Random Thoughts – Page 40 – The ramblings of an addled mind.

Piney Mountain Canine Foster Care

Marie and I have been providing canine foster care to dogs since June of 2012. We find it to be a very rewarding experience. Some posts to this blog promote animal fostering, offer training tips and cover canine health issues. I will post the stories about our foster dogs, articles about what we’ve learned as foster care providers, and some links to the organizations we work with.

But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve been busy setting up Facebook pages for each of the foster dogs where I can post short bits of information, pictures and videos about each dog. Why not just do all this on the web site? In a word: traffic. Continue reading “Piney Mountain Canine Foster Care”

Why Foster Care?

Animal shelters and rescue programs desperately need the help of people who will provide in-home foster care for some of their animals.

What Is Animal Foster Care?

Foster Care saves lives — Belle – July 3013

Animal foster care is similar to human foster care in that you provide a loving, safe, temporary environment for animals in need. Programs vary from facility to facility, but generally The Shelter/Rescue provides the food and medications; you supply the place and the love.

Why Animal Foster Care?

Shelters and rescues need foster homes for several reasons:

Continue reading “Why Foster Care?”

Advantages of Recycling Aluminum

We see aluminum cans by the thousands. We may come to think that with so many aluminum cans around, why bother recycling? But it is this abundance that is a prime reason TO recycle. We may ask, “Is it worth the bother?” It is if you have any concern for your surroundings.

Recycling aluminum is so easy that the time needed for an empty beverage can to be recycled, refilled and be back on the store shelf is as little as 60 days!

Because aluminum does not degrade or burn off during recycling, aluminum is infinitely recyclable. Recycling aluminum saves 90-95 percent of the energy needed to make aluminum from bauxite ore. Aluminum smelting also produces sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide, two toxic gases that are key elements in smog and acid rain.

It doesn’t matter if you’re making aluminum cans, roof gutters or cookware, it is simply much more energy-efficient to recycle existing aluminum to create the aluminum needed for new products than it is to make aluminum from virgin natural resources.

Someone has said, “Success knows no strangers while failure has no friends.” On first reading it seems to be a fairly accurate observation. We do tend to applaud those who succeed and shun those who have failed. Society gives the limelight to those who have done extraordinarily well, yet it hardly gives a footnote to those who have not met public expectations. The friendship factor favors the successful. We clamor for companionship from those who can teach us how to be winners. We are indifferent to those who have allowed life to lose its zest. Business, politics, entertainment, and sometimes even religion focus upon beautiful people who appear to be bright and successful. Therefore our beginning statement seems to have some validity.

On the other hand, however, the issue of success and failure may be as much a matter of perception as reality. If we perceive ourselves to be successful, most likely we will have a more exuberant personality. Yet, if we perceive ourselves to be failures most likely we will be inhibited and withdrawn. From this perspective neither success nor failure is as much a matter of numbers as it is a matter of attitude. Successful people who have lost the challenge of achievement feel like failures. People who have failed are sometimes motivated to survive their setbacks and focus their sights on higher goals. In many ways we are who we think we are and we do well not to think more highly or lowly of ourselves than we ought. Continue reading

The Great NASCAR Pilgrimage

Since I’m low on ideas for prattlings this week I thought I’d skate along by reprising a post from an old blog about the last time we took a really-truly vacation. That was 2011, when Marie and I went on our NASCAR pilgrimage to Charlotte Motor Speedway. This has been an annual trip for many years, but this year we added a twist.

Normally we just take a long weekend and pop over to North Carolina and back. While there we take in a race, visit some race shops and see some sights. We live just 12 miles from the Tennessee/North Carolina border and the drive to Salisbury (where we stay with relatives) is only about 3 hours – if we drive straight through, which we rarely do.

This time we decided to go to North Carolina by way of Alabama and Georgia so we could visit with my twin-brother-by-another-mother and his wife. We took an entire week (an historic event in itself), took our time and enjoyed the journey. Continue reading “The Great NASCAR Pilgrimage”

THE GOD OF OUR IMAGINATION

Do we worship a god, sometimes, who is the figment of our imagination? Do we create a god in our image rather than conform to the image of God created within us? Do we set our own agenda or do we seriously search for the will of God? False gods do not have to be made out of gold or silver. They can be the products of our speculation. Idols are formed in our minds long before they are created by our hands. Our most common human heresy is to make up our own set of rules. We pray to a god who permits. We serve a god who satisfies our carnal desires. Our religion is egocentric rather than theocentric. We invent ways to satisfy our thirst for heaven which fall short of heaven’s expectations. We are never at peace with God because the gods we create instigate chaos.

Sooner or later our house of religious cards will tumble. The bubble of synthetic spirituality will burst. The charade of pretentious Christianity will end. We cannot go on serving a god who does not exist. There comes a time when the issues of life demand a quality commitment to reality. Whenever sickness and death sting us with the tentacles of despair, we need an eternal hope. Whenever temptation lurks at the door and sin creates an uneasy conscience, we need more than a silly system of self approval. Whenever friends turn against us and we feel alone, we need the deeper friendship of divine devotion. Whenever crises come, as surely they will, we need more than human resources.

Simply stated, there comes a time when we cannot make it with a faith based only on convenience.

What, then, shall we do to cultivate an authentic attachment to our Lord and all that adds substance to the living of our days? We need to take God at His word and follow His guidelines for godly living. We must evaluate our tendencies to be less than honest with ourselves about God. We cannot serve a god who exists only in our imaginations. The altar of our own ego is a poor place to find the peace that passes all understanding. We need to confront our risen Savior and in the fellowship of His suffering find meaning in whatever penalties and blessings life presents us. We are never nearer to God than when we denounce our idols and make Him the primary focus of our lives.

Reducing Runaway Consumer Buying

Advertising is everywhere. Its purpose is mostly to increase consumer buying. Some advertising purports to educate you, but in the end the purpose is to induce you to buy their brand, support their cause, or think their way.

How much advertising we are exposed to depends on the person. Estimates published on the Internet vary from 247 to 5,000 advertisements per day. If you watch television, approximately 25 minutes of each hour will be advertisements. Radio is similar. Then there are billboards and signs on stores, busses, cars, trucks, food packaging and clothing that advertise someone’s product to others. “We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad agency.

The net result of pervasive advertising is that we begin to think of things like cell phones as fashion accessories and feel that we must always have the latest and greatest of anything we own…as well as owning a great many things that we don’t really use.

This is a vastly different mindset from that of America a few generations ago. During the Great Depression Americans were experts and reusing and repurposing everything they had. Before that: when people began settling the Appalachian region, people made most of what they had. Getting supplies from the East into these mountains before there were roads and railways was difficult and dangerous. Settlers brought the bare essentials with them, then used what was on hand to make what they needed. By trading amongst themselves they could have what they needed without having to make everything themselves.

Some of us still treasure generations-old cast iron cookware or power tools from the 50s and 60s that were built to last – and did. Today too many products are designed and manufactured to be disposable. The manufacturers want them to wear out so you will buy them again and again.

Some will argue that consumer buying is the driving force behind our economy and to keep the economy strong we must all do our part by continually buying as many consumer goods as we possibly can.

Excuse me?

camel, straw, load, stress — Like it? Buy a print from www.Art.com

You’ve heard the saying “It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” and you probably recognize that it refers to a slowly increasing load or burden that eventually crushes the one carrying it, but have you ever given the saying much thought? Have you ever considered whether it applies to you? Or perhaps you’ve been through an experience that could be described by this prophetic witticism. Our modern society is very good at pushing the idea that if you’re not flitting around like a hummingbird, involved in everything, and severely stressed by it all; you’re not normal. I say if that’s normal, strive for abnormality!

Continue reading “The Camel, the Straw, and Stress”

THE WORD OF GOD

The word of God converges upon us in many ways to remind us of our creatureliness in relation to the Creator. At best we are limited in our understanding of who we are and how we fit into the scheme of things. We are not equipped to be God, but we are equipped to know the mind of God. Although there is mystery surrounding the Divine presence, He does not wish to remain a secret. We are invited to grasp as much of God as we are willing to seek. We are not left without resources in our search for ultimate reality.

We do not have to concoct fictitious characters and suspicious myths about the past. We do not have to worship the bizarre in the present nor do we have to fatalize the future. We have the Bible as the written word which bears witness to Christ the Living Word. We have the Holy Spirit which enhances our appreciation of both. Whatever lack of knowledge we have concerning the things of God is not because we lack the resources and one of those resources is the Bible.