November 16, 2019 today’s thought: Wherever you find sugar, you'll find ants. Filipino Proverb

It has been a slow and easy Saturday. I slept until about 8:30. I woke up about 4:00 with a lot of the “problem solving” kinds of thinking that I couldn’t get rid of but then fell back to a deep sleep.

The girls were here for the past two days. I made pancakes and pulled out a can of Spam for them to try. Sonja loved it.

Sue and I got some seldom memory-talking done along with how we agree that, as we age, it seems, sadly, that we become less of a presence in our children’s lives.

Bob made an event of putting his OSU flag up for the upcoming football game.

The only productive thing I have accomplished is a little work on an idea for a photo coffee table book I would like to put together. I also got some work done one a couple of photo of the day projects for today.

I made some coloring pages to take to church for HM3 tonight (Hoge (Memorial Presbyterian Church), music, message, meal). On the way back from there I will pick up a pizza for dinner.

One of my worries during that wake up time at four this morning was that I may be boring the kids with the letters that I write each day. Maybe I should back off, for a while at least.

Of course the searching for the photo of the day adds a bright spot. It also pushes me to look around for interesting things close by taking my mind off of whatever may be bothering me. Yesterday’s theme was “light” so as I was going and coming in the car I was on the alert. The traffic light is what I ultimately came up with.

The word today is charm.  Novelty has charms that our minds can hardly withstand, William Makepeace Thackeray.  It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences-makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely.' Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions, Aristotle.  Love, all agreeable as it is, charms more by the fashion in which it displays itself, than by its own true merit, Francois de La Rochefoucauld. 

There was a second photo of the day for me today. It was with another on-line group that I belong to, a yahoo group called “thephotogroup101.” This one was a challenge for me. It so happened that my sister was helping the twins make book marks. They were pieces of cardboard with a rainbow of colored stripes. It so happened that the theme was “stripes”. That was my answer. Many of my shots from this group are at https://www.flickr.com/photos/parksfan/28017346409/in/dateposted-public/

What a wonderful project, kids helping kids. Both are receiving benefits from this one project, one physical and both emotional. This article is about a class of students at Grandview Heights that are making prosthetics for children around the world. The kids were using pliers, screws, rubber bands and plastic bags of plastic fingers to put together a hand. The kids are fascinated when it comes together. This project will be sent to Honduras for a child either born without a hand or a hand lost to an accident or land-mine explosion. On Friday 80 hands were given to the Hands of Gratitude. According to the article every grade in the Grandview Heights schools worked on building prosthetics for the group. These projects started about four years ago. The parts are made from 3D printers and put together by the children. The Hands of Gratitude worked with the schools for the first time in 2018. Photos from the kids who got those hands were shown to this group of children so that they could see them in use. One was a boy who was born with a defect. The hands are “designed with strings to help move the fingers and felt tips that act as finger pads.” The kid s who worked on the hands said they were hard to put together but that didn’t stop the smiles when they hand was done. I like the fact that it shows the children that they can make a difference.

Today’s photo theme for the fatmumslim.com.au group was “patterns”. I went out in front of the house and looked around. I saw several possibilities, fences, shadows. Then my eyes fell on this capture.

Bob was late getting home last night so we didn’t have the normal Friday night pizza. Instead we rounded up left overs. We will have the pizza tonight.

Joy