January 31, 2020 thought for the day:  Good deeds never leave home, bad ones echo a thousand miles. Chinese Proverb

I got up a little early since I knew I had to get to church to complete the newsletter. I have two ladies who help me with these last steps of preparing the newsletter. All three of us are early risers and like to get started on projects as early as possible. When I got to the church one of the lady’s was already there. We had it finished in less than an hour.

The photo theme for January 29 was “trio”. One of the first things that entered my mind was the trio of alphabet statues we have at Westgate Park so I headed there after I left the church. In order to make the statues stand out I used some filters to turn the background to black and white. I left the statues their original colors.

I had planned to visit my great grandson today but plans were changed. I am going to try to make it next week. He is growing so fast, he will be crawling soon.

It is a dreary day (with a few snow flurries here and there) and I don’t have much on my agenda. The impeachment talk has taken over most television stations so anything related to my favorite soap operas are on hold for now. I know this is an important time in history, or so we have been told, but I can’t help but picture kids on a play ground arguing when I see the grown men and women in suits sometimes making fools of themselves. The repetition of the same thing over and over and over is jarring and makes the whole thing seem useless. I’m sure it is important to history on more levels than one.

The word is divine. There is a deity within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated, Ovid  As the sun shines both on the cedar and the smallest flower, so the Divine sun illumines each soul, Therese of Lisieux. Heartsick, heartbroken - to know love is to know pain. What could be more common? Even so, each broken heart is so singular that with it we probe the divine, Rumi.  To err is human, to forgive divine, Alexander Pope. It is well to think well; it is divine to act well, Horace Mann. For Mercy has a human heart; Pity, a human face; Love, the human form divine; and Peace, the human dress, William Blake. As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two, Marcus Aurelius.  The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace, Joseph Addison.

Today’s photo is “cheers!”. I went to the archives and found the cake used to celebrate my son’s return home from a deployment.

Bob Hope was a very well known presence in “my day”. The article today is about the new display at the Veterans museum in downtown Columbus. It is about the fifty years he spent entertaining troops. In 1941 he was invited to preform to troops stationed in California. We weren’t a war at the time and he was nervous about preforming outside the usual studios. That was the start of his fifty-year adventure of preforming for American troops all over the world and through five wars or conflicts. I have not been to see the exhibit. According to the article the World War II period is highlighted. They are calling the exhibit “So Ready for Laughter...The Legacy of Bob Hope”. Columbus is the first stop for a tour of the six city tour. One of the people involved in getting this show to Columbus has “firsthand” experience with Hope’s shows. His father was in the military stationed in Germany. Bob Hope did a show there at the time. The boy went to the show with his father; he said  “When you’re overseas and someone brings home to you, it’s amazing,”. Hope called his troupe “The Gypsies”, together they logged over 21,000 miles, sometimes preforming four or five shows a day. The article stated that he received an average of 38,000 pieces of mail a week. In the exhibit at the Veterans museum there is memorable artifacts such as a coconut and a wooden airplane propeller, and a letter from a services mans mother who told his mother about Hope’s visit. I may have a chance to visit it before it closes in mid April.

This is the composite of the photos for each day for the month of January 2020.

It’s pizza night again....love it!

Joy