Category: Americana
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Family times are times when knowledge is passed down
Last week I took time for a walk up into the woods. The woods that I normally walk is filled with beautiful stands of oak, but on this particular noontime walk I happen to notice that there were many smaller black birch trees scattered in the hilltop area where I had stopped to half…
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Gather flowers before frost
Gather flowers before the frost Last night was the first frost here in West Granby. So for me it was time for my annual tradition, going out and cutting armfuls of flowers for season-end bouquets. I especially associate this tradition with picking marigolds as they are not the easiest to arrange and they look better…
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Fun for the 200th Anniversary of our church
The early part of our church’s history was during the Victorian era. So to enhance the sense of the age of our church, our Anniversary committee invited people to dress Victorian if they desired for the 200th Anniversary Sunday. JoAnne and I thought that would be a lot of fun. She has been a…
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Mudslinging and the Golden Rule
A contrast between a message on love and the political fracas The Sunday message today was about expressing love in action. In our small church, we sometimes have a Questions and Comments time following the message and one of the younger parishioners asked about the incongruity between the current campaign process and the golden…
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My Take on the Super Bowl Ads 2016
I haven’t been really following football this year, but I always enjoy watching the Super Bowl ads. I am especially interested in Super Bowl advertising because it is such a mirror and microcosm of American culture, for better or worse. So again this year, I am reflecting upon the best and the worst of the…
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Migrating left without moving
Observing politics today is disconcerting It is interesting and very disconcerting to me to observe what has happened in politics over the last ten years or so and what is happening this year. I used to call myself a conservative Republican, and even voted on the Conservative line often to reflect that leaning. But in…
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Using the berries God provides
When we moved here 2 years ago, I soon noticed a group of elderberry bushes in bloom just over a stone wall. It was being attacked by marauding vines and overshadowed by maple saplings. But I was determined to pick some elderberries. I remembered picking them as a young man and eating elderberry pie that…
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2015 Train Fair visit
Sometime during the later years of my service at Kirkville I became an annual visitor at the train show on the NYS Fair Grounds. When I arrived in CT, I was delighted to discover that there was a huge train show at the Big E grounds. Well, technically, the show is in Massachusetts as the…
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Christmas Trains for 2014
How it started One of my hobbies is model trains, specifically, O-gauge trains running around my Christmas tree. Yes we had a Lionel train which we three Jones brothers shared when I was a boy. But what really started me back in this hobby was the gift of a Lionel train much like the one…
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Baseball ads and culture
For the first time, I was able to watch at least some of every game of the World Series. For a long-time baseball fan, this was a big deal that has been a long time in coming. But since I am not a big TV watcher, I am not as adept as some at escaping…