Saturday's Old Photo

I’m still working on replacing photos lost from some of the long ago Saturday’s Old Photo posts. This one was originally posted in May 2007.

These are Carl and Avas Carlson, relatives of my father, who ran a little Brethren in Christ Mission on the southside of Chicago. This photo is from the the early 1960s, and it’s one of those photo cards that missionaries give out. Stamped on the back of the photo in red ink is this:

 

BRETHREN IN CHRIST MISSION
6033 S. Halsted St. - Went. 7122
CHICAGO 1, ILLINOIS
CARL J. CARLSON, Pastor 
SUNDAY SERVICES 9:45, 11, 7, AND 8
WEDNESDAY SERVICE 8:00 P.M
YOU ARE WELCOME !  

 
I remember Avas as a pale, quiet woman. That’s how she was during the three years my family lived in the Chicago area and we attended church at the mission. According to my mother, there were quite a few days that Avas couldn’t get out of bed because she wasn’t feeling well. 

A few years after this photo was taken, Carl died. What did Avas do? We heard she started a new life. She began playing her harp again and giving concerts, perhaps until she was well into her eighties and maybe her nineties. No more days in bed for her.

You might think from those details that Avas was unhappy with Carl, but I don’t think so. I think she may have been unhappy with her restricted life in a gloomy flat above a storefront mission in a very rough area of Chicago.

Avas didn’t die until 2001 when she was 107 years old. 

Round the Sphere Again: How To Do and What to Do

Guidance for Grilling

Winter’s over and I’m ready to start the charcoal. How about you? Are you already grilling? If not, Serious Eats has a helpful guide to get us going.

1. How to Clean Your Grill
2. Arranging the Coals
3. How to Gauge the Heat
4. Learn to Control Flare-Ups
5. How to Use Smoke Woods

Useful for YouTube

• Let’s say—hypothetically speaking—that you post a video on YouTube that contains clips from someone else’s video, and you post their video clips because you are doing commentary on them. That comes under the category of fair use, and you shouldn’t have a problem. That doesn’t mean YouTube won’t take down your video if the owner of the video clips complains, but it does mean that you have good grounds for challenging the take down. Here’s a goofy little video that explains how to do that.

• Never again, at least on my blog, will you be forced to listen to a choir sing a beautiful hymn while irritating photos of roses and clouds and mountain streams go by, slowly, one by one. Nope, I will do this instead. (22 Words) And that’s a promise.

Astute Advice

• “In 1964, more than forty years after losing his own leg in a childhood accident, award-winning cartoonist Al Capp - creator of the wildly successful Li’l Abner strip - generously sent [this letter] to a young fan who had recently become a fellow amputee.”

• Don’t shy away from the hard texts: “God gave us brains so we could be obedient with them.  And he has spoken to us in the Bible so he might be more easily known, even when some things are hard to understand.” (Kevin DeYoung)

My Place 1

Airing the sleeping bags, May 3, 2010.

I know there are people who come here each week only to see the desktop photo, but I’ve decided to change things up anyway. Last week’s was number 100 and that’s enough for me. For a few months I’m going to post weekly photos from my place, and by that I mean something more than just my home and less than all the universe. Each week’s photo will be taken during the week it’s featured—a photo that show something unique (or maybe not) about my corner of the world.

This is the view from my porch on Monday morning. Airing on the clothesline are the son’s sleeping bags from the weekend’s spring camping trip. Yes, it was spring when they were camping, but Monday brought us a brief bit-o’-winter.