Saturday's Old Photo

When my oldest son got rid of his SmugMug account, I lost some of the photos in the Saturday’s Old Photo posts in my old Blogger blog. Since the primary reason I’m doing these posts is so that my children will have a record of the details of the photos and the family stories associated with them, I don’t want to let the posts go photoless forever. So I’ve decided that on Saturdays when I’m really busy (like today), I’m going to repost an old old photo post and upload the photo that goes with it again. I’ll be rebuilding my old photo post collection and keeping this blog alive on busy Saturdays. They don’t call me the queen of efficiency for nothing!

This post was originally posted in March of 2007.

It’s cold out, so this picture seemed appropriate for today’s old photo. My sister and I are showing off our brand new parkas in this family picture. We’d just moved to Minnesota that fall, and the coats we’d used back in Illinois weren’t appropriate for the colder northern winters, so we’d gone with my mother to J. C. Penney’s to buy us each a parka.

These are what we picked out. If I were writing this unprompted by my mother’s notes on the back of the photo, I’d tell you that the coats were a lovely shade of blue, and then I’d pat myself on the back for my accurate, detailed memory of my childhood. However, my mother’s notes say they were red, and you can trust her on that. That is, I guess, a little warning to us all that while I’m always certain that what I write in these little pieces is factual, I can get my facts wrong.

I remember loving the fuzzy feel of these parkas. I wore mine for a couple of years before I outgrew it, and then my poor sister got my hand-me-down, so she wore the same parka, just different sizes, for four years.

When we moved to Minnesota, we lived in the parsonage at Northern Bible Chapel. The pastor of the church owned his own home, so my dad and mom cleaned the church in exchange for a deal on renting the parsonage. On our first Christmas there, which would have come a month or so after this picture was taken, Mr. Klein, an elderly man from the church who didn’t get out much because he couldn’t leave his sick wife for long, knocked on the door and delivered a package for each of us girls. He’d bought us little white zippered Bibles—the very first Bibles we owned.

Round the Sphere Again

Some of my favorite posts from the past few days.

Thinking Theology

• Steve Hayes on the use of the word person in formulations of the Trinity. (Triablogue)
• John MacArthur’s foreword to Steven J. Lawson’s Foundations of Grace is an essay “on the unchanging nature of God and the glory of his sovereignty”. You’ll find the whole piece posted at Ligonier Ministries Blog: Divine Immutability and the Doctrines of Grace, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
• When we disagree over doctrine, how should we handle things? (Roger Nicole at Ligonier Ministries Blog)

Smart Send-ups

• Man Debunks His Own Birth: “Earl Bartman, 37, was once convinced that his mother bore him and loved him. But recent discoveries have caused him to dismiss his old beliefs as mere myths.” (TBNN)
• Mocking my mother tongue: Pronunciation Poem (HT: mental_floss Blog)

My Destop Photo 57: Lesser Yellowlegs

Photo by Andrew Stark
(click on photo for larger view)

My birding friend Judy said this about the lesser yellowlegs in a post at my old blog:

It’s a shore bird but enjoys making a lot of noise while teetering at the top of trees. It is one of the prime food sources for the peregine falcon which, after a thrilling come-back, are somewhat on the decline. One theory [on the decline of the peregine falcon] is that the yellowlegs are being poisoned by insecticides from farmers clearing coffee fields in Central America.

The old post linked above includes a picture of a lesser yellowlegs doing a bit of tree-top teetering. If you want the whole lesser yellowlegs experience, look at the lesser yellowlegs in the tree-top photo while listening to the lesser yellowlegs call.

And while we’re talking about her, let me tell you a little about Judy’s latest adventures. Right now, she’s in South Africa, where she is doing some volunteering for the same organization my daughter volunteered with a little over a year ago. She’s a retired teacher and she’ll be working in an elementary school, doing a little training of the school staff and working with the children as well. She will, of course, fit a little birding into her schedule, too, and hopes to see many wonderful South African birds.

On the Sunday before she left, Judy told me that not only did the idea for this trip come from my blog, but also the means to do it. She sold an original painting she bought for $35.00 through the gallery I linked to in the post on Canadian artist Jim Logan and made enough to finance her entire trip.