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National Hike with a Geek Day

I stumbled across this particular “holiday” while researching why June 20th was a bank holiday.  I was trying to schedule a bill payment online and choose June 20th as getting the payment to the utility just before the due date.  The credit union’s website would not let me do it.  When I looked closer at their scheduling calendar I discovered it was a bank holiday.  A bank holiday in June… I don’t remember one of those. So I looked it up.  Turns out Juneteenth is now a national holiday, and since it falls on Sunday this year, the banks are closed on Monday, June 20th.

Just in case you do not know, Juneteenth is:

“a holiday celebrated on 19 June to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. The holiday was first celebrated in Texas, where on that date in 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, slaves were declared free under the terms of the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.”

But I also discovered that someone had designated June 20th as MY day, National Hike with a Geek Day.  The blurb for this celebration reads:

“U.S. National Hike with a Geek Day is celebrated every year on June 20. The purpose of this day is to promote healthy activity in people who otherwise work in sedentary jobs throughout the year, such as I.T. professionals, accountants, and so forth.”

Bullseye… that is me right down to the hanging nail on my left big toe.

And so it goes.

 

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Ghost Guns… Why are they legal?

Color me sheltered, I had no idea.  These are deadly weapons that anyone can buy online.  They are unregulated,  no serial numbers, untraceable, anyone – and I mean anyone with a credit card or PayPal account can buy one online.  I am betting an untraceable Visa/Mastercard gift cards would work just fine too.  Wow! This is so very WRONG.  Now here is something I would classify as sinful, the marketing of such merchandise.  What is the lowest level in Dante’s Inferno?

More information available at BradyUnited.org

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Maus by Art Spiegelman

  Graphic novels are not something I typically read. The closest I have come as an adult would be several books compiling the work of various newspaper cartoonists.  What piqued my curiosity on this book is that a school board in Tennessee banned this book from the eighth grade curriculum. While a graphic novel, honors received include: The Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship and National Book Critics Circle Award. The New Yorker called it “the first masterpiece in comic book history.” The very conservative Wall Street Journal described it as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust.”

This is not an easy book to read due to the theme.  It deals with the treatment of the Jews in Poland by the Germans and Poles at the beginning of the World War II.  The main character and his wife end up at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Partly through ingenuity, but mostly Continue reading “Maus by Art Spiegelman”

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Word of the Day – Sangfroid

  • Noun: Sangfroid
    1. self-possession or imperturbability especially under strain
    2. As an aside – sangfroid (sometimes hyphenated) is an English word from French, if you break down the French… sang refers to blood and froid is cold
  • Synonyms:
    1. aplomb
    2. calmness
    3. equanimity
    4. poise
    5. unflappability
  • Usage:
    1. “If you had said, ‘This, too, shall pass,’ I might have scratched your eyes out, recalls Michele, a mother of two from Arlington, Virginia. ‘If you had urged balance and sangfroid, I would have impaled you on the plumber’s helper.'”
  • Encountered:
    1. While on the throne pursuing my daily inspirational reading… in this case Living Life as a Thank You by Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #8,535

yeah I know you did not ask!

Me speaking commandingly to myself, “Job is not done until the tools are put away, David Stephen.”

Me replying to myself somewhat sarcastically, “Sir, Yes Sir, Daddy, Sir.”

Admittedly being orderly and maintaining your tools and equipment are not bad habits to have. However, my father routinely employed a Victorian modality of instruction with his five progeny. It is not a method formulated to foster fond memories.  As he had a successful career, I can only assume that he utilized a different instructional paradigm when imparting information in his capacity as a technical representative for an aerospace company.

My name/names within the family and extended family are a whole other blog posting… but don’t hold your breath.

And so it goes.

 

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #2,471

yeah I know you did not ask!

I don’t want to say that I am old, but I remember a time when all supermarkets had bag boys who carried your groceries out for you.  And boys is correct.  It was never a female, and they were generally young.  If you had only 1 or 2 bags of groceries they would carry them out and put them in your car.  If you had a buggy load they wheeled that out for you, and again loaded them into your car.  People may have tipped them, but I don’t remember my mother ever doing so.

For various reasons, today for the first time, I used curbside pick-up.  It was from the pharmacy at the Sam’s Club in Chesterfield valley.  Hmm, I thought as the member of the Curbside Team handed me a bag full of drugs, COVID has brought back bag boys.  Of course this time it is not restricted to males or the young.

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Broadway Bound Concert

Robin aka Señora sings in a couple different choirs.  One is them is the Allegro Choir, a choir for persons of at least 50 years of age.  Sunday they put on a concert using the Parkway Church of Christ for a venue.   Señora is the soprano sitting in front, just to the left of center as you look at the stage.

Enjoy.

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I Taught Señora a New Cuss Word

I taught Señora a new four-letter word.  Well I might have had she been home.  All couples have their origin stories; our tale involves a lot of off-color words.

What got me scandalizing the neighbors Saturday was that one of the rear drive wheels of my new Toro lawnmower came off.  This mower is so new that just yesterday my check to pay off the credit card I charged it on cleared. I had ordered it online from Home Depot as they did not have it in stock at the Chesterfield store.  When I unboxed the mower I was glad to see Continue reading “I Taught Señora a New Cuss Word”

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A Polemic – Which Is the Greater Sin?

I really do not believe in the concept of sin, at least in sin as defined in the Christian Bible.  The idea that there is a god that will condemn the soul of one of his creations to burn in the fires of hell for all eternity for some behavior during their all too short life span is more than I can give credence to. But then I also do not believe in the concept of heaven or hell.  I have no idea if we have a soul or not, the rational part of me believes that death is simply the extinguishing of a light, no big deal.

However, I do believe that there are any number of human behaviors and actions that can be classified as “sins”. For me a sin is any action or behavior that damages another being either physically, mentally or emotionally.  I would also put into the definition harming the environment, the planet, the overuse of resources, basically any unethical behavior that reaches Continue reading “A Polemic – Which Is the Greater Sin?”

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Where’s the Pause Button?

There is a common cliché about your life passing before your eyes just before you die.  If such be true then perhaps my body/mind knows something I don’t know.  The last few months my life in review has been on a never-ending loop.  I ache to stop it, but expressing with the new word Señora taught me eons ago, I keep perseverating on the past.  If I could escape out of my mind I would.  Maybe I have already and I do not know it.

This perseveration likely has more to do with the fact that I just turned 70. I reckon I should be celebrating that I have reached this milestone Continue reading “Where’s the Pause Button?”