January 5, 2021 thought for the day: Don't measure your neighbor's honesty by your own. Arabic Proverb

What a dreary day. It’s feels good to stay inside.

We got some grocery shopping out of the way yesterday. So, my first item on the agenda was to work on the bulletin. After about an hour or so that was well on its way.

Then I directed my attention into trying to find out about some odd expenses I didn’t recognize on my Spectrum bill. There are three of us here so we each use our separate televisions. So after a phone call, you know how that is with all the transfers and press this button and then that one. I made a little progress. It was time consuming and mildly mood altering. I often wonder how folks who are working can spend time on phone calls that take so much time.

The photo of the day for yesterday was titled “so colourful”. I meant to look for something while I was out and about at the grocery store but was to focused on getting the groceries that I forgot. So when I got home and after the groceries were put away I looked around the house for something that would fit. There were a few of the groceries on the counter. I noticed that there was a good deal of color in their labels so that was the chosen image.

I have a new routine to work on the weekly message that goes with our free meal at church. There is a new person who will be sending me the message. So it is a new person I will learn to work with. We have passed on week with very little problem. That’s a good sign on a dreary day like this.

The word is relax. To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment, Jane Austen. Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much, Francis Bacon, Sr. Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence, Samuel Johnson. Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold and have escaped, not from one master, but from many, Plato. He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate, Henry David Thoreau. Our minds need relaxation, and give way unless we mix with work a little play, Moliere. The intellect must not be kept at consistent tension, but diverted by pastimes.... The mind must have relaxation, and will rise stronger and keener after recreation, Seneca the Younger. Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live, Margaret Fuller. It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine, Heraclitus. Remember to preserve a calm soul amid difficulties, Horace. Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength, Charlotte Bronte. Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much, Francis Bacon.

This is another day for two photos a day. The first is titled “a pet”. That’s an easy topic for me but may become a sort of bore since I use them so often. I glanced around and found Sweet Pea on the bed as she stared at me and the “camera”.

This is a bit of history and seemed interesting when I started on the first paragraph. I starts out describing that there was “an immense body of land west of the Appalachian Mountains extending to the Mississippi River…..” The eastern part was “loosely” called the Ohio Country. This area was divided in “tracts”. There were land grants called the Refugee Tract beginning at the Scioto River running east from what is now Fifth Avenue north and to Refugee Road to the South. In the earliest part of the development people from Nova Scotia had this section. The largest of the land grans was called the Virginia Military District the was given to Virginia soldiers and citizens. A Col. Richard Anderson was assigned to organized this property. He hired surveyors one of whom was Lucas Sullivant. In 1705 he led a group into Deer Creek Valley, now Madison County. While he was “laying lines” along Deer Creek he met a “mounted French trader accompanied by two Indians.” After they passed one another Sullivant heard shots. When he checked it out he found that his “rear guard” had killed the Frenchman, the Indians ran away. He reprimanded the men who fired the shots and knew that the killing would incite the Indians at the villages along the Scioto.  Four days later he saw a band of Indians “larger than his own party” some distance away. He was ready to fight but his men weren’t so they all stayed hidden as the Indians passed. He and his crew finished his work by sundown. A flock of wild turkeys’ flew up into some trees and the men fired several shots at the birds. The shots alerted the nearby Indians and they began an attack. He tossed his compass that was on the “Jacob’s staff standing beside him” and tossed it in a tree top. Then he took hold of his shotgun and fired at an Indian with a tomahawk. The he noticed that his men were in a panic and scattering. He chose to run also and soon met up with six of his men. They traveled all night and the next day without incident. The compass was discovered by a relative many years later. Sullivant was paid for his work with land. He ended up “one of the largest landowners in Ohio”.  The article said that he “laid out plans for several towns”. He liked the forks of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers the best. He founded the village of Franklinton in 1797, this became his home and eventually the new capital city of Columbus developed across the river in 1812.

 My second photo today is “stacks”. I have a stack of newspapers that I use for a variety of things.  I put a dish or two on them to drain, I may use them as a hot pad, I roll food scraps in them as my mom use to before we had garbage disposals, I use to use them to line a bird cage. Anyway, I used that stack for my image of the day. These second photos of the day are on my flickr.com  photo page.

I think we will have hamburgers for dinner tonight.

Joy