The Arrow's Path

I am not generally one to talk politics on this blog, but...sweet merciful bacon. Will someone please tell the President it is never in the national interest to call a press conference that will be broadcast all over the world (and watched by terrorists and crazy dictators) to announce, "We don't know what we're doing..."  Seriously, people need to at least feel like you're in control of something.

My Mother-in-law does quite a bit of quilting. As such, she has several quilts in various states of assembly balanced on a railing in her house (amongst other places). She has been after me for several months to make her a quilt rack.  We first talked about it back in the winter, when it was simply too cold to be out in my wood shop working with power tools. Spring came and went, and I never got around to it. Finally over the last few weeks, I ordered some lumber custom. She wanted a high quality oak to match several of her antiques. Flush hex-screw hole  I finally got the type of oak she was wanting, after finding a building pattern that both she and I liked. The original pattern had the quilt rack all screwed together with glue and such. I wanted something that could be disassembled.B eing the "problem solved" off-the-wall builder I am, I got about half way through the pattern and decided I had better way of building the thing. I added some adjustable Allen wrenc...

I had the opportunity to hear a missionary priest from Aleppo, Syria speak in Church today. He said they update the Facebook page once a week when they have their hour's worth of electrical power. He was a good speaker, despite English being his 4th language. You can find his Facebook page by searching for SOS Christians in Syria. They also have a blog that is worth reading. If you would like to donate, St. Michael's Catholic Church-Hastings is taking up a collection next Sunday (August 31st) for the work in Syria. You could probably also donate through the Diocese of Lincoln . Or, contact me, and I could probably figure out something through Paypal or whatever.

Well, this is fascinating .

Very interesting video here by a group that asked homeless people to write down a fact about themselves. It reminded me of my deceased great uncle. He was simply know as "Uncle Bill."  He was the...shall I say...special one in the family. He was basically homeless for most of his adult life. He was my grandmother's brother. He was a very strange guy, and my family tried to help him as much as we could. I think they even tried to rent him an apartment or house for a while, but he just chose to be homeless. We never really knew why until after he died. As it turned out, he had been in the Korean War front lines. We learned from a friend of his that he'd see all these starving kids and would feel so guilty about it, he'd basically give away all his C-rations. He was basically starving himself the entire time he was over there, and it apparently warped him. He never recovered from that. Back then, we really did not know anything about Post Traumatic Stress Disord...

Good stuff here reminding us what the Catechism teaches on the appropriate way to read scripture, of which I quote here:  "The Catechism reiterates the profound teaching in Dei Verbum by laying out for us three rules that must be observed as foundational principles to reading the Bible “in accordance with the Spirit who inspired it.”In the first rule, paragraph 112 of the Catechism tells us to observe with the utmost strictness that the entirety of the Scriptures from the first word of Genesis to the last word of Revelation. Every word from first to last has a unity and consistency of content that excludes any contradictions. It is common practice today to try to search out apparent contradictions in the Biblical texts. Surely, many apparent contradictions have been found and held out for examination, but upon deeper understanding, all contradictions are proven illusory. All of the Holy Scriptures emanate from Christ’s Sacred Heart illustrating the unity of God’s salvific plan ...

General Question for comment. I have been asked to do an adult forum at my parish. The priest has given me pretty free reign to do what I want. I have plenty of ideas, as I have done several in the past. If it was your parish, what would interest you in a Monday night adult forum? I am inclined to do a bible study or something in church history or theology, but I would be interested in hearing suggestions.

I saw the pattern for this in this month's edition of Scrollsaw Magazine. They called it a "crayonator," which I thought was kind of lame. We took my daughter to the zoo a few weeks ago, and so my daughter saw this pattern and immediately wanted one.  It was actually extremely easy to do, though it turned out much larger than I had pictured. Upon reflection, I don't know why I thought something that would hold 24 crayons in this manner would be small.   I think it turned out pretty well. Though, I would add that if you are using the pattern, the directions tell you to use a 3/8 inch bit for drilling with your drill press. I found for regular Crayola crayons with the wrappers still on them, you need a larger bit for the crayons to fit smoothly into the holes. If I could have found a package of solely orange and white crayons, I would have used them for the picture. I am still a Tennessee fan after all...

As many people know, the crazies in Iraq are trying hard to exterminate Christians and other minority groups like the Yezedis (who are basically Zoroastrians). If half of what I read on the internet is true, it is basically a whole out genocide. It has become trendy on Facebook to post the image of the Arabic letter nun. You can research that at your leisure. I have mixed feelings about doing things of this nature. I guess it does raise awareness to an issue that the Western media has pretty much swept under the rug. I recoil at political internet bandwagons like this because in the end, it ends up being well meaning people patting each other on the back for "doing something" when what is actually done in real life is incredibly minimal. Posting something as your Facebook picture perhaps is a start, but do not fall into the trap of thinking you have now done something and are now not morally obligated to do anything else. So, what can you do other than post Facebook stu...

RIP Pete Van Wieren (and Skip Caray, who has been dead for quite a few years now.) They even made rain delays great because they'd cut to an Andy Griffith Show episode and then talk about the episode when they came back and the delay was still going.