Changing light ~

It's always so interesting watching the play of light as the sun comes up. I remember when we went to the Monet thing and how they had made a full size model of his lily pond yard and they talked about how he drew the lily pad scene, he painted it over and over and over because of the changing light.



And I get that because as I watch the sun come up the light is so different and I have this urge to capture it in photography pictures. So I take more pictures even though I already have pictures of that I take more pictures because the light is different or it's brighter or it's highlighting something off in the distance instead of the stuff up front.



The added depth of things in shadow close and things in bright direct sunlight off in the distance is amazing and then the heavy wetness of a dewy morning combined with the call of the birds and the roar of the traffic.



It's an amazing experience.

Proud to be an American ~

What if I told about a place to go to think of would be available to you? Where there would be food to live and stay and air conditioning and roofs that don't leak.



What if I told you this place had methods of transporting you back and forth to wherever you wanted to go? You could go and see loved ones just because you wanted to. And then you could return back to where you live and no one would charge you any money or give you any hassle



If I told you that your children in that place could get an education that was better than anything you ever had in your life? Be taught by people who cared for them and made sure that they were good for them. Then after school colleges would line up and pay for them to go to their classes and then your children would have an opportunity to become rich and successful.



I would warn you that the police would require things from you. Requires some work to get some of the things that you want when you get there. A lot of things would just be laying around waiting for you to come up and use them and take them. Some of them would require you to work and do things for other people while you were there. What if I told you that this place allowed you to send you that you earned back to your family where you're at now so that you could help support them and improve their lives. And give them a chance at something better or at coming to be with you in the new world.



What if I told you that you live in that place right now? That there is a whole continent south of our country that has people doing whatever they can do to get to where you live right now. And to do the things you take for granted it even complain about.



What if you embraced that way of thinking and approached life here in the United States of America as if it was the greatest thing that ever happened to you and that you had something that so many other people wanted you should feel exceptional? You should feel blessed to be enabled to be and do whatever you want to be and do.



So often we turn things sideways and we look at them as if those people are just coming here to steal from us and take things that my children won't get to have. But instead of doing that we should embrace it and say this is the spirit of America. And while we should enforce the laws on the ones that do get through we need to embrace and put them to work and help them to make our country better. Show them the legal way to do things, teach them how to be responsible members of our communities. And how to be a good citizen of a country that has so much for them and is a beacon of light and hope to the world.?



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Negative references ~

It's always bothered me how people use words and references that were once horrifying as commonplace and even to be bragged about nowadays.



I remember when mental illness was something people just didn't joke about, then people started joking about it. Then people would refer to somebody as being "anal retentive" or having obsessive compulsive disorder because they wanted to check the stove before they left the house. It even became a put-down to be called OCD.



Autism terms started to catch on a little bit but because they became a protected class that kind of slid back into the background.



Anorexia is a mental illness that people suffer from but people will joke about somebody looking anorexic when a food dish is made that people just can't get enough.



And those foods are called "crack" like the drug that's based on cocaine or heroin or whatever but I don't hear a lot of people joking about how that food was like heroin.



Binging on things has become something that people joked about more and more over the past few years. It's become almost something people brag about, to binge watch something on a streaming platform because it's so good that you just can't resist it. But I remember when the Harry Potter books were coming out and kids that I knew would stay up all night the night that they got the book just so they could read it all in one night and brag about it the next day. They would also complain about how tired they were but how good the book was.





It's funny how nobody markets their stuff as being as addictive as meth, isn't it? And I wonder when it will become a joke to call something as deadly as fentanyl. Or maybe they do that already, I don't know.

Lower people stories ~

One of the themes in my life is always looking for the lower person's story. I usually shy away from biographies because I don't really want to know what famous people did or big world leaders did. And as I've gotten older, I've started reading a couple of them, but not a lot.



But when I can find a book about a person that went and did life with people where they were instead of in the halls of leadership and power, I really enjoy it. I remember listening to an audiobook by a reporter who went to China and rented a car and drove all around China in the big cities and villages.



He learned about how people in China adhere to the rules, but also bend them to whatever they're doing or want to do. I've read about people in small towns. I love homespun stories. I don't really get into what that president was deciding when he looked at and jumped at an opportunity or how a cutthroat leader got ahead by screwing his buddy and his buddy's wife.



But when I can learn about real people, I really enjoy it. You can check "Country Driving: A Road Trip Across China" at https://a.co/d/bPCtY0o

Proverbs and fire ~

In achapter of Proverbs there's something interesting in there. Lower down in the chapter, there's a sentence says:



Can you build a fire in your lap and not burn your pants?



Can you walk barefoot on hot coals and not get blisters?



And just like with other chapters in Proverbs I've listened to this over and over and over I get something out of it every time I hear the chapter.



I know somebody who has walked across hot coals and not gotten blisters. A friend of mine has an aunt that was into that. She went to a camp and meditated and got her mind so set that she actually walked across a long bed of hot coals and did the mind-over-matter thing and did not get any burns or blisters. She was fine.



I only saw this woman one time at a family gathering in Ocala. What I remember of her is that she had a completely different vibe from everybody else in the room. It's like that whole vibration tone thing that the New Agers talk about.



I always feel like my vibe is different from everybody around me, but in a bad way. Hers was different, but in a weird way. The only thing that I can compare it to is when we went to Spain to visit with Paula's family, our exchange student's family.



We went to Northern Spain to visit her grandmother and grandfather in Sardina. And I remember when we went to their apartment, even though we didn't speak Spanish, we could understand her grandmother perfectly as she went on and on about telling the boys they needed to eat more food and that they were too skinny and she was handing them pudding and cookies and making them eat while they were showing us the apartment and showing us some of the things that they had and were proud of.



And I remember that they had this old cat. Paula told us it was mean and not to mess with it because it would scratch you. And this old cat was sitting there and it was staring at us as if it was just pissed off and ready to do something just totally terrible.



And I remember getting close to it and Paula said, don't touch it, don't get closer and it turned its head just a little toward me and all I could feel was this vibe off of this cat like it was in another world and I was not going to disturb it.



That's what this woman felt like. She was in another world and nobody around her was going to disturb her. It was weird. It was also something that I admire because it was cool.



And so as I meditate and stretch and do my lessons and all that. I'm not trying to be weird and get to where I'm totally vibing differently from the world around me



But I am trying to do that because I am different. I'm God's child and I shouldn't fit into everything around me. People Will be uncomfortable around me when I look at them and see through the Holy Spirit things that a regular human would not normally see.



So it's weird just thinking about that and thinking about the vibe and then having my memory jogged by Proverbs chapter 6 today You can read Proverbs 6 at



https://bible.com/bible/97/pro.6.24-35.MSG





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I am Santa Claus ~

As my four children grew up we enjoyed the Christmas holidays. The decorations, the lights, the stories, the legends. 

Each of my four children believed in Santa Claus in their early days. As they grew older they would ask me and their mother if Santa Claus was real. My wife would tell them that Santa Claus was real and he was at the mall waiting to take a picture with them. When they came to me and asked me about Santa Claus I would smile and say I am Santa Claus.

I told them I was Batman and the Easter Bunny. That I was the tooth fairy. That I was all the mystical creations. And they smiled and laughed and told me know when that I couldn't be all that. And they didn't believe me.

Until they got older. And they discovered that I really was the one that replace the tooth with the dollar. I was the one that filled their Easter baskets with their mother. I was the one that filled their stockings on Christmas Eve after I encourage them to go upstairs and stay in their bedrooms with the door closed so they didn't spoil the surprise. I was the one that got them the surprise that they needed.

I love being that person. Part of me is sad that I was so honest with them, but one of my core values is that I don't online the people. Including my family. So I never lied to my children about Santa Claus. Or any of the other characters that we grew up with. 

Now on Christmas morning when they get a gift from the Grinch they know that it's socks or underwear. When they have a gift labeled from the president they know that is probably going to cost them money. Recently with the stupid virus reactions when they get a gift from Dr. Fauchi or the CDC they know that it's probably a mask or something silly like hand sanitizer.

I love being honest with my family. Especially my children. I hope they appreciate it.

Holly leaf spikes ~

Over the years, I've loved looking at and taking pictures of holly bushes and trees. Since my last name is Holly, I love to see those things and celebrate them and use them in pictures and postcards and other things, wallpaper on my computer.





I don't do it all the time, but when I do, especially during Christmas season, I really enjoy it. One of the things that I read about holly trees and the leaves is that normally holly leaves are smooth around the edges.





I know that most of the pictures that I've seen show spiky leaves and I've always associated my gruff side with those spikes, but holly trees, when you look at them as they get taller, have smooth leaves.





The article went on to explain that when a holly tree or bush is being nibbled on by critters all the time, it reacts in a defensive way by putting spikes on the leaves. It's almost as if the plant senses what's going on and reacts to its environment, which ought to give vegans pause because that means plants are conscious of what's happening and react to defend themselves.





As I thought about that article, I realized I'm a lot like that too. When I'm in an environment where I'm not being nibbled on or attacked all the time, I tend to be smooth and easy to get along with and not as volatile as people think I am.





But when I start getting attacked or put down or ignored and left out, I become defensive and the spikes start showing up. I tend to be a little bit faster than a holly tree or a holly bush, but it's still there and it's still what I do.





It was an interesting article. You can check one out at https://earthlymission.com/holly-trees-ilex-aquifolium-leaves-nibbled-by-deer-makes-lower-ones-spiky-regrow/



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Making email more useful ~

I have used email for a long time. I remember when email started to grow and become used by more people. It was good to have an email address.



I made sure my wife and I had separate email addresses because we live separate lives and we are separate people with different interests. I remember others being frustrated because they would send an email to my wife and then wonder why I didn't know about it. They just seemed boggled by the idea that we would have separate email addresses. AND not read each other's emails.



Fast forward to today where email is clogged with spam. I subscribe to several different newsletters and I also have a bot that goes and gathers things for me and emails those things to me. I find email very useful for passing information around to others in a form that almost everybody can access now.



But I always keep in mind that email is like sending a postcard. It is something that passes through several different servers and is wide open for whoever owns that server to read it and save it. So I'm careful about what I send. Sending account numbers, ID numbers, passwords, and that sort of thing is a no-no for email. Unless you zip it up in an encrypted file and password protect the file or send encrypted email. And even then I'm kind of thinking it's risky so I don't do that if I can avoid it.



But that's not what I wanted to talk about. One of the issues that I kept running into is it all running together. Especially at work. As I would scan through the emails that I got I couldn't really tell when I was on a different day and how long it had been since this email had come to me. I tried tagging things. I tried setting up rules to tag things automatically. It all seemed to run together in one big blur.



One day I had a thought about divider lines. When you look at posters or letters or anything printed there's usually a line or a boundary between sections. It makes that section stand out a little bit and know that you're looking at something that's different than the rest of it. Especially in a one-page thing a header line or divider line between the sections helps a lot.



So my big idea was getting a divider line into my email inbox. I thought about that for a couple of days and then came up with an idea of having my bot send me an email every night in the middle of the night with a bunch of dashes as the subject.



A bunch of dashes. It sounds silly when I talk about it but it's been revolutionary for me. I added the date to the front of the line of dashes. Now has I scan down through my email I can distinctly see where each day of email starts and ends. It's amazing! It's so silly and sounds stupid but it's amazing.



It's helped me scan through things and find stuff a lot faster. When I go to search for specific days or or try to focus on one or two days of emails that I'm trying to dig something out of instead of having to search using their between two dates functions I just type in the date space ��� and it comes right to that day and I can quickly scan that these emails and find what I'm looking for.



Here's what it looks like



Today's date---------



Such a simple idea. And it's been so helpful to me.



Just thought I'd share!



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#email #idea