Saturday, January 4, 2025
Memorial of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious
Eleventh Day of Christmas
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Cotton candy
Sing to the Lord a new song!
We didn’t make it to the Liberty Hill Christmas festival in time to get cotton candy; the booths all closed by 3 pm on December 14 to prepare for the parade at 6. The parade took place under a full moon, rising across the street from us. The band played on, big kids tossed candy and toys to the little kids on the sidewalks, including Mile and Jasper, and we enjoyed mild mid-December weather in shirtsleeves and shorts. What a day!
And yesterday, our friend Diane (who with her husband Mike organized our trip to the parade) fulfilled her promise to Miles and Jasper for cotton candy. Last week she found an electric cotton candy maker and brought it home. It’s a spinning horizontal heating element around a sugar holder, which spins faster and faster and throws out nano-thin strands of “cotton” candy. We had blueberry, orange, mint and vanilla flavors, and everyone got their own cone.
Two missionary ladies from Grace Covenant, recently on furlough from Asia and Eastern Europe, helped Diane put this together. Andi and her boys were friends with one of the missionaries and her three kids. Â I listened to the kids talking about toys, Star Wars, Sonic the Hedgehog and making the candy, and the ladies talking about the psychological rigors of moving back and forth from missionary work to the good old USA.
I talked with Mike about helping a crew of 20 on Thursday build and install a wheelchair ramp on an elderly person’s house. They got it all done in two days, stable and solid, with a very grateful elderly couple waving goodbye.
But we had to leave in order to get to the IMAX theater at Bullock Texas State Museum. Andi our art teacher daughter was mesmerized along with the rest of us by “Lasting Impressions,” more than 100 impressionist paintings, made to move and set to music. Vincent Van Gogh received an especially impressive showing, and the show ended with one of our favorite paintings, “The Starry Night,” as the famous song played along.
After the movie we ate ice cream at the Star Café and could have sat outside on the warmish patio, overlooking the Texas Capitol Mall. But the weather is changing today, and in Illinois there could be eight inches of snow or thick ice on powerlines, along with temps near zero. “This is winter,” climate scientist Jennifer Francis said. And “this double dose of nasty weather may be triggered in part by a fast-warming Arctic, serving as a not-so-gentle reminder that climate change gooses weather extremes, even winter ones.”
Sitting cozy in the IMAX theater seats, it was easy to relax. Plus the MUTTS cartoon for today helped me put the winter weather in perspective, and yesterday’s … even more: Mooch the Cat in bed: “It’s so warm and safe under the covers.” Mooch peeks out, goes back under. “I wish I could fit the WHOLE world in here.”
Let the sea and what fills it resound, the world and those who dwell in it.
(1 John 3, Psalm 98, Hebrews 1, John 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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