Lydia Archives - Page 17 of 50 - Ramblin' with Roger

Lydster: Working Girl, per Melanie G.

stolen t-shirts

Coverville.CokeShirt-front The fun facts in our household this season:
1) I’m no longer working; I’m retired
2) My wife is not currently at work; she’s a teacher and it’s the summer
3) My daughter IS working

For some reason, the youngest among us seems to be irritated by this situation, the ONLY person employed. For instance, she’s been grilling me about MY first job, which was delivering the evening and Sunday newspapers in Binghamton, NY when I was 12 and 13.

“No, what was the first job when you had to Deal With Other People?” That’d be working as a page at the Binghamton Public Library when I was 16.

She’s involved in this Summer Youth Employment Program conducted by the city of Albany. While I know where she works, I haven’t quite sussed out what she DOES. Something about being a non-profit co-ordinator? Wha?

They’ve been teaching the teenagers some life skills. The teens have been wrangling smaller kids. My daughter noted that she kept running into one young girl and smiled at her. The girl brought my daughter a cup of water.

I did not expect that my daughter would start stealing my clothes. Specifically, my T-shirts. To be honest, my tees are more interesting than my wife’s. Mine tend to be about social causes (AIDS, peace), sports, and especially music.

I haven’t let her steal my green Beatles T-shirt yet, but I have allowed her to purloin my Coverville shirts, and I have about a half dozen of them. She doesn’t even listen to the podcast yet. I ought to just go out and buy my daughter her own set!

I understand that she likes earning money so that, one of these days, she can buy a car. I’m assuming she has no sense of the expense of owning a car beyond the purchase price and maybe the gasoline. You know, the maintenance, and the insurance.

Fortunately, a 20 hour/week job for five weeks won’t get her there THIS summer. Then again, she’s still too young to get a driver’s permit. Oh, and who’s going to teach her to drive? It can’t be me, and my wife and I agree that it oughtn’t to be her.

A problem for another year, thank goodness. Do they still teach driver’s ed in high school?

What the heck is a Triennium?

‘Here’s My Heart’

“The Presbyterian Youth Triennium is a gathering for high school age youth from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church that occurs every three years. The 2019 event is July 16-20, 2019 at Purdue University. The theme for the 2019 event is ‘Here’s My Heart.'”

Here’s the thing: my daughter and I just got back. Or we will have just returned since I’m writing this BEFORE we departed. Talk about your time warp. I’ve been one of four chaperones for the Albany Presbytery.

“Five days of CONVERSATION, RECREATION, LEARNING, WORSHIP, AND FUN! Drawing from the rich and diverse theology, history and education of the Presbyterian tradition – the Triennium experience is packed with the information students long to explore!”

Moreover, it will have taken about 17 hours on a bus to get to Lafayette, IN and another 3/4 of a day to get back. Our departure was scheduled for 8 p.m. on July 15. That was my wife’s birthday, which was our present to her! Our return ETA was July 21 at 8 a.m., by which time she will have had time to miss us.

If I had still been working, I almost certainly would never have agreed to go. A week away from the job meant taking two days just to catch up. That’s been the nature of the beast. Also, if my daughter didn’t want me to go, I surely would not have done so.

“Digging into faith through a variety of activities and experiences – all focused around the theme ‘Here’s My Heart’ (Recognize the line yet? Hint: It’s a lyric from a classic tune/hymn we sing!) participants at the Triennium will re-enter their lives with a fresh sense of inspiration grounded in the context of personal and communal worship!”

One other thing, I will have been without anything to write on electronically for a week, a curse when you have a daily blog. I will have a cellphone but no laptop. So, if I haven’t visited your website, or approved your comments, or commented on Facebook, it will have been a combination of busyness and inaccessibility.

One other selling point of the trip that can check Indiana off my list of states. That will be #31. I had been through there back in 1998 on a train, but I did not actually DO anything for it to count. Sooner or later, I may actually write about the experience.

BC: British Columbia; Before Christ

the use of BCE was popularized in academic and scientific publications

British Columbia What possessed me going through the two-letter postal codes for United States states, Canadian provinces and territories of both? It started with a game I used to play with my daughter, usually in the car.

I’d say there were four states beginning with A and she’d name them. None with B, but three with C, one with D, etc.

Re: British Columbia, I started wondering about something. How does the province in Canada furthest from the country and explorer for which it’s named become so dubbed?

Here’s an explanation: “The Colony… was founded by Richard Clement Moody [et al.]… in response to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush… He was hand-picked by the Colonial Office in London to transform British Columbia into the British Empire’s ‘bulwark in the farthest west,’ and ‘to found a second England on the shores of the Pacific…’

“Today… the question of Aboriginal Title, long ignored, has become a legal and political question of frequent debate as a result of recent court actions. Notably, the Tsilhqot’in Nation has established Aboriginal title to a portion of their territory, as a result of a 2014 Supreme Court of Canada decision.”

The traditional English abbreviation was B.C., the traditional French C.-B. for Colombie-Britannique. Capital: Victoria; largest city: Vancouver.

Dionysius invented the Anno Domini system in the sixth century, “which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar.

“Common Era or Current Era (CE) and BCE (Before the Common Era or Before the Current Era)… are alternatives to the Dionysian AD and BC system respectively… Since the two notation systems are numerically equivalent, “2019 CE” corresponds to “AD 2019” and “400 BCE” corresponds to “400 BC”.

The expression has been traced back to 1615, when it first appeared in a book by Johannes Kepler… The term “Common Era” can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish religious scholars.

“In the later 20th century, the use of CE and BCE was popularized in academic and scientific publications as a culturally neutral term. It is also used by some authors and publishers who wish to emphasize sensitivity to non-Christians, by not explicitly referencing Jesus as “Christ” and Dominus (“Lord”) through use of the abbreviation “AD”.

There’s a daughter story here, too. Someone in her class a few years back suggested that AD meant After Death, presumably of Jesus, but someone (OK, I) had told her some time earlier that it meant “in the year of our Lord”, or Anni Domini. However, the teacher agreed with the other student until he subsequently checked.

For ABC Wednesday

Lydster: Toussaint Louverture

from the French word for ‘the one who opened the way’

Toussaint Louverture Virtually all my friends say they never helped their children with homework. My parents certainly never helped me. But there was a disconnect last year between her algebra teacher and most of the class, so I did what I could.

This year, I didn’t help much until my daughter had two sick days in early May. Being ill in high school does not mean you don’t have to do the work. So during the last week of classes, I did assist her for three days in a row.

One of the assignments for AP World History was to talk about a notable historic figure. My daughter decided to draw, then paint, François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (or L’Ouverture). He could be considered the George Washington of Haiti, although he did not live long enough to see the end of that country’s revolution.

While she worked on English homework, I found some biographical information about Louverture. The early stuff was vague; he was born between 1739 and 1746, with many historians settling on 1743, in May, or maybe November.

He was a leader of the 1791 slave revolt. “His military and political acumen consolidated those gains, and eventually controlled the whole country. He worked to improve the economy and security of Saint-Domingue,” later called Haiti.

“Some time in 1792–93, he adopted the surname Louverture, from the French word for ‘opening’ or ‘the one who opened the way.’ Although some modern writers spell his adopted surname with an apostrophe, he did not.

“The most common explanation for the name is that it refers to his ability to create openings in battle. The name is sometimes attributed to French commissioner Polverel’s exclamation: ‘That man makes an opening everywhere.’ However, some writers think the name referred to a gap between his front teeth.

On 29 August 1793 he made his famous declaration of Camp Turel to the blacks of St Domingue.

In 1800, he created a de facto autonomous colony, and named himself governor for life in the constitution, against Napoleon Bonaparte’s wishes. “In 1802 he was forced to resign by forces sent by Napoleon to restore French authority. He was deported to France, where he died in 1803.

“The French, suffering the loss of two-thirds of their forces from yellow fever, withdrew from Saint-Domingue that year. The Haitian Revolution continued under Louverture’s lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared independence on 1 January 1804. It was the only slave revolt in the modern era that led to the founding of a state.”

The airport in Haiti is Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Tabarre, near Port-Au-Prince. The number of cultural references to Louverture is enormous, including a 1971 track by Santana from the group’s third album.

Not helping my daughter with the homework would give me more time. (And I DO love summer vacation!) But in helping, I learn stuff, so that’s the trade off.

Lydster: confirmation class 2019

My daughter decided to draw her statement of faith

My daughter and four other teenagers at church were in confirmation class this spring. It ran seven Sunday mornings starting on March 17, but excluded Easter Sunday. It involved some theological tenets, plus the history of the Presbyterian Church and our church in particular.

The parents, us included, insisted that they must take the class, run by one of the pastors. He helped them deal with big-time issues such as fuzzy concepts (Virgin birth) and the room for doubt. They had the decision whether or not to join the church at the end of the process.

Near the end, they were to work on a “statement of faith” that they would share with the Session as part of becoming members. May 5 was the last class, but by the end of that session, none of the five were finished. this meant working on it during the week.

My daughter, as is her wont, decided to draw her statement of faith, representing God (everywhere), Jesus (lamb of God), the Holy Spirit and the church. By May 11, she’d only finished two of the four, though she decided on the concepts for the other two in the car.

This pattern, which feel like procrastination, makes me a bit anxious. I relate to this article Why People Wait 10 Days to Do Something That Takes 10 Minutes. But it just is her way for now.

She then drew the last two pages on Sunday morning, May 12. Among other things, the Holy Spirit was mysterious, path, and messenger, the latter represented by a drawing of texting.

At 9:30 the class members shared their statement of faith with Session; my daughter represented her group in one of her church panels. They were then received in worship at the 10:45 service. All five of the confirmands decided to become members!

A couple of them were baptized first. After the sermon the confirmation youth were called forward by the Clerk of Session. She called each youth by name and they came up and stood by the baptismal font. That was the part my daughter most disliked, but she was fine.

I, on the other hand, may have gotten a little verklempt. After the service, during Coffee Hour, there was congratulatory cake.