respublica

Monday morning traffic report

Every St. Louis morning news program has been reporting a tractor trailer on fire at 270 and Olive. What strikes me, as always, is just how too darn big these trucks are now. The interstates in Illinois to and from St. Louis are clogged with these big guys. They are in front of you, behind you, next to you and it is beyond belief how huge they are allowed to be. Some government agency is constantly regulating one thing or other, but never these enormous trucks. Here is the semi on fire this morning.

How tiny the men on the left look.

Monday morning ladder drops

2 ladders have fallen on local highways this morning, must be Monday.

Tally:

Mattresses 56

Ladders 76

Another dictionary chooses its word of the year

Last week the Oxford Dictionary published its annual "Word of the Year" and it actually turned out to be 16 words. This week the Miriam Webstser dictionary group came out with their choice of the Word for 2020.

It is Pandemic.

Which makes sense.

How many more dictionary companies are there waiting to take a turn at this?

What food do you just pretend to like

There are a lot of foods and food trends that tons of people like. Or say they do. Many of us pretend to like things just to be polite or not want to be out of the mainstream of popular food. So here comes the result of a poll on secretly hated foods. Seems many of us try to be polite when being offered any of these, but are not at all thrilled.

1. A rare juicy steak----Now I'm with this one and haven't hesitated to say so. This way of fixing steak (bloody rare) is all the rage with "chefs" and meat gourmets. I can't eat bloody meat.
2. Shushi--I guess I'm not a gourmet because I agree with not liking this either. I guess rare meat/fish is part of my DNA
3. Brussel sprouts
4. Lobster--I'm in this list too
5. Caviar--Can't eat it
6. Seaweed---What?! Who eats seaweed?
7. Swordfish
8. Irish Salmon
9. Uni, the reproductive organs of this sea urchin
10. Sea cucumbers-nuff said

There are more, many of which I have never heard of and never had them placed before me to eat.

Christian's time machine

On Wednesday our oldest grandson, Christian, went with Dale to pull the tiny town buildings out of our storage unit and set them on the driveway. Christian is 14 and as it happened, exactly ten years ago to the day, November 25, 2010, he and his family were visiting us from their then home in Washington DC. He was 4 and helping paint the first house that would sit next to the church in Tiny Town. I had pictures from that day and took some Wednesday as a comparison.

Christian was wearing the Hawk shirt and just painting away. Later that night he sat with Dale quite happily after a job well done.

Now, ten years later he is almost taller than Dale and carried out of the truck the exact same house he painted.

Time truly marches on. As it happened I found a short video from that day with Christian and his brother talking away with Dale.

 

Tiny Town coming our way today

I'm pretty excited. Dale and our oldest grandson are on the way to our Collinsville storage unit to pull out the buildings that make up our Christmas Tiny Town. For at least ten years the town has been placed in the side yard of our seminary house. We added lighted trees around them and it was such fun. Kids came by to play with the farm toys we put into the barn, adults just walked through for the novelty of it.

I have no idea how this is going to work in a much smaller space that is our front yard now, but we are going to give it try. Our neighbors have no idea about this as yet and I hope they won't be horrified. What makes me happy is seeing some of our other neighbors already having put up outside decorations. This is new for our street and I believe it is because there are newer families with kids. The neighbor across the street had a professional service come out and hang light across the roof line. Next to that is a family who placed big inflatable Santa and snowman along with lights.

Christmas on Tillotson will be different this year and I'm happy.

The best word of 2020

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the Best Word of 2020 is: 16 (or more) words!

I bet if you were like me you'd have thought the word would be Covid or Coronavirus. But the Oxford people did not feel 2020 was easy to put into words and not just one word could possibly describe this year. So they made a list of 16 words to mark this year in order to reflect it.

Number 1 is Bushfire since the year began with the worst fires in Australian history.

2. Impeachment

3. Acquittal

4. Coronavirus

5. Covid-19

6. Lockdown

7. Social Distancing  (two words)

8. Reopening

9. Black Lives Matter (three words)

10. Cancel Culture  (2 again)

11. BIPOC  (I had no idea what this was, it is: Black, indigenous, and other people of color.

12. Mail-in

13. Belarusian  Again, I have no clue. It seems the re-election of the Belarusian President caused an uprising

14. Moonshot  (mass covid testing program)

15. Superspreader

16. Net Zero  (not a soda, but something about China and carbon neutral)

 

Thanksgiving via Dr. Fauci

I was reading Dr. Fauci's warnings about Thanksgiving safety due to the Coronavirus outbreak. He said he would not go anywhere on Thanksgiving this year out of health concerns. "He warned that if too many people choose not to abide by the basic health guidelines and advisories set by health officials such as social distancing and wearing face masks, a bad situation could be made far worse."

Then this: "The chances are that you will see a surge superimposed on a surge," Fauci predicted. "Things lag by a couple of weeks, so what we're seeing now is what happened two-plus weeks ago. What we're doing now is going to be reflected two, three weeks from now."

My highlighted text is the important part and is exactly what I've mentioned earlier. The outbreak we are seeing now....what happened two or three weeks ago?  The election! People in long lines to vote early, more people voting in person, that is what went on all over the country two or three weeks ago.  It nags at me that no where have I seen any major news reporting on this connection when they are quick to point to any other big events and covid out breaks.

Why is this?

A Covid retrospectrive

With all the news reporting nothing but a new onset of the Coronavirus, I got to thinking back on the beginning of all this from a personal level. It was March 8th, a Sunday, and after we had come home from church Dale was hurrying to pack for his annual trip to Arizona for 5 days of Spring Training games. He and a number of other baseball fan pastors from around the country had been meeting up for this for several years.

He was in a hurry, running somewhat late as usual. I took him to the airport and on the way back to the seminary I stopped at Walmart for, I hate to say it, toilet paper. We were about out and I had no idea this would soon become subject number one among all Americans. When I got back to the car after checking out I saw a text from Dale on my phone from a number I did not recognize which said Dale forgot his phone and could I quickly bring it out to the airport. I called that number which belonged to an airport employee, got Dale and told him I had no idea how I could get that phone to him before he boarded.

He was frustrated and I felt panicked thinking of him being gone all week with no communication. When he got to Phoenix he called from another pastor's phone and we talked about what to do. Maybe get a disposable phone there at the Phoenix airport. That did not work out and he had to get going to the retreat center where they were staying. Meanwhile I kept thinking about this and decided to see if UPS could overnight his phone to the retreat center. And, yes they could! So I hurriedly boxed it up really well and zipped over the the UPS store. I called the other pastor's phone to have him tell Dale his phone should be coming next day.

And it did! It even got there before they all left for the first spring training game.

But, in the end, when his trip ended and he got back to St. Louis on the 12th, we realized how fortunate he was to be home because the next day all the virus shutdowns, flight cancellations were beginning or about to begin. One more day out there he may well have not gotten home for some time.

From toilet paper to shutdowns I'll never forget that week and things did not get better and still no end in sight.

A tribute documentary to The Hill neighborhood

Tonight at 7 Channel 9 in St. Louis will televise a documentary on The Hill. Most of us have been on The Hill at one time or other to eat at one of the many good restaurants. This film spends less time on the eating part and more on how this area developed, its history, and how it is seeing a  renaissance today.

We've been over there many times through the years and it always appears to be a strong, stable place. Homes are not big mansions, but are meticulously cared for, and I always believed I could happily live thee.  I'm looking forward to watching this tonight if I can keep Dale off the remote for a football game or some such.