Funnies, Abe Lincoln and His iPhone, Dragon Fan, Freedom of Speech

 

This week plumbers came on Monday to give me a bid to replace my 12 year old water heater, and they will come back on Tuesday to do the work. They will also check and clean the garden sump pump which is about  5 years old. My garden has a sump pump and French drains which work great to push rain water to the street gutter. They gave me a $200 senior discount so the sump pump servicing is sort of free. Next project is to replace one of my gas wall heaters which is 40 years old. For home repairs and improvements I usually get 3 bids. So far I got two, one is $1,000 more than the other. We will see what bid 3 will be.  

Above is my dragon fan, three feet across, and a dragon sculpture, on my living room wall. Also closeup of dragon sculpture befow.

 

Many countries are pushing against free speech for their citizens. Indeed some EU governments are pushing against free speech by citizens in OTHER countries. They are aiming to stop Americans from freedom of speech, even though it is legal and protected in America. The UK has arrested far more of its citizens for speech than Russia in the past 12 months. As famous minds have said, no one who wants to censor freedom of thought and speech has ever been on the right side of history.

And here is a funny about President Abraham Lincoln and his iPhone and photoshopped. 
 

Things I Like to Chat About

 I love to learn. I am a librarian and so many topics interest me. Here are some topics and people that I care about. Do we share any interests?

Authors: Rumer Godden and Agatha Christie. Fascinating lives, lived at same time but paths apparently did not cross. Rumer spent half her life in India and Agatha many years camping in harsh conditions in remote deserts in Syria with her archeologist husband Max. Favorite novelist Anthony Trollope. D.E. Stevenson. P. G. Wodehouse for good laughs. Mapp and Lucia books by E.F. Beaton. Poet Mary Oliver.

 

I like novels set in India during the time when British were there. Novels set in Turkey. Many mystery series. Alexander McCall Smith, especially Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency set in Botswana. 

Memoirs. A favorite memoir on aging is Essays At 80 by American Poet Laureate Donald Hall. He lives alone in an isolated farm house in New England once owned by his grandparents. He is aging well and inspires me. The memoirs by Agatha Christie and Rumer Godden.

Petra in Jordan. A place of wonder I visited. Two American college girls visiting the desert long ago.

 

My favorite coffee shop below. 

 

 Gad Saad, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Maye Musk, Russell Brand in his Christian path. Katie Hopkins.

TV shows. Tatort Munster. Great friendship between the detective and the coroner. The new 3 part Seven Dials. The new Northanger Abbey. Eastenders, watching it from almost the beginning. Munch (funny). Son of a Critch (based on memoir, funny, sweet). The current series of Father Brown, 13 seasons now.

If you know me, C.S. Lewis is my Christian mentor. One favorite of his books is The Great Divorce, fiction about people who reject God and who accept God and his imaginative look at what happens at the moment of death. 

Flowers flowers you can not have too many flowers. I treated myself to the above bouquet at Costco.  A week later on Mothers Day my youngest son came over with another glorious bouquet and card. 

What do you like?

funnies, blue Turkish ceramics

 

Above is a cup I bought in Bursa, Turkey, where they are famous for their blue ceramics. The second photo shows blue Turkish tiles in the Blue Mosque. I visited it several times, it is beautiful. In Turkey they were not allowed to depict people or animals in art, so many of the designs are floral. I wrote my B.A. Art History thesis titled "History of the Development of the Mosque" The old grand mosques are airy and uplifting as are the Cathedrals of Europe.

Gardening Brings Me Joy and Mamaw Tribby

 "Did I take time out to laugh, to love,

To see, to think, to pray?

These are the thoughts that cross my mind

At the closing of the day."  Mamaw Tribby 

quote from the book "A Garden's Grace" by Nancy Hutchins 

Gardening brings me such joy. I know many of you feel the same peace when you see your gardens. Also some of us love to see gardens our neighbors provide. 

 The above is from my patio fence and has volunteer nasturtiums.

 

 

 

My dad enjoyed nurturing his garden and lawn at our Wisconsin home. He especially liked pruning our forsythia and lilac bushes. Once in a while he pruned a bit too much but we always had yellow forsythia and lilac blooms every spring. We had a white lilac, a dark purple lilac and a light lilac flower lilac all next to each other. The white lilac was about 10 feet tall, almost a tree, I planted a lilac recommended for where I live in California but it doesn't produce blooms. This year it had one group of blooms! I have had this lilac for about 15 years and I am not giving up on it.