Christmas, again, for it is still Christmas until Epiphany on January 6.  We're up to maids-a-milking, if you're keeping count.

On New Year's Eve Afternoon, we went out to do a few errands:  to the library to pick up The Road to Character by David Brooks, a book recommended by our rector; to Staples where we accomplished nothing except discovering that our magic (corporate) credit card no longer gives a discount (boo!); and then to Steak 'n Shake for the supposed highlight of the trip, a half-priced Speculoos Cookie Butter milkshake!

The milkshake was all we could have wanted, but that it was worth waiting nearly an hour for is questionable.  It seemed that half the world was at Steak 'n Shake, and the other half was on the roads.  The traffic was ... I was going to say unimaginable, but we could well imagine that it would be yet worse at night, with half the drivers drunk, and therefore were very glad to be planning a quiet evening at home.

Lo and behold, 2016 came in just fine without me being awake to welcome it.  I guess the world doesn't revolve around me after all.

I went for a swim on the last day of 2015, and again on the first day of 2016.  That's a first for me:  our pool is screened and well-shaded and has never in my memory been so warm at this time of year.  If you live in Florida long enough, you get used to surprises from the weather.  Last week the water temperature was 72 degrees (the year-round temperature of our freshwater springs), but today had climbed to an unbelievable 75.  Today's high is predicted to be 86 degrees, but this may be the peak:  tomorrow is supposed to be 20 degrees cooler.

May your 2016 be blessed with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  (See banner above.)

Having finished YouVersion's Cell Rule of Optina read-through of the New Testament by Thanksgiving, and planning to start a new chronological plan at the end of the year, I wanted something short to take me through Christmas.  I chose Before the Cross:  the Life of Jesus, which was billed this way:  "This 80 day reading plan takes you through the four Gospels, in chronological order, walking through the life of Jesus from His birth to His ascension into Heaven."  That's almost true, though they did leave out some of the less action-oriented passages.  I easily compressed the 80 days into one month.

I also switched versions of the Bible for this reading.  My favorite versions are either the old New International Version or the old Revised Standard Version, neither of which is often accessible in online form.  I had been using the English Standard Version on my phone, which is a little modern for me but not bad.  This time I decided to try the New King James Version.  I'd heard a lot of positive talk about the NKJV, but I was not impressed.  I was expecting a reworking of the beautiful-but-outdated King James Version that takes into account all we've learned in the field of Bible scholarship since the early 1600's.  Maybe it's not outdated anymore, I don't know—but I do know it's no longer beautiful.  Why produce yet another Bible stripped of its poetic language?  We had plenty of those already.

Now that I've finished the Before the Cross plan, I've committed to another year-long chronological plan.  Not the chronological plan I started with; that was a great one, but why not try another one, since there isn't completely agreement on chronology?  This is called Reading God's Story: One-Year Chronological Plan, and this time I've chosen to use the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

I'm still gung-ho about the YouVersion system.  Granted, most of their reading plans are not what I'm looking for (too short, too slow, too embellished, too disjointed), but I still find what I need.  And having it right there, on my phone, easy to access, easy to keep track of—priceless.

I'm not Englebert Humperdinck.  I'm not Michael Bolton.  But <ahem> last night I sang with the amazing Ashley (Locheed) Tessandori!  Don't ask about the venue or the size of the audience, just let me bask in the reflected glory.

My random quotation generator greeted me with this when I turned the computer on this morning:

May no gift be too small to give, nor too simple to receive, which is wrapped in thoughtfulness and tied with love. - L. O. Baird

Merry Christmas to all!

I did some last-minute grocery shopping this morning, realizing that my normal day for that event (Friday) was out of the question this week.  Boy am I glad I didn't go later in the day—it was crazy enough as it was.

Before I even put the groceries away I checked my e-mail, which contained a Christmas greeting from Publix, our grocery store.  I like it so much I have to share it with you.

I know it's Advent, and we're still waiting for Christmas.  But that's the header for our Christmas newsletter.  This year we revamped our system for Christmas cards, sending more than half of them out by e-mail.  I'm concerned that some folks may have gotten lost in the upgrade.

So if you did not receive our Christmas letter, and would like to, please let me know.

1066 and All That:  A Memorable History of England by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman (Barnes and Noble, 1993, original 1931)
It All Started with Columbus:  An Improbable Account of American History by Richard Armour (McGraw-Hill, 1953)

Attention teachers and parents:  Next time a child whines, "Why do I have to learn history?" you are free to use my answer.  "So you will be able to understand why these books are funny."

They are funny, and clever to boot, but without a solid grounding in history, and some literature as well, you're not likely to get the jokes.  As poor as my knowledge of history is, I'm confident I know more about British history than most Americans; even so, a good bit of 1066 and All That left me scratching my head.

It went better with It All Started with Columbus, which does the same thing for American history, a subject on which I am still apallingly ignorant but at least savvy enough to get most of the jokes.  It doesn't cover as many years, America having less history than England, but unlike the British book, it gets past World War I.  Not much past, however.  I wonder if anyone's written a sequel to either of the books.

I think Armour was the better writer, but that may just be the influence of my greater familiarity with his subject.  Armour pays homage to his inspiration in the book's dedication:

Humbly dedicated, in an attitude of gratitude, to Walter Carruthers Sellar and Robert Julian Yeatman, who wrote the wonderful 1066 and All That

From 1066 and All That:

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa.  It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).

From It All Started with Columbus:

[Benjamin Franklin] was self-educated, which means that he was too poor to go to school and therefore got a good education.

My 95 by 65 Goal #11 was initially a "to be decided later" walking challenge.  Yesterday I decided it was about time I set that up, and determined that it would be fun to aim for the distance between here and our family in New Hampshire.  The "crow flies" distance is 1130 miles.  Since the middle of 2014 I've been letting my phone keep track of the steps I've taken (walking or running).  That's only if I have the phone on me, so the recorded numbers are lower than my actual steps, but quite good enough for this purpose.

The app keeps track of the raw data, but not in a form useful for "walking to New Hampshire," so today I set up a spreadsheet to analyze the data, starting from the beginning of this year, and keep track of my progress as I head for the goal.

SURPRISE!  I'm already there!  I arrived two days ago.

It blows me away to realize how much I've walked in under a year.  I guess small steps do make for great progress over time.

Continuing the trip to "visit" our other grandkids adds 3747 "crow files" miles and involves walking on water.  I guess I'd better get going!