Lincoln and God

Posted on September 26, 2012 by civilwarrose5

“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

The Civil War was a terrible thing. It pitted brother against brother; family against family; friend against friend. We lost over 600,000 American lives during this time of turmoil. The Southern part of the country was devastated; land physically torn up, families torn apart, and life long institutions permanently dissolved. The world was upside down.

Can you imagine being the one to preside over this mess? What would any of us have done if we had been in Lincoln’s shoes? There can be no doubt that Lincoln believed in God and prayed to him often. How could he not? How could any of us not be brought to our knees to pray to God for wisdom, strength and courage? Lincoln may not have attended church, but he definitely prayed.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, while talking to General Dan Sickles (who had his leg taken off in the peach orchard during the battle), he related this story:

“Well, I will tell you how it was. In the pinch of the campaign up there when everybody seemed panic stricken and nobody could tell what was going to happen, oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg. I told Him that this war was His war, and our cause His cause, but we could not stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville… And after that, I don’t know how it was, and I cannot explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul. The feeling came that God had taken the whole business into His own hands and that things would go right at Gettysburg and that is why I had no fears about you.”

For those who think that Lincoln was not a religious man I ask you to read his second Inaugural Address:

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away… With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in…”

Thanks be to God that we had an Abraham Lincoln when he was most needed. Let us pray that God gives us another leader to help us turn the tide of this economic woe. Let Him show us the way to regaining our freedoms through the faith of the people. Amen.

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Cribbage

Posted on September 24, 2012 by civilwarrose5

This weekend Jay and I were able to spend some time just enjoying each others company. It was a busy weekend, but by the end of Saturday we were both ready to relax.

While we were shopping he decided that he was going to buy a Cribbage board and teach me how to play. He likes to play an electronic version on his phone so he thought it would be fun for us to be able to sit and play a few games.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical at first. There are so many rules and so many ways to score. Jay is a very good teacher and after one game I started to pick it up. I had beginner’s luck and managed to get some really good hands that allowed me to win. In fact, I skunked him. That means that I won before he managed to get to a certain point on the board. I promised him that as I learn I won’t be as good and he’ll have a chance to beat me a time or two.

I cursed him Sunday morning because I discovered a free Cribbage app for my Kindle. I downloaded it so that I could get more practice and understand the scoring a bit better. Yes, it’s one of those numbers games that I love. I cursed him for getting me addicted to it. lol He just laughed. I suppose that for him it’s payback for me getting him hooked on the TV show ‘Psych’.

I love spending quality time like that with Jay. You put on some music in the background, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy harassing each other as you get dealt a bad hand. In the end it doesn’t matter who wins or loses because it was time spent connecting. Do you know how many people don’t do that anymore? They might be sitting in the same room, but they are tuned into the TV or one person is too busy playing on their phone/computer. Interaction is a good thing. You should make time for it. Whether it’s an evening walk around the block or a quick game of Cribbage, you will be glad that you did.

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I Just Don’t Understand This Fad

Posted on September 22, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Have you noticed these stickers that go on the windshields? Is it just me, or does it not make sense? Why do you need to spell it out on your windshield what make of car you drive? Are you afraid that people won’t recognize the logo on the grill? Can somebody please explain this to me?

Do you know what I would like to do? I drive a Honda, but I would put a sticker across my windshield that said ‘Lincoln’. Technically it’s one of the car manufacturers and it’s also my favorite president. Shouldn’t we be able to put the type of car we would like to be driving up there? That way it says, “I can only afford a Kia, but I am pretending that it’s a Mercedes.”

The other annoying-to-me car fad is those stick-figure families that you see on the back of various vehicles. Do I really need to know just how many children you have? Do I care that you also have two dogs and a cat? Why do people feel the need to advertise these types of things about themselves? Since you aren’t driving a convertible and I can see the car seats in the back seat I’m automatically going to assume that at some point you haul small children around in your vehicle. Or midgets. After all, you have to be a certain height before you’re allowed to ride in a car without a booster seat.

Do you know what I’m tempted to do? Just to mess with people and make them wonder I want to get some of those stick figure stickers and put one woman on my car, with about 12 cats. LOL. Can you imagine what people would be thinking?? Yep, that’s what I want to do…. mess with peoples’ minds. 😀

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7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess; Ch 5 – Waste

Posted on September 21, 2012 by civilwarrose5

In this chapter Ms. Hatmaker has decided that the seven habits she is going to institute for the month in order to reduce waste are gardening, composting, conserving energy & water, recycling, driving only one car, shopping thrift and second hand, and buying only local. She identifies a lot of these habits as belonging to the tree-hugger types, and I guess that if you take them to the extreme then I would as well.

The problem that I had with this chapter is that the author seems to find these concepts almost hard to deal with when trying to implement them. A lot of these habits were ones that I was raised with; not because we were ‘environmentally conscious’, but because we weren’t wealthy and thus had to watch our expenses. In the entries where she discusses gardening it absolutely blows my mind that somebody would have no idea how to grow vegetables. I was exposed to this in college when a story was related to me that kids my age had no idea that peppers don’t grow on trees and that cod is a fish (not what you give to somebody on their birthday when you live in Boston).

The disconnect that I have is that I can’t identify with the ‘city’ mindset. I grew up on a farm where we planted a vegetable garden after the last chance of frost was forecasted; where you picked blackberries in the summer; where you went into the pasture to find the ripe apples on the apple trees; and where you named cows that you knew you would eventually eat. Being a farm kid you knew exactly where your food came from and that was just how it was. We didn’t compost. We took all natural food scraps and peelings (vegetables and fruits) and tossed them into the pasture. Either the cows would eat it or else it would break down. I suppose you could consider that to be composting because when you needed fertilizer you just went into the barnyard and shoveled it into a bucket.

As for conserving energy and water, that again was ingrained in us as kids. If you left a room you turned the light off. If you were done using a light you turned it off. When brushing your teeth you shut the water off while you were brushing. How many of us had parents who said that they couldn’t wait until you had your own place so that they could visit, leave every single window wide open, turn the thermostat up, open the fridge, and turn on every single light in the house and then leave? Was it just my dad? Nobody else had parents say that to them? Even now when I’m at Jay’s it bothers me if he’s watching the TV in the basement and has the one in the living room going as well. I ask him if he’s going to watch that one, and if not, I turn it off. Even if the power is cheap, why use it if you’re not actually watching it?

Recycling… again, we didn’t realize that’s what we were doing. When you live out in the country you have to pay to take your trash to the dump. Thus, you try to minimize the amount of trash that you have to haul. If you buy something where the packaging can be reused, then you save it. Quite a few of our dishes that we used were those black rectangular plastic dishes that microwavable dinners came in. My mom saved mayonnaise jars to hold her hardware (little nails, screws, big nails, hooks, etc). We saved prescription bottles after the antibiotics were gone to store beads and small craft things. Cottage cheese containers were washed out and used for storing leftovers. This was before you had the Glad and Ziploc containers readily available.

We shopped at thrift stores a lot when I was younger. In fact, I still enjoy shopping at thrift stores. I hate to pay full price for clothes or books. So many people give away perfectly good articles of clothing that I love it when I find one at a good price. Many of my skirts have come from thrift shops. Once you identify a good one then it’s easy enough to be a repeat customer. The people you work with don’t have a clue where you buy your clothes. As long as they are comfortable, look nice and fit, what do they care? There are only a handful of things that I refuse to buy second-hand; underwear, mattresses and pillows to name a few.

There is one part of the book where I really had to roll my eyes. Jen Hatmaker is so excited because despite the fact that they had to buy a large Suburban, she was able to find one that runs on flexfuel so it’s better for the environment. What is flexfuel? It is gasoline that is made up of 85% gas and 15% ethanol. Ethanol is corn. First off, this fuel is nowhere as efficient as regular gas so it takes more of it to run the vehicle. Secondly, why in the WORLD are we burning our food supply when we have tons of oil beneath the earth up in Alaska? If we would be allowed to drill for it then we would have a huge source of cheap fuel for our country and we wouldn’t be dependent on foreign oil. How dumb are we?? Think about it… this summer we have had a horrible drought where our midwest states have been unable to grow the amount of corn and grains that they normally do. This creates a shortage of these products, which increases the cost of not only our food but also our fuel. Besides, doesn’t anybody else have an issue with burning our food when we have such a short supply of it to begin with?? Finally, my last issue with it is that just because YOUR car isn’t using as much fuel with the ethanol doesn’t make it better for the environment. Think about it… by using it in fuel we are creating a larger demand for this product. In order to fulfill that demand the farmers need to plant more fields of corn. How do they do this? With tractors. What do those tractors use? Diesel fuel. When they harvest it, what do they use? Tractors, combines, semi trucks, etc. What do those vehicles use? Diesel fuel. Just because you aren’t personally using more fuel doesn’t mean that it’s any better for the environment. Plus, I have news for you. No matter how ‘green’ our vehicles may get here in the States we still have the issue of the underdeveloped nations running all of the gas-chugging vehicles that they want without emissions standards. So, again, why are we burning perfectly good food??? Can you imagine how many people your Piece-of-crappus would feed if you weren’t hogging all of the corn for your ethanol-laden fuel?

I can’t wait for the next chapter… Spending. I am a penny-pinching accountant so that ought to make for another interesting blog post! Stay tuned. 🙂

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Frustration Relief Needed

Posted on September 20, 2012 by civilwarrose5

This is how I feel this week. Again. I can handle things when they come one at a time, but not when I’m being hit all at the same time from different angles. Work… the house… expenses… the wedding… our inept government… it all is working to beat me down.

My boss has been at work for six months and still doesn’t know the basics. The engineers don’t follow established procedures and then get upset when I call them on it. VPs decide that we suddenly need to release the new product that we’ve been working on and that it can only take two days to do it; it takes me almost two days just to do my portion of it! Another person is trying to test a new doc type so now I have to enter a couple thousand new lines to our AAIs so that the test will process correctly. In the meantime other people are coming at me with other questions, including my boss even though I’ve told her a million times that I was never involved in that particular part of developing the budget. *sigh*

Jay helped me to fix the crack in my basement wall this weekend. At least, I think that we fixed it. We used an epoxy kit that is expensive and sold for this very purpose. I still have to clean out my gutters. We had some rain yesterday, and so far no water in the basement *knocks on wood*. The epoxy leaked out in spots, though, and pooled on the floor. Now I’m having to use a putty knife and hammer to chip it off. Then I’ll have to clean up the wall enough to paint it so that it looks nice. I still have to finish cleaning the junk out of the basement, too. I might end up putting a lot of stuff on the curb with ‘Free’ signs on them.

Jay and I are looking at houses, but between the down payment and closing costs it’s going to suck up a lot of our savings. I will have more once I sell my house, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to take. Plus I still haven’t found a job down near Jay, yet. So until I do that means I will be driving back and forth between there and where I currently work, which means more gas. With all of this Jay and I want to get married this fall, but we both come from large families so it’s not going to be cheap if we have the traditional reception. I would rather elope, but it’s important to him and others that we have an actual wedding. I don’t care about the pomp and circumstance, I just want to be Mrs. Jay.

The world is turning against the US; in the Middle East they are tearing down the American Flags over our embassies and raising the black flag of the Jihad. What is our president doing? He’s attending campaign parties with Beyonce and Jay-Z, and then shows up to yuck it up with David Lettermen. We had advance intelligence that our embassies were going to be attacked on September 11th, but why bother attending the daily intelligence briefings? Attending only about 38% of them should be enough. Also, when our Ambassador to Libya was in danger and the embassy was being overrun why bother to stay up? Instead our president went to bed. After all, I’m sure he had another bunch of campaign stops to make the next day. Or perhaps he was going to plan different ways of redistributing wealth. Why let people keep the money that they’ve worked so hard for? Instead he’ll take from the working people (via taxes) and give it to the grits who are too lazy to get out of bed in the morning and work an honest job.

I return home each night, exhausted, and usually with a headache. The only thing that I can do to make it through the week is concentrate on the weekend when I get to spend time with Jay. Just having him by my side makes everything more tolerable. I can’t wait until I actually get to see him every day. What a great thing that would be!

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Quilts in the Civil War

Posted on September 19, 2012 by civilwarrose5

You may have heard this before, but quilts have played many roles in the Civil War. The most popular use was along the Underground Railroad. Each quilt pattern had a different meaning, and the escaped slaves were well versed in this secret language. If a certain pattern was left out on the line to ‘air’ then it might mean that it was safe to stop there for the night. Another pattern might mean that they were not safe to stop at, so keep going. There seems to be some debate whether this all is actually true, but it’s nice to believe that it is.

Other quilts were made for the soldiers. There were thousands of men on both sides who were always in need of bedding. After all, living out in the elements on campaign is rough on fabric. Not only for the ones out in the field, but the guys in the hospitals were in need of warm covers, too. The women at home had to feel like they were contributing and this was their way of doing so.

As the war went on it became harder for the women in the south to obtain the necessary fabric and supplies for quilts, but they often found substitutes. The blockade was effectively keeping any European fabric from entering the southern states. Women learned to weave a crude fashion of fabric referred to as homespun. Quilts, and clothes, were often made of this fabric.

There are many books on Amazon with patterns for the blocks, along with various free places on the internet. A very good site that I found was this Civil War Quilts blog by Barbara Brackman. She not only provided a different block each week with the pattern that you could print off, but she also gave a lot of history behind each block. If you are into quilting and vintage fabric patterns, I think that you will enjoy this blog. It appears that this month she has started a new free series as well.

I’m not a quilter, but my mom does a lot of it. I might get into it when I get older because it’s a great way to pass something beautiful on to somebody whom you love. My mom has made a couple of quilts for me and I love them. At night when I lay under one of them I know that somebody spent time and energy making it for me so that I could stay warm. I’m sure that many soldiers had the same thought, or wondered what the woman was like who stitched his quilt.

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A Cross Stitched Wedding Sampler

Posted on September 18, 2012 by civilwarrose5

This pattern is called Love With A Capital ‘L’. I stitched this years ago because I fell in love with it and knew that I wanted to use it for my marriage sampler. This was stitched on evenweave using HDF silk floss. If you’ve never stitched with silk, it’s amazing! I love that stuff, though I hear that Vikkie is no longer going to be dying the embroidery floss anymore.

As soon as Jay and I have an official date I’m going to finish filling this in. I get to add his ‘J’ to the empty box near the top (my ‘K’ is already in the box on the right). Then our last name will go in that giant empty box in the middle, and 2012 will go in the little box above the bottom ‘LOVE’. Isn’t this gorgeous? I can’t wait to get it finished and framed. 🙂

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Updated Cross Stitch – Warthog

Posted on September 17, 2012 by civilwarrose5

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I last updated you on my cross stitching progress. A lot of that might be because there really hasn’t been a lot of progress. lol. The weather has been so gorgeous that I try to get things done outside and then when I get in I’m too exhausted to pick up a needle. My weekends seem to be very busy, as well. We’re wrapping up the flying season, though, so soon I will have more time to work on my stitching.

Here is the A-10 as of August 9th.

 

 

 

 

 

And here it is tonight. I had wanted to feel like I had done a lot before posting, but I didn’t realize how much I had really managed to stitch. I still think that this is going to be one of those pictures that is best viewed from across the room. lol Either way, it’s definitely getting framed. I am not looking forward to filling in the rest of that sky. Ick.

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Fredonia Fun Fly

Posted on September 16, 2012 by civilwarrose5

This weekend Jay and I attended a fun fly in Fredonia. It was chilly (I was wearing a turtle neck, a sweatshirt, and my windbreaker), but the sun was out and the grass was dry. It was a lot of fun, though we did get wind burned! My face is still sore.

We don’t get our picture taken together very often, so I wanted to post this one. You can ignore me, but isn’t he handsome? Have I mentioned how lucky I am??

 

 

This was the first time that I’ve been to the Fredonia field and it’s fantastic! I wish that it was closer so that we could fly out of it more often. From what I was told, this used to be a landfill and a swamp, but now it’s not really used for much. The people who own the property allow the Fredonia guys to cut the grass and fly their RC models whenever they want. It’s great because it’s a big, flat area that is almost above the tree line. Since you are already above the trees you don’t have to worry about running into them. You have this huge, wide open expanse of sky that you can tear up! I wished that we’d had my LT so that I could take advantage of it. We’ll have to return to this field again.

Jay paid enough attention to the weather that he knew it was going to be quite windy, but there was a chance of rain so he only brought his F-16 and the MiG-15. I believe that he had two flights on each of these. It was so windy that a lot of the time was spent chatting, catching up with guys he hadn’t seen in a while, and relating stories about eJets to the guys that he hadn’t seen since getting back from Ohio.

There were quite a few guys there, and I was happy about the turn out from our club. Considering the distance there was a very nice representation of the membership. There were planes of every kind, too. Gas engines, electric, EDF, and even a couple of turbines. Later in the afternoon Jay wished that he had brought the ‘Hog.

 

You’ve seen a million pictures of Jay flying his various planes, so now you’ve seen a million and one. lol. This was when Jay was flying the 16 over the edge of the field and down into the valley. It really was a neat field to fly out of!

 

 

The one thing about being with Jay at a fun fly is that he’s usually very busy. If he’s not flying his own planes then somebody else is asking him to fly their plane; or they are asking his advice on the particular power set up they are trying to put into a jet; or Jay is harassing the elderly members (sorry Al! lol). A lot of the time the guys want Jay to maiden their plane so that he can get it trimmed out to where it should be, then they can just concentrate on flying it. Here Jay is helping Chad trim out his combat foamie that he bought this summer.

Before that, Jay was assisting Barry with his combat foamie. It needed to be trimmed out just a little. These guys are getting good at flying the foamies, though. I’m hoping to be good enough by next summer so that all of us can get our foamies out there (my watermelon) and really go to town.

 

 

This is when Jay was flying Barry’s combat foamie. I thought that this was a neat picture so I wanted to include it in this post. That little plane really sticks out, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

Yes, there were other guys at the show. Here’s proof. I know that you usually only see Jay’s pictures in my blog so I thought that I should prove that there really is a club that we belong to and it’s made up of real people. lol

 

 

This is how most of a fun fly is spent. You will spend on average about 5-10 minutes in the sky, and 45-50 minutes hanging out. Even when it’s not windy.

Doug… wake up!

 

 

There’s Jay flying somebody else’s plane again. In fact, I think that he flew other guys’ planes more than he flew his own. On this flight the guy had neglected to top off the gas tank and it ended up dead sticking (the engine quit). You still have control of your surfaces, though, so Jay was able to bring it down without any issue. In fact, Jay is so good that he will take a plane way up into the sky and have you toss something out on the field as a target. Once the plane is really high up he will cut off the motor/engine and bring it down using only the control surfaces to keep it in the air. Ninety-nine percent of the time Jay can land the plane within 6 inches of the target on the field. I can’t wait until I’m that good!

It was a very good day overall. We were out there from about 10:30 until 7:00. The flying was good and the company was great. I always look forward to these types of events. It’s just too bad that the flying season is winding down. 😦

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7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, Ch 4 – Media

Posted on September 13, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Surprisingly, I was neither upset or impressed with this chapter. That might make this blog post fairly boring. Just thought that I would give you a heads up.

This isn’t about giving up anything coming from Mainstream Media (though I feel that would be a VERY good practice for all people… the mass media are irresponsible and not doing their jobs properly so they should all be fired). Instead, this is about giving up the electronic devices that have really started to distract us from every day life. Ms. Hatmaker listed their electronic devices and I’m sure that you probably have a similar list. In their house (with a bunch of kids) they had: four gaming systems, two MacBooks and one desktop computer, five TV’s, three cell phones (at least two being smart phones), a DVR, two DVD players, three Nintendo DSs, and three stereos. WOW. To me, that’s a LOT of electronic devices.

Growing up our family had two TVs, one gaming system, one desktop computer, one VCR, and at least three radios. Even now when I’m out on my own I don’t have that many electronics in my house. Let’s see, I have one laptop (on which I’m currently typing), one TV, one DVD player, one Roku device (love it!), one iPod, one Kindle Fire, one cellphone (of the stupid variety – it doesn’t even have a camera), and two radios. Hmm… maybe that is a lot.

Jen felt that they needed to cut themselves off of this mass electronic stimulation that they are constantly getting. In their household they eliminated the TV, gaming (video games), Facebook/Twitter, iPhone apps, Radio, Texting (with limitations), and Internet (with limitations). I bet that you can figure out what the outcome was for this chapter. In the end they realized just how much time they are losing by sitting in front of these electronic devices for hours on end. They end up becoming closer as a family and really enjoying themselves. Am I supposed to be impressed? *sigh* I suppose that in this modern and fast-paced world it should make a person very impressed to know that another individual could possibly live for one month without Facebook or Twitter.

I could never give up the radio. I listen to that for the local news and weather in the morning when I’m getting ready for work. The car radio is always on in case a good song comes on that I can sing along to. At work I listen to the Ace & TJ show out of Charlotte, then Glenn Beck, and finally Rush Limbaugh. These guys get me through my day. So no, I can’t give up the radio.

I have pretty much given up regular TV. The only TV that I have has the Roku box hooked up so that I can watch stuff on Netflix or most of the time it’s on The Blaze TV. That way I can listen to Glenn Beck’s program, or Pat & Stu, when I’m cleaning or doing various things around the house. I don’t own a gaming system, so I can’t give up something that I don’t have. I mainly text Jay, so I’m not giving that up. And the Internet…. I don’t think so. How else would you read my blog??

Facebook and Twitter are another thing, though. I do have a Twitter account, but I can’t tell you when the last time was that I actually looked at it. I also have a Facebook account, but I’ve been ignoring it a lot lately. The games on there basically waste my time. I could be reading or stitching instead of tending my ‘crops’. Most of the rest of Facebook is just shared pictures or shared sayings. You do have the person or two who insist on constantly posting their complaints and sorrows. You will have another person on your list of friends who has nothing better to do so they post every single little thought that pops into their head. Seriously? I’ve backed off of it and only go on there when I have to. There are many people who refuse to communicate through anything except Facebook (which can get irritating!). Those people either have to remember how to use e-mail to contact me, or else they are surely going to miss having me in their life. Giving up Facebook is a lot of fun and more people should do it!

So that’s my wrap up for this chapter. No big surprises around the corner. Stay tuned when I review the next chapter on waste. Woo-hoo!

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