"Transfer of Power"

 I've shared sermons from Asbury First Methodist before in the days before and after the election.  At this critical time here is another powerful one to watch.

Here is the LINK.

Blooming

The first of several blooms on the amaryllis my daughter gave me for my birthday last month.

The plant is enjoying the southern facing window in our great room.

Just thought I'd share something unrelated to the events of the last few days.

Have a nice weekend!

 

Shock

I started watching the news which I never do during the day, near the start of the Congressional session. They had already gotten to Arizona and the objection so the houses were split to debate.  I heard McConnell and Schumer speak and then it was Cruz's turn.  I had to turn it off when his logic failed him.

I turned the TV back on when I saw a news flash on my phone of the protestors storming the Capitol.  From then on I was in shock.

 

Tears flowed when the broadcasters enumerated all the different units that come to the rescue of Congress. I am well familiar with some of those.  My father in law and brother in law were once in the DC police force, we lived in Maryland for 40 + years, my sister lives in the VA suburbs as do my husband's family.  These pictures, these descriptions just didn't make sense for what I knew America is like.

At least there was this good news in the afternoon: Democrats have the majority in the Senate.

I'm writing this at 7:30 am.  I've only seen one headline that the Congress affirmed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's electoral votes.  I can only hope that there is action being taken to remove tRump from office now. The fault for this rests with him, his sycophants, his enablers, and the media that amplified his lies as facts .

Books Read

 You'd think with all the quarantining that 2020 would have been a banner year for reading.  Not the case. I only read 64 books whereas 2019 was 79 and 2018 was 81.  I think I can explain this because library books were harder to come by, I did a lot of jigsaw puzzles in the first several months of our lock down at Vantage House, and I just got turned off by some of the books I started and just couldn't stomach.  Those don't get added to my list even if I read the ends before giving up on them. 

So I just posted the last 7 books I read to my list here.  Of these I'd recommend the latest Louise Penny book but only if you've read the others in her series.  If you haven't read her then start with her first one. Well worth it if you like mysteries.  

I'd also recommend The Nickel Boys for a picture of what racism has been like and likely continues in this form.  For lighter reading the historical fiction The Two Mrs. Carlyles is good.

What am I reading now?  I started In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen, a narrative non-fiction about the U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 1933.  It's well written but it's not comfortable reading in light of who we still are trying to extricate ourselves from in the form of tRump.  I see too many parallels between Hitler and tRump and Hitler's minions and tRumps kowtowing senators.  Maybe I'll get back to it after January 6th or 20th.   (Thanks to Marcia LaRue for pointing out my error.) It's the February selection for my book group.

So you probably noticed the photos had nothing to do with my content.  I  am so looking forward to being able to travel again so I went into my photo files and brought up some photos from a trip to Europe some years ago.