Month: January 2017

Donald Trump and Christianity

Excellent piece. Conservatives don’t have a lock on Christianity. In fact, I’m not sure they know how to find the door.

alotfromlydia's avatarA lot from Lydia

The New York Times today published an article titled “Why Rural America Voted for Trump”, written by Robert Leonard. I am still struggling to understand Trump votes, so I read it.

The article describes an entirely different mindset between the two political parties. The author quotes a baptist minister JC Watts who said “The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans believe people are fundamentally bad, while Democrats see people as fundamentally good,” — meaning if a person commits a crime, Democrats try to find what societal trigger made the criminal, and Republicans think the criminal is a bad person. He went on to say that Republicans believe God made them and Democrats believe they are their own God.

“We teach them how to be good,” he said. “We become good by being reborn — born again.”

He continued: “Democrats believe that we are born good…

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I’m Dreaming of a Baby Elephant 

My dreams are technicolor wonders. Many mornings I wake up and feel like I’ve just attended the world premiere of a major Hollywood movie. Of course upon further reflection the dreams come closer to being low budget indie productions, but still quite entertaining. 

Take last night’s offering, for example. For some reason, Studly and I were living in an apartment complex. He sent me on an errand, and I drove around the inner courtyard of the complex trying to find an exit to the street. As I turned a corner I came face to face with the cutest baby elephant you’ve ever seen. 

I couldn’t wait to tell Studly, so I hurried back to our apartment where I discovered him dressed in a beige plaid suit. Beige. Plaid. I tried to tell him about the baby elephant, but he told me to hurry up and get dressed because he was going to be in a friend’s wedding. 

Most of my clothes were at our old house, but I quickly found a floral tutu type skirt in my closet and paired it with heels and a black t-shirt. As we set off in our car, the road became narrower, turning into a single lane, then a sidewalk, and finally something no wider than a curb. Our car morphed into a motorcycle and then a bicycle built for two as the road grew smaller.

Just before I woke up I looked back and the baby elephant was attempting to catch up to us. My arms ached with the need to cradle this little one. 

Interestingly enough, I’ve had the narrowing road appear in my dreams often. In my amateurish attempts to analyze my dreams I’ve come to believe that my subconscious is reminding me that my options are narrowing as I grow older. But the baby elephant indicates that there are still sweet surprises awaiting. Where are you little elephant?

Peace, people!

Arched

From Jan Wilberg. Brilliant and oh, so relatable.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

She examines my eyebrows, using her fingers with maroon nails to smooth the tiny hairs, pulling the light and magnifying glass closer to see exactly where the line of the arch should be.

I lie on the table, my head on a slight incline, a pillow under my knees. I fold my hands like a person might in a casket and I wonder to myself, will she come to the funeral home and fix my brows and do my hair. But then I remember that my brows and my hair won’t matter because I want to be cremated and then planted with a sturdy tree. If they did matter, I would want Kris to take care of them. I trust her to make me a good looking dead person.

She drips the hot wax under the full line of my right eyebrow. I know what is next but the stripping…

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Family Photos

The Doright Family converged on Nashville, Tennessee, for Christmas. We rented a home on Old Hickory Lake through Home Away and spent four days in close quarters. I’m pleased to announce that not one of the twelve people present was harmed during our long weekend of enforced confinement. See, miracles do still happen.

As part of our Christmas gift our children arranged for a photographer to come out to the house on Christmas Eve to take family photos. The last family photos were circa 2002, so we were way past due. 

Here are a few of my favorites:

Studly Doright and Moi
Daughter Ashley and Son Jason join the Dynamic Doright Duo
All the Grands
Jackson and Garrett
Eldest grandson, Garrett
Youngest grandson, Jackson
Eldest granddaughter, Dominique
Middle granddaughter, McKayla
Youngest grandchild, Harper
The big girls
Siblings
Siblings
Daughter Ashley and her family
Son Jason and his family
Just the granddaughters
The whole bunch featuring Saint Helen

One Half from the East

This sounds so good.

yourdaughtersbookshelf's avataryourdaughtersbookshelf

unknown-1Happy 2017, everyone!! Here’s to a great year of reading.

In many places, life is just easier if you are a boy. For you and for your family. Afghanistan is one such place.

10-year-old Obayda lives in Kabul with her mother, father and three older sisters. She loves to go to school and wear dresses and dance and swing her beautiful hair around. Her father is a respected policeman, and the family is content and prosperous. Her future looks bright. But the future cannot always be predicted. 

One day, as she waits outside the pharmacy for her father to pick up a prescription for her illness, a bomb blows up and changes everything. Her father lost a leg and his will to live, and the family had to leave their life in Kabul to move in with his family in a small village.  Life is so different now. Her father refuses to leave his…

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On the bull kelp

Mike Bizeau is one of the best nature photographers out there. He shares a link to a songbird site in this offering.

Mike and Christy's avatarnature has no boss

yellow_rumped_bull_kelp

A tiny Yellow Rumped Warbler found the bull kelp a perfect perch for hunting sand flies and other small insects on the beach. This girl would quickly dart down form the kelp to snag a small meal and quickly return to her perch. Seeing her sitting on the head of the bull kelp made us realize just how small she was. We watched a documentary about songbirds the other night called The Messenger. Here is a link to the website http://songbirdsos.com
It is a very timely reminder about what a world without song birds would be like.

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Acoustic, Yet Radioactive 

Sirius/XM satellite radio might be the greatest invention of all time. If talk radio is your thing, they’ve got you covered. News? Covered. Traffic and weather? Covered. Sports? They’re all over that. But greatest of all is the quality and quantity of channels catering to music.

Remember the old days when your favorite song would begin playing on an FM station just as the family’s Chevy pulled out of broadcast range? Torture! Especially if Daddy was driving. He wouldn’t even attempt to tune the dial to reclaim the song, as opposed to when he lost the signal for a high school football game broadcast on an AM station. Then we were treated to static of varying quality in his search for a even hint of the game. Good times, but I digress.

Thanks to Sirius/XM I can listen to one station for the entire length of my journey, barring brief interruptions incurred whilst driving under overpasses or through tunnels. Truly, it’s a beautiful thing.

My favorite music station on Sirius is Coffeehouse, where only acoustic versions of songs are featured. Some of the offerings are quirky, but others hit it out of the park. One day this week I heard Imagine Dragons’ acoustic version of their hit, Radioactive. I do believe it’s a home run.

https://youtu.be/ef9zcnozDmM