Getting another round of snow here in Indiana right now. Way too much for me but my wife loves it. When these storms happen it seems the cardinals go into a panic mode. I wish I could invite them all inside to stay warm… but then there would be the bird dropping and my cat would probably have a heart attack. Click on either image to see a larger version Continue reading I Wish I Could Invite Them All In
We in the U.S. know that one of the primary foundations of our democracy is freedom of speech. That is being able to say something different from our leaders and not suffer serious consequences. In my opinion, this is what … Continue reading The Church Is Not a Democracy….
Not everything beautiful is perfect. Somes imperfection in itself is beautiful. Such is the case with this flower I photographed in a Rockford Illinois at the Nicholas Conservatory. Continue reading Beautiful Imperfection
I want to do an extended post on some of the States I have visited in order to get to know them better. I will start this project out with the State I really know very little about and that is West Virginia. I have been through it a few couple of times but have never spent much time there. My initial source of information about WV is from the old John Denver song, thus the title of the post. Here are some of the lyrics from that song: Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River. Life is … Continue reading West Virginia, Mountain Mama..
When I visited the Museum of Appalachia in Norris Tennessee this last fall I was totally unprepared for the fullness of the experience. I came away with a much-expanded understanding of what it might have been like to live in such an isolated area. The way the museum personalized every display which made me almost think that I knew the people themselves who made the things seen. Sometimes I forget that creativity will flourish wherever it is found. With nothing more than a piece of wood and a whittling knife, true pieces of art were created. Here are a few … Continue reading Appalacian Folk Art
One of the sad things about the current US leadership is that much of the world seems to be looking elsewhere for its moral and ethical purpose and why shouldn’t it when most of our citizens are doing the same thing. One of the prime things that the Oval Office occupant wants to do, besides undoing EVERYTHING his predecessor accomplished, is to keep “foreigners” from invading America. Will there come a day when no one will even think about wanting to come to America? These are the questions for today’s post. Maybe I am being naive but I kind of … Continue reading Our Shrinking Voice…
I ran across a rather startling picture at the Andrew Johnson Historic site in northern Tennessee this year. Before I talk about that, I was thoroughly amazed at how Johnson’s hometown managed to spin the story of him to make him appear to be a heroic figure which is very contrary to most public opinion. I guess I have not come across too many photos showing how intrinsic slavery was to the southern States. This picture, according to the legend below it, was taken in Atlanta in 1864 just after the Emancipation Proclamation. The “Auction & Negro Sales” store … Continue reading Slavery..
There is yet another 480-page book about Martin Luther just released. As the article from the quote below states, he is the most written about a person in the Christian realm with the exception of Jesus. For the most part, Luther … Continue reading About Martin Luther..
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. — Albert Schweitzer I must admit that in some ways I am not a very creative person. I have often times in my life needed a spark from another person to get me headed down a path. So, I certainly appreciated the quote above from Albert Schweitzer. I have deep gratitude for those who have lighted the flame within me. I am a passionate … Continue reading Rekindled By A Spark
There is just something about neon lights that still attracts us after so many years. I found this one at the Studebaker Museum in South Bend Indiana recently. Click on the photo to see a larger version Continue reading Neon Lights…
We have a lot of wild turkeys running around our area but that is not what this post is going to be about. Instead, it is about a Kentucky Bourbon manufacturer that I visited a few years ago while staying … Continue reading Wild Turkey
I came across this device during my visit to the Museum of the Appalachia a few months ago. I have seen a lot of historical tools of the past but never anything quite like this. Can anyone speculate what I might have been used for? Continue reading What Is This??
Happy New Years to anyone who happens to come around RJsCorner. May we all do our part, no matter how small, in causing normalcy to return to our country. Enough small steps and it will happen. May truth once again … Continue reading Happy New Years
For this Sunday’s post, I want to talk about the strict conformity many churches today demand of those who want to be members. It is not as simple as deciding to join but you must jump through all the hoops they tell you to before they will accept you. I’ve seen the light go out in people’s eyes when they decide it’s safer to embrace a doctrine or a policy that their gut tells them is wrong than it is to challenge those who say it’s right. I’ve watched open minds close and tender hearts harden. I’ve seen people pretend to … Continue reading Conformity..
I am pulling off a photo from your 2009 month long trip to the Pacific Ocean. I’m not sure just where this was taken but I suspect it was in Colorado. It is very different from what I am used to. Continue reading Go West, Young Man
Yeah, I know there is quite a bit of anxiety out there about driverless cars but I am not one of those. I hope before I die I am able to buy one. Ford Motor has set a goal of producing a self-driving car with no steering wheel and no pedals by 2021, allowing time to make sure such technology can be managed safely. Source: Trying to Bypass Anxiety on the Road to Driverless Cars – The New York Times I love to travel but don’t particularly like to drive, but I hate flying even more. That is a dilemma that … Continue reading The Anxiety of Driverless Cars
One of my regular blog reads is Satisfying Retirement from Bob Lowry. Bob’s blog is much more popular than mine and as a result of him mentioning RJsCorner in his blog list, I get quite a few referrals from it. Some of his readers who visit RJsCorner might be interested in how very different people can become friends. Over the years we have become pretty good blog buddies. At this point in our lives we share many of the same beliefs and feelings, but from his post of yesterday entitled If Life Had a Do-Over Option, Would I ? and previous discussions we … Continue reading Satisfying Retirement and RJsCorner
I have decided to spend this last week of the year totally ignoring our dark political times. Here is the first installment. One of the things I remember most about my grandpa, besides him being a pig farmer, was that he would start each meal by cutting everything into small pieces and then mixing it all together! No matter what was on his plate it would end up in a pile with everything else.When questioned about it he always said: “It’s all going to the same place so why not start it that way”. I’m sure if grandpa were alive … Continue reading Grandpa Would Be Proud..
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to Everyone Who Happens to Visit RJsCorner. Continue reading Happy Holidays
I just took this picture from my kitchen window. It looks like it will be a “White Christmas” here in the Midwest. Continue reading White Christmas
I am a person who loves symmetry. I don’t know why but it draws my attention whenever I come across it. This picture for artsy Saturday is of a staircase at a Des Moines museum taken in 2010. Continue reading I Love Symmetry
I have run across some interesting articles lately about what makes a good writer. Some of the characteristics come naturally to me, some I need to learn. But one thing I know after nine years and 3,000+ posts here on … Continue reading The Difference Between Good Writers and Bad Writers
I had been in South Bend Indiana a couple of times in the past few years before I realized that it was the home of Studebaker car manufacturing. So, I thought it was worth another trip to that city. It was the last trip I took for the 2017 season. While Studebaker was never considered a mainstream car it was a well made and totally Hoosier. The Avanti model has gotten quite a calling now and is sought out by many collectors. Continue reading On-The-Road – Studebaker Museum
It’s become quite clear that really bad people get more attention than decent people. Liars get more attention than truth-tellers. Conspiracy theories get more likes than reasoned arguments. It’s clear that short tweets are more convincing with some people than … Continue reading Latching On To False Beliefs..
The Old Testament has always been a struggle for me. I find far too many places where God’s wrath is brutally shown. This is in such a total contrast with Jesus Christ I know in the New Testament. It is almost like the good cop/bad cop scenarios that play out so much on the TV cop shows. I tend to refer to it as the all-powerful God vs. the all loving God. Can the two really co-exist or did God basically change his management style between the Old Testament and the New Testament or you could say between the old … Continue reading Contemplating the All Powerful God and the All Loving God…
For this artsy Saturday, I want to give you a photo from this past Fall. It is basically looking from my front porch. Even after seventeen years here I still appreciate the Fall colors, but maybe not so much the leaves that have to be later raked. :) Continue reading Fall At The Homestead
This is going to be one of my Aspie themed posts or so I image but it also could be my almost total lack of exposure to women in my early years. Six of one, half dozen of the other … Continue reading I Don’t Like Eye Candy..
The title of this post comes from something I recently heard on GPS with Fareed Zakaria. The topic was how the Internet puts things out there with no clear distinction between truth and untruth. If you have the wisdom to discern the difference then the info you gain from instant communications is invaluable to you. If you don’t then it is difficult to decide just what to do with opposing information. The very heart of this topic lies in the question, how does a person gain wisdom? Besides putting truth and untruth on the same level, the Internet also makes … Continue reading The Truth And The Untruth Lay On The Same Level.
We went to Disney World in the Spring of 2016 for our 30th wedding anniversary. At least for me, it was a very memorable experience. My wife took the idea that Disney World was for kids and was therefore determined … Continue reading Circle Of Life…
For this artsy Saturday, I have chosen to highlight one of the paperweights from the Bergstrom Museum in Neenah Wisconsin. I have grown quite enamored with glass paperweights in the last few years. I now have six in my collection. But none as fancy as the one in this picture. I have no idea how they go about creating such a beautiful thing. Continue reading Paperweights
The article below got me to thinking a little more deeply about our time in the USA and if we can survive them as a democracy. Tribalism is how we as humans survived to become the thinking creatures we are. It is at the core of our human experience. Tribalism, it’s always worth remembering, is not one aspect of human experience. It’s the default human experience. It comes more naturally to us than any other way of life. For the overwhelming majority of our time on this planet, the tribe was the only form of human society. We lived for … Continue reading Tribalism & Democracy..
With this post, I am going to try to add more on-the-road trip reports here to RJsCorner. I thought this would be a good project for the 2017-18 winter months. The subject of this post is Ft. William in Thunderbay Ontario Canada which is on the north side of Lake Superior. It is in my top five historic sites I have ever visited. Here is a little background on Ft. William from Wikipedia: Fort William Historical Park is known as a living history site. Numerous historic buildings have been reconstructed to show the range of the post, and costumed historical interpreters recreate … Continue reading On The Road – Ft William, Thunderbay Canada
One of the goals of RJsCorner it to maybe teach the younger generations some lessons so they don’t have to make the same mistakes I did. If maybe one of my over 3,000 posts has helped one person in that regard then all my efforts here were worth it. With that in mind, I am going to start a series here on some of the life lessons I have learned in my seven decades on this earth. It would have been nice to have been forewarned about some of them but I really had no one to teach me these … Continue reading Life Lesson # 102.. Don’t Work for Assholes
I have certainly had some fun visiting the rendezvous in the last few years. They are becoming my favorite venue for my micro-RV trips. With temperatures in the 60s today and much of November, it doesn’t feel like winter (thank goodness) but I am still in the mode of looking back with my picture portfolio. So, I have gathers some pics to celebrate rendezvous. Someday, if I live long enough I just may try to join some of these folks. As usual, click on any pic to see a larger slideshow view: As you can see, my favorite flavor … Continue reading Rendezvous…
I find myself often complaining when Christian organizations don’t come right out and say that currently labeled “Evangelicals” have kidnapped the true meaning of their religion and have replaced it with their own political version. I search out where someone is speaking out on this topic and here is one of them. You might want to read the whole article if this is of interest to you: “Is Roy Moore a hill on which Evangelicals are prepared to die? As for me and my house, ‘Hell no, we won’t go,’” said Evangelical theologian Rev. Dr. Peter Heltzel, Associate Professor of … Continue reading Over 300 Christian Theologians Challenge The Corruption Of U.S. Christianity
For this artsy Saturday, I want to talk about jellyfish. Thank heavens I have never run across any them in the wild as I hear their sting is pretty nasty. The only place I have seen them is in city aquariums. The ones shown here were in the aquarium on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The is just something almost magical about them. Continue reading Jelly Fish
I’ve been pretty busy lately redoing my study. It needs a refresh after 17 years I think. I may miss a few posts here and there and some may seem kinda rushed. So, pardon me if you will, .. or won’t… At this point, we can only hope and pray that enough Republicans vote on their principles rather than taking small measures offered to them in this monstrous 515-page tax bill. A BREAK FOR BOOZE: The Senate bill contains a special tax cut for makers of beer, wine and spirits, for no particular reason. (Perhaps it’s because these companies are doing their patriotic … Continue reading A Special Tax Cut For Beer Makers??
I have pretty much vowed off talking about the current occupant of the Oval Office but have to put this one out there as a snippet. I found this on my desk from the Nov 10 issue of “The Week” magazine Team Trump doesn’t seem very worried that proof of collusion will emerge said Timothy O’Brien of Bloomburg.com. But in the past, the president has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of properties to Russians and gone into business with Felix Sater of the Bayrock Group, a Soviet emigre with organized crime connections in Russia. Trump may well owe … Continue reading Russian Ties…
The words in the title above have been around for probably eons, but I kinda think they have been forgotten in today’s world. It seems that everyone wants everyone else to live their life as they do. Christians can’t tolerate non-Christians, Muslims think they need to kill anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs. And then there is the RedAmerica vs BlueAmerica, that divide is becoming too wide to even think of breaching. Live and let live seems to be a forgotten phrase today, but I kind of think it is the solution to most of our problems we face. Let … Continue reading Live and Let Live…
This is an extremely hot topic that I want to pursue delicately if I can. It just seems like the words “Sexual Harassment” has come to mean something quite different than I had imagined. Having had limited opposite-sex contact even in my youth, and my Aspie characteristics even then limited my experiences in this area. To be honest, whenever I had even a casual contact with a female in my young adult years it was most often an intimidating experience. Not for them but for me! I just didn’t know what to say or how to act. As far as I … Continue reading You Have My Permission To Kiss Me..
It used to be that your word was your reputation. If you break your word you suffer the consequences. But for the words in the title above, the majority of us break our word. Oh, we have all the intentions … Continue reading Till Death Do Us Part… Aspie Style..
For this artsy Saturday, I want to take simplicity to the edge. This is a picture of a floor in one of the sites I visited this summer uRV trips. I guess it is considered a parquet floor but I don’t think I have ever encountered one like it. Being a woodworking guy it just fascinated me. For those who don’t know what they are looking at, it is an end view of the 2×6 boards. Continue reading Taking “Simplicity” To The Edge
I wonder how many of you out there remember when a company’s employees were considered assets to be nourished and held on to? Relative to my years on this earth, it was not that long ago. I don’t know why but all of this stuff that I now consider bad, seemed to have happened during the Reagan years. I think that was the beginning of where we ended up today. It was the early 1980s when the “three-legged stool” was abandoned. This principle was that a successful business was made up of three equal legs: owners, employees, and customers. The second leg was … Continue reading Assets Or Liabilities?
Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers. There is certainly a lot to be thankful for around RJsCorner. I hope you and yours have a peaceful day. Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving
I know no one likes rules but sometimes they are necessary to maintain a civil society. But then again the very idea of civility is being attacked by some in RedAmerica. They just don’t believe that civility is of any benefit to them and therefore it is deemed useless. I got a dose of this recently from a niece and her teenage daughter. She flat out said that being civil was not “her thing”. I know I am getting off track here so let’s shift back to the idea of rules in a civilized society. Civility has a pretty simple … Continue reading Rules, Rules, Rules…
