November 10, 2026, a thought for today, The will is a good horse. Welsh Prover

Photos in my life yesterday

The first challenge was “my favorite number”. Have several but for today I used three using these three candles. 

he second assignment was “antique”. This is a waffle iron, on they used on
top of a stove instead of being plugged in. 

The last upload was “bridge”. It is located in the middle of town. I walked across it every work day for over fifteen years. 

Life today. It has been another of the quiet and productive days. I did have one thing to get out of the way before I could dive into my computer and to my to-do list. I left early, after the sun was up and  safer for me to drive, to get my blood drawn for my coming biannual doctor’s appointment. I gave the nurse a compliment at the first stick, but it sort of change a little. There had to be a little probing. I have three black and blue spots now. 

I stopped by Kroger to pick up some meds that were ready. Then at Wendy’s for a bit of brunch. 

To add to my chores for the day was moving a couple of things. The forty pounds of kitty litter that I had ordered arrived. I had to move it from the front porch to the back of the house by myself, pulling and sliding it, good thing the box it was in was sturdy. I’m sure that would have been amusing to watch but I got it done. Then there was the empty trash can to bring from the front curb, up the incline in the drive way to the back of the house. I can move it when it is empty but when it is full I tend to lose it at the incline, so my kind and thoughtful neighbor does it for me. 

My sister is still experiencing some of the ongoing health issues so she stays quiet in her room for most of the day. She came downstairs for her lunch a while ago so we had some sister time and talked in bits and pieces for a while. 

We are having another near perfect weather day, though it was a bit on the chilly side to start. The sun is bright and shiny right now. 

The word offered to ponder today is fact.  He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts. Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Facts are the enemy of truth. Miguel de Cervantes. Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong. Dr. Thomas Fuller. Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not. We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them. John Henry Cardinal Newman. Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. John Adams. Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left. Jane Austen. The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon. Oscar Wilde. There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge. . . observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Denis Diderot. There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight. Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Aricle summary. When I saw the title to this article it put me in one of my very frequent “research” modes with it being a start. It also felt a little like my own personal letters/blog/diary. I wanted to check out what kinds of things carried “history” and how the stories were presented. The title is How studying the old drawings and writings of kids can change our view of history. Karen Sánchez-Eppler. L Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of American Studies and English, Amherst College. At theconversation.com. It opened with a quote from 1 Corinthians, concerning childhood actions and thoughts and growth to an adult. Next it related that the way children speak, think and observe doesn’t relate much to “adult perceptions”. The author, a cultural historian, feels that it would be interesting to see if the childhood ways “may possess valuable knowledge and insight”. In other words about how we think about historical events of the past. As historians study more about past history they have begun “studying the history of childhood”. It includes “using materials produced by the people they study – not just the things said”. As the author continues her study, she uses “writings and drawings produced by 19th-century American children”. She explains the difficulty in finding the sources. There are drawings, letter, diaries, essays and doodles in “library collections” but it is not cataloged as “child-made”. After finding these kinds of items she has to “figure how to interpret them”.  In the article she tells about an 1827 diary written by an eight-year-old daughter of a minister, where she found information  about a snow fall, weather of the day, and  how mama played a guitar at home. The writing as short but the use of a guitar in “middle-class households” was brought to light along with the nature of that day. It also encourages us to detect the viewpoints of a child. In another diary she discovered that a young boy wrote about home life during the Civil War. He described the “skirmishes” that “closely replicate the battle plans of actual Civil War conflicts” and show how the boy followed the news. The author says she even pays attention to “scribbles” in the margins. She came across ones from the 18 and 19th centuries that could tell about race and colonialism by the colors used in her scribbles. Some of the writings she has found were about shipwrecks and the childrens’ own stories tied to the idea of the shipwreck in an imaginary world. There have been homemade books found that show interest in inventions and engineering and building. In one of the books there was a map that showed where different things like, iron, hay, fruit, books, and pictures could be found. The author feels that these finds show how the children played and about their curiosity, and how we can see the history as was seen in their eyes.

While I stopped at Kroger to pick up meds I also picked up what we use to call “TV dinners”. I just hope they don’t do too much damage to acid reflux.

Photos in my life today

My first upload for today is “the last thing I bought”. I stopped at Wendy’s for a sausage sandwich and a cinnamon pull apart. 

The next assignment is “a crack in it”. My blacktop driveway has several cracks in it, some with weeds taking up residence. 

The last upload is “what I am wearing”. It is sweatshirt weather so I have on one of my favorites, Mickey Mouse. 

Joy

Fine Art America upload for today....snowy and abandoned

Want to shop? fineartamerica.com search for joy rector (“view shop”) redbubble.com search for jarector