This is a great theme for us: “HOPE,” while we are captives in the throes of cold, dismal weather and on the brink of another year.

All my hope is summed up in this:

That’s a painting of Jesus the Messiah, done by marvelous artist Carl Bloch (1834-1890). My hope is in my Lord, that He will return sometime soon.

For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? 1 Thessalonians 2:19

I have hope for little things, too. I hope to visit here someday. Scotland.

Photo by Val Vannet and used with permission under the Creative Commons License.

And I hope to see this again, very soon!

And there are so many other things that have hope and that I hope for that I can’t put in pictures: hearing my children’s giggles, enjoying their wit, knowing their devotion to God as they grow older; my employment and my hope to pay off all my debts; so much more!

And now, Lord, what do I hope for? My hope is in You. Psalm 39:7

How did your Photo Hunt go today?

Photo Hunters: Hope

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Jesus the Messiah wasn’t born on Christmas Day; December 25th was chosen by a pope to counter the pagan winter-solstice feasts going on during this time. But Jesus was indeed born, He did heal the sick, He was crucified for our sins, and He is risen. And He will indeed return to judge the living and the dead.

Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch. Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, “How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.” John 10:23-30

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” John 11:25-27

Merry Christmas

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As an adult with kids of my own, and especially as a Christian, Thanksgiving Day takes on a deeper meaning than food and a warm home. We now celebrate this day in praise and thanks to God through His Son, Jesus the Messiah. I saw this excellent video, done by Coral Ridge Ministries out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida (by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy), and wanted to share it. It’s great!

I hope you have a blessed day. Happy Thanksgiving and thank you for life and love, Jesus!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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See what’s up with today’s FFQF at Meet the Founders blog

For this the final day of “virtue” as the topic for this month’s FFQF, I couldn’t choose just one. I decided to post a whole bunch of quotes! I don’t know about you, but I am savoring every word from these wise men.

Virtue toward the Constitution:

“No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid. It is not to be supposed that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by judges as fundamental law. If there should happen to be a irreconcilable variance between the two, the Constitution is to be preferred to the statute.” Alexander Hamilton

Electing virtuous candidates for office:

“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate — look to his character….” Noah Webster

Necessity of a virtuous people to maintain free government:

“It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” Richard Henry Lee

The virtue of eternal vigilance under a free government:

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” Thomas Jefferson

Virtue is the primary ingredient and main support of free government. George Washington said it best, I think:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

…Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

Hey, did you know that for centuries, American schoolchildren were required to memorize Washington’s Farewell Address? This hasn’t been done in schools since.. well, since about the time that virtue and morality have taken a national nosedive! Now, why is that, I wonder?

FFQF: Virtue Extravaganza

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I love looking at old photos. The people in them have such interesting faces. I like to think about what life was like for them back then, before electricity, running water, and computers! I’m sure life was very hard– lots of labor as evidently etched on their faces– but they had their wonderfully simple joys, too. I have an old cake tin filled with 90-year old birthday cards, baby announcements, and invitations to dinner. Those old papers once belonged to my great-grandmother and she had labeled them to be burned after her death in 1967. But my grandmother wouldn’t burn them; she saved them, and I got them after her death. I’m glad she saved them. They are a tiny window to the past, enabling me to see and understand the simple pleasures and pains of time gone by.

I caught the genealogy bug from my late grandmother. I’ve managed to research one of my parents all the way back to the 600s, to a Norse king. It is so neat to discover your own family history! I found out that my family tree includes Half-Dan the Old (a Viking king); a king of Jerusalem in the 900s; William the Conqueror; Eleanor of Aquitaine; a few kings of England; a Mayflower passenger; a Lexington, Massachusetts, Revolutionary War hero; a Civil War hero; and numerous pioneers.

I have a small collection of photos, too. It is so neat to look at one’s ancestors and see their features on the faces of one’s children! It is amazing!

Here’s a very old photo, dating to around the Civil War:

I wish I knew who these people were– they are ancestors but the photo is unlabeled. But the older woman looks strinkingly like my late grandmother! The gentleman also resembles Silas Fyler, a pioneer of Central New York (when it was uninhabited by white men). His family had come here from Connecticut, descended from the famous Walter Fyler of Windsor, Connecticut.

Here’s another one dating from that era. That tall girl is my great-great grandmother. Her great-great-great(etc) grandfather, a young teacher names George Soule, stepped off the Mayflower in 1620.

When that young lady grew up, she married this handsome man from Western New York. My youngest son resembles him so much that it is striking! He is my great-great grandfather.

The man died from a bad leg amputation in 1889. He left his wife with 5 very young children. This photo was taken of them shortly after his death. The woman manages a smile, but the children are very sullen. That little girl kneeling to the right is my great-grandmother. I am named after her. I never knew her, because she died three months after my birth. I heard she was a fun-loving, spunky woman. I think I would have loved her very much.

Here’s my grandmother with her nephew. This photo was taken in 1932, when she was about 12 years old. She looks a little like that girl in the photo above (my great-great grandma) with the two girls at the table.

Finally, this is me. Well, no it’s not REALLY me! This is the lady I use for my avatar. She is my great-great aunt. I like this photo a lot. She looks so intense! And her brown eyes are so steady and firm.

So there you have a little story to go along with some old photos of my family! How did your Photo Hunt go today?

Comments are FIXED! Please leave your comments. This blog will no longer self-destruct when you do. Wow, what a day…

Photo Hunters: Family

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This is what clear-headed Christians and Upstaters think of American culture and the slothful shift toward government control, these days:

Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny.

A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or rather, apparently, welcomes it.

-The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
Etienne de la Boetie, 1530-1563

What’s Really Going On

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The New England Hurricane of 1938, also called the Great Hurricane, had just plowed across Long Island. It left dozens dead, houses washed away, and sliced part of Long Island in half, creating the Shinnecock Inlet that we know today. The hurricane, unexpected and ferocious, was aided by the highest tide of the year (it was the Autumnal Equinox), and at high tide for New England. The hurricane slammed so hard into Long Island that seismographs 3,000 miles away registered as an earthquake.

It was now heading for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In 1938, communications were slow and spotty. The coastal towns of New England were completely unprepared. Weather reports had called for “cloudy conditions” and “gusty winds,” which was not unusual for New England coastlines.

The extreme storm surge of the 1938 hurricane was beyond anything coastal residents in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had ever experienced or written about. There was no historical comparison. Several survivors along the coast of Rhode Island, stated that at the height of the hurricane, they saw a 40-foot fog bank rolling toward the beach, when the bank got closer, they realized it wasn’t fog – it was water (Whipple – 1940).

The [combination] of a 16 to 20-foot tidal surge and wind gusts that may have reached 150-mph – leveled 1 out of every 3 buildings along the coast of eastern Long Island, southeast Connecticut and southern Rhode Island. Along the open-ocean facing coastal roads in Rhode Island and Long Island – the damage was horrific. Whole beach communities were swept away – some without a trace.

The greatest sufferers of the hurricane were undoubtedly the residents of Napatree Point in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. This was a beachfront area, filled with large homes built on the beaches only yards away from the Atlantic. This was one of several areas entirely wiped out by the hurricane.

Helen Joy Lee, daughter of the founder of the Packard Motor Car Company and living on the beach, had watched the weather as the winds strengthened and the water rose. She recollected:

It was all I could do to close the front door against it. Spray and sand came under the door. … I watched sand piles built up on the floor. Debris that had gone to sea with the wind from the northeast began to come back and crash on the house. A piece of the roof went and …[in] a few minutes I was ankle deep in the water.

I saw our 3-car garage lifted up and dropped into the bay. I had to hold on with both hands against the force of the wind. I got soaked with each wave as it went over the house. …

[A] piece of house (6′ x 8′) came by and I crawled onto that; it was like a surf board. This was pretty exposed and as I came up the side of a wave, a board like bookcase shelf hit me across the left eye. … (My head and face were cut and bruised so, that I could not stand to have my hair touched for four days in the hospital.)…

A mattress came along that seemed to be moving faster than I was, so I changed steeds, pushing through all manner of wreckage. The mattress was very comfortable for my bad arm. …I would have stayed on the mattress, but part of a boat came along faster, so I changed again. …It offered protection from debris, too, and I lay in that. …

Shortly after I got into the boat, I heard a different scratching, and looking, I saw I was going over some treetops. (They are twenty feet above the usual water level.). Soon my boat stopped, and debris began piling up against it.

Helen was out to sea for 12 hours, until a rescue boat picked her up.

Picture a person in dirty blue shorts, a gray sweater full of holes, pieces of grass and briars still hanging to it, the black eyes, hair wild, legs the same size from above the knees down, and a mass of scratches, mud, blood, bruises and deep gashes; feet so swollen the toes looked like brass tacks stuck into upholstery, and of course, one arm inside the sweater. …

Later [the doctor] told me (he’s known me 33 years) that he didn’t recognize me — I looked so terrible. Saturday, my left eye began to open. I said to the nurse, “What is the matter with my left eyebrows — they are hanging down in my eye?”

She said, “That’s not ‘eyebrow,’ that is an inch long stick of wood in the bridge of your nose. When they set your arm, they will take it out.”

Another amazing survival story was of one Rhode Island family who noticed the water seeping into their three-storey home. They realized the ocean water had surrounded the house but it was too late to escape, so their only way was up. The waters flooded the first floor, so the family moved to the second floor. The waters flooded the second floor, and to the third level they climbed. Finally in the third floor of the house with no where else to go, the house gave a tremendous shudder and was cast into the swirling waters. The family clung to the floorboards, and miraculously, the section of that house stayed intact. They floated all the way to Connecticut. I’m sure they appreciated their skillful carpenter from this!

Not all stories had happy endings. Arthur Small, lighthouse keeper of New Bedford, CT, was duty-bound to keep the cape lighthouse lit; but he was concerned for his wife’s safety. He sent her away from the danger of the lighthouse, only for her to perish while fleeing for safety. You can read their story here.

The hurricane was now starting to touch the cold waters of Maine and Canada, and was losing it’s power. However the high tide and storm surge fueled by the winds hit the coastal bays, which acted as funnels to the cities inland. Providence, Rhode Island, was completely inundated with up to 16 feet of water surging through the streets. Many people were drowned in their automobiles.

After the shock of the hurricane, which waned at around 7pm that evening, looters pillaged the cities and violence erupted in areas. Even after all the tragic events of the hurricane, storm surge, flooding, looting, and aftershocks of seeing the destruction the next day, The New England Hurricane got hardly any mention in the newspapers. They were, instead, filled with pre-war provocations in Europe. New England has been on its own before the hurricane, and they were on their own after. Americans hardly knew what had happened.

How times have changed!

You can read more about the New England Hurricane here:

The Long Island Express
PBS: The American Experience, The Hurricane of ’38
Wikipedia’s The New England Hurricane of 1938

The New England Hurricane, Pt. 2

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The mummy was obtained by library patrician Robert J Hubbard, who traveled to Egypt in 1894. He came back with a variety of strange and ancient artifacts specifically for this museum. The mummy is called the Cazenovia Mummy and is believed to be 2110 years old (the person who is now mummified is determined to have lived about 104 B.C.).

The information was a little confusing. There was plenty of documentation and books about the mummy, but there was no place to sit down and read it all. From what I could gather, there were TWO mummies brought to Cazenovia, but one of them deteriorated. The mummy we saw was well-preserved, and was estimated to be a 30-50 year-old female. You can click on the pictures and then click “ALL SIZES” for a large enough view to read the pages of the book.

Lots of tests were done on the mummy. The DNA of the person is too deteriorated, but experts were able to come up with a loose idea of what the person must have looked like.

A CAT Scan and X-ray were done of the mummy too. There was a huge chart of all the results.

And guess what? The mummy came to New York with her pet cat!

It was a great visit and the Museum of Oddities certainly lived up to its name!

Egyptian Mummy at Cazenovia Library

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Albany is New York State’s capital city. The Hudson River connects Albany with New York City. Historically, this wateroute has been the only way people could move from New York City to Upstate New York. Therefore Albany has been an extremely ethically-diverse city from the beginning.

We arrived to Albany early Sunday morning, barely making it in time for the church service (Albany is a 2 hours+ drive for us). The church service was sweet and simple. The parson preached from Matthew 18:15 (“Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.”). There were not many people attending the church that day (I guess on Labor Day, many clear out of the city and head for the vacation areas), but the people we did meet were extremely friendly. One lady (I think her name was Mary) offered to take us for a light tour of the church. What a treat! She took us to the front of the sanctuary, and showed us the famous pulpit.

(My pictures came out poorly due to insufficient light. You may want to view a better photo here).

There was a lovely banner to one side of the chancel. Mary told us it was called The Lily Among the Thorns, dating back to the 16th century. It was a Dutch rallying symbol when Catholic Spain had attempted to wipe out the Dutch Protestants. The banner translates, “Like a lily among the thorns, so is my beloved among the maidens.”

We also saw a lovely window made by Louis Tiffany, which seemed to be the pride and joy of the congregation.

Something even more intriguing, in my opinion, was the framed Charter of Incorporation, established in the 1720 and signed by King George I. It was a stunning preservation. A huge wax medallion with the King’s seal hung from the charter. I was not allowed to take a photo because the flash could diminish its ancient writing. We also saw the historical 1656 Dutch weathercock, which had been the city’s central landmark until after the Revolutionary War.

Today, the church has few Dutch members, but boasts a huge multicultural congregation. They have a large ministry dedicated to helping the poor of the city, too. I was intrigued by hearing about their “drive in” services they offer. Do they broadcast services on televsions on lcd mounts, I wonder?

There is a beautiful cobblestone-paved park next to the church with benches, trees, and flowers. We walked through it and it was lovely. It had a European, cottage-garden atmosphere. It is named “Clee Park,” in honor of one of the church’s previous pastors. I didn’t get a good photo of the park, but you can see a portion of it in the picture below.

If we are ever in Albany on a Sunday, we hope to visit again!

First Church in Albany

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FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA., (September 5,2007) — Founder and Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church Succumbs to Complications from Cardiac Arrest. Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder and senior pastor for 48 years of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (CRPC) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., passed away peacefully in his sleep at approximately 2:15 a.m. at his home with his wife and daughter by his bedside, following complications from a cardiac event last December. He was 76.

My family was blessed greatly by listening to his Coral Ridge Hour every Saturday night and reading some of his books. God bless his family and church.

We know we will see him again someday.

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. 1Thessalonians 4:13-18

The Ultimate Trip

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