Big Surprise!

Judy, from Living on the Other Side of the Hill gave me this award and I am passing it on to five others as soon as I can decide who to send it to. This is a real honor for me. I have never really been a super anything before. But a Super Commenter is wonderful! Thank you so much, Judy!

The first one for sure is Sansego, a friend of mine who writes wonderful political commentary. He is a talented author. He can be found at http://sansego.blogspot.com/ Since I don't know how to post a link that goes directly to the site, you will have to copy and paste his address into your address bar.

My second nomination is at http://bettysnewtrick.blogspot.com/ This is really a neat site with lots of opinion.

My third one is found at http://pattypenny.blogspot.com/ This is also a super interesting site.

Company For Lunch

My old friend from Chanute, Kansas, and her husband are coming for lunch. I am having Chicken Parmesan, salad and baked potatoes with a veggie...probably broccoli. I have some of that cherry pie cake and ice cream for dessert.

They will be here at noon. I have the chicken thawed and have the table set already. They were to have come for dinner this evening but had a conflict of which they were not aware until last night so we just changed it from dinner to lunch so they would be back home in time for the other appointment.

This is the best picture I have of them. They are such fun people.

After dinner Gay showed Bob and me the pictures from her trail ride in Colorado. She and Tony are quite the mule enthusiasts.

They stayed most of the afternoon and we sat on the patio and watched the dog, Slinky, and visited. The rain kept the patio cool and we really enjoyed their visit. They are a pleasure to have here.They love animals and we each regaled one another with tales of our animals...dogs, cats and their mules.

Doctor's Appointment

Well, we're off to Bartlesville today for Bob's appointment with Dr. Grisham to see how his cataract surgery came out. If the eye is healed, Bob wants to go ahead and get a new right lens for his glasses and wait until winter to have the left eye done. It's such a hassle to do all the drops, etc. while it heals. He is bored and wants to make himself available to be deployed with FEMA. It has been since April...the longest time between deployments since he started four years ago. It will be interesting to see what the doctor has to say.

Bob does not hear well and since his surgery, he cannot see well either. It has been such a strain on him.

Bob decided after seeing the doctor to go ahead with his left eye surgery the 20th of this month. Medicare will help pay for one appointment and glasses but if he does it one eye at a time we will end up paying for one lens ourselves. It's probably just as well. He would not be any more up to it this winter then he is right now.

Dinner With Friends

We had friends over last evening for dinner. I made it simple. We had hamburger pie, salad and garlic toast. Then we had cherry pie cake and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

We spent the rest of the evening visiting about their coming wedding in October. I will marry them at a rustic campgrounds nearby. They have written their own vows and they were beautiful.

These kids have bought a huge old house and are redoing it from top to bottom. It will be absolutely lovely when they finish. It is one of those homes built at the turn of the century when they really knew how to build homes to last forever. There is a mansion at the edge of town built by the same builder. Their home is the one on the upper right.

The picture to the lower right is the mansion at the edge of town that was built by the same builder. It is lovely and information about it can be found online if you put Brown mansion in a search engine. There is even a video. I got that picture above of the house my friends are redoing and posted it here too.

I am looking forward to their autumn wedding.

Bridges Out of Poverty

Yesterday Bob and I attended the Bridges Out of Poverty Workshop in Independence. I was representing the board at MC3, the Montgomery County Medical Clinic. Bob was representing PINCH , People and Institutions for Cultural Harmony, a group to which he belongs that promotes racial harmony. Marilyn, Pat and Howard went representing Genesis, a local group that helps low income people of our community with their utility bills, rent and food. It was a very good workshop presented by the SRS office out of Chanute, Kansas.

Afterward our group went to eat lunch together. It was a good day.

This top photo is of one of the two presenters from Chanute's SRS office.
The bottom on is of Marilyn and Ginny taken during the break.

I had read the book the material from which their material was taken before. It was written by Dr. Ruby K. Payne. Many of the schools in our area require their teachers to take the course and read the book before school starts since we have so much poverty in this area. I read it when I was administering the Independence FAST (Financial Assistance Short Term) ministry. I also gave the book review at several civic clubs in the area to help them to understand the situation in which the poor find themselves trapped in today's society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class is fast disappearing.

Peace Academy

Case Western Reserve University, Peace Partnership International and the Biosophical Institute are working together to establish something sorely needed in these United States....a National Peace Academy. We already have a national naval academy, Annapolis, a national army academy, West Point, and an Air Force Academy in Colorado all dedicated to teaching war. In a time of much needed change in direction, with a trillion dollar war, an economic crisis of phenomenal proportions , a homicide rate ten times that of other leading industrialized nations, and a prison population that includes 1 in every 100 citizens, an academy dedicated to teaching peace will be this nation's welcome change.

The academy is slated to open in 2009. Although great efforts are being made at all levels of society and government to address these crisis, the National Peace Academy will focus on the root causes of these national challenges.

A vision meeting was held in April of this year. Attendees included educators, business leaders , armed services personnel, journalists, community representatives and policy makers from all around the world.

The founders realize that peace is serious business and will require great discipline and rigorous study. If it is done correctly, it will save the country money and lives.

Scorching Sunday

Today, is a real scorcher here in southeast Kansas. Yesterday it got to be 104. I don't know what to expect today. We were in Independence last evening to take our grandson and his girl friend to dinner and it was scorching hot then too.

We brought the dog in as soon as we got home from church. He was panting terribly. Shar-Pei's don't do well in heat anyhow and this one is ten years old. The cat, Missy, was in all day so she is perfectly happy. Poor Slinky was out though until 1:00.

I got my "we missed you at church today" notes done this afternoon while Bob napped. I will put them out on the mailbox and they will go out in Monday's mail.

This evening at 7:00, we will go to the "Living the Questions" group at Lively's home. We always have a lively discussion with that material. We like all the people in the group. We all respect one another's beliefs and don't try to convert one another to our own. We just share. It has grown from a small group to 13 though. That's really large enough for two small groups but no one wants to leave the group to start a second one.