Life here on Tuesday

Well, we're already in the sixth month of the year, and it's getting hot for the summer. Since I'm allergic to pollen, etc., and therefore can't have my bedroom windows open, and since it is on both the east and south sides of the house, making it quite hot up there when it's sunny, dad--the room is on the second floor, and the window is pretty cranky, requiring engineering expertise--installed our air conditioner. We have opened our pool, but it's still pretty cold for us spoiled swimmers; it's only about 65 F. Summer school is going well, only two trig lessons left.

I've done some more composing/arraigning work recently. While sitting at the piano, I just let my fingers have free reign, and they came up with something pretty interesting for a change (as opposed to the nice but normal stuff) so moved to the computer and punched it into Finale Print Music (my music notation software). It came out pretty good, but not as good as it was at first on the piano. If I get a chance, I'll upload a mp3. I rearranged a voice solo part with piano accompaniment into a piano solo for one of mom's piano students--her favorite student--who was graduating and would be discontinuing lessons. Now, I'm working on rearranging Our God Is In Control by Don Wyrtzen from a four part choir piece with piano into a ladies trio with piano accompaniment. The guy who is teaching our Sunday school class in Ecclesiastes thought that this would go well with the book, and requested that we rearrange it. The only problem was that he didn't have anybody to sing it, so I didn't know what to arrange it for. We finally decided to just arrange it for the trio, knowing that we have some talented voices in that area, and hope they will sing it. :)

Our DSL is having some more problems this morning, but apparently it is city wide, so it's messing up everyone in Charlotte who is teaching Koreans English, not just mom. :) I was on the phone with the service providers for about an hour this morning, and spent another half hour trying to contact them. The internet problem also affects the phone lines.

Mom went up to Flint (about two hours away), taking Matthew and me with her, and bought a spinning wheel. For those who know about these things, it is an used Ashford Elizabeth 2. It retails new for about $755 (finished) but she got this one for $405 using a PayPal 10% off coupon. If I wasn't feeling so lazy (and hungry) I would take a picture of it. Maybe next time.

A quote: (I stumbled across this, and thought it was good, if wordy)

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Winston Churchill

And a verse:

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." - 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

And just for good measure, another:

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5:13-16

To go with the last verse, listen to song #5 on the side bar: City on a Hill (if you like bluegrass :)

In His name,

Jonathan

P.S. If you noticed that half of this post is some one else's words, read the end of the fourth paragraph again.

Fire Rainbow!? & etc...

Well, I finally have something to blog about. Looking south over our house, I believe I have seen a fire rainbow! What a gift from God!


According to Wikipedia,

A circumhorizontal arc or circumhorizon arc (CHA), also known as a fire rainbow, is a halo or an optical phenomenon similar in appearance to a horizontal rainbow, but in contrast caused by the refraction of light through the ice crystals in cirrus clouds.

It occurs only when the sun is high in the sky, at least 58° above the horizon, and can only occur in the presences of cirrus clouds. It can thus not be observed at locations north of 55°N, except occasionally from mountains.^[1]

The phenomenon is quite rare because the ice crystals must be aligned horizontally to refract the high sun. The arc is formed as light rays enter the horizontally-oriented flat hexagonal crystals through a vertical side face and exit through the horizontal bottom face. It is the 90° inclination that produces the well-separated rainbow-like colours and, if the crystal alignment is just right, makes the entire cirrus cloud shine like a flaming rainbow.^[2][1]

A circumhorizontal arc can be confused with an infralateral arc when the sun is high in the sky; the former is however always oriented horizontally where the latter is oriented as a section of a rainbow, e.g. as an arc stretching upwards from the horizon.^[2]

I checked the pictures of infralateral arcs, and this wasn't it. Although I realize that this rainbow in the sky wasn't nearly as bright as some of the ones documented across the internet, I doubt that I will ever see one again--a circumhorizontal arc, the rarest of all meteorological phenomena!

Pretty Cool, huh?

One of our music providers has gone off line, so all we have on the blog right now is bluegrass. Sigh... ;-)

Lets see...there are some flowers out, so here's some pictures of them:


These are just a few of the little wonders God has scattered across our yard.


Here's a picture of our front sign (the one mom painted):
And one of the beloved dog who wishes that I would quit taking pictures and play with him. :-)
Speaking of the dog, I reciently found some pictures of him from before he came to our house:


And here are matthew's chicks (more due to arrive Monday):
Some of those chickens(by my reckoning) have got to be from the weirdest parts of God's creation.


Finally, Matthew's newly revised (and much sturdier [he replaced his 12 1/2" pvc pipe hoops with 6 1" steel pipes {bent to spec--he went over to the gentleman from church's house and curved them on his trailer--and anchored to the ground via fence posts}]) hoop house:


And now I'm running out of pictures.

The DSL Chronicles

Every spring through fall, our DSL internet service becomes spotty. This year, with mom teaching Koreans English, we need better than spotty. So, we(she) have been constantly on the phone with the central office, or shepherding a tech around the house(technically, the service people shouldn't need to be kept track of, but some of the ones we get need to be told where the mouse is at the computer[really, it's true!] even though we keep it on a tray like most people do). One tech even came on the phone with the people at headquarters to tell me to undo what he did when he was here. Good thing I was watching. :-)

There was a really nice, knowledgeable guy (definitely a divine blessing) out from AT&T (the owners of the phone line, but unfortunately, not providers of DSL in this area) who checked all the lines for faults, and came up with no problems. He even told us all the technical information to relay to the service provider to backup his story. However, we still cannot seem to reliably and speedily connect to the internet, like we can all winter.

As their last possible fix(or so they say), the service provider is going to order a new line from the roadside box to our house. There's not much else we can do ether after they throw up their hands, as they seem to be the only DSL provider in this area. The cable line stops up the road, and satellite has too much of a lag. We could look into getting an air card(which gets internet from the cell towers)but that is pretty expensive.

The Close of Band

We had our last band rehearsal on yesterday, and the concert is next Monday. We are playing(not necessarily in this order):

The William Bird Suite(movements 1 and 6)
Abrams Pursuit
Liberty Bell
The 1812 Overture
Marche Hongroise
Salute to America's Finest

I'm not sure what we will do in the way of brass music over the summer, but we might startup the PotterVilla a Capriccio again.

Friends, Children, Countrymen!

We had some friends from the UP (that's the upper peninsula to non-Michiganders--we live in the lower peninsula) come down to visit us for the homeschool conference. We got to look after four of their five kids while they went to the big city for the conference. Compared to 'normal' kids, these guys (actually more girls, as they only have one boy out of five) are very well behaved, and a joy to have over the weekend. When they come is one of the only times we get out the knex(see knex.com) and build stuff. Since the toys follow basic building principles, it's pretty easy to build some BIG stuff. While they were here, we built a ferris wheel that stood about three feet high (we have built stuff that scraped the ceiling--and higher). There was some smaller stuff to come out of the weekend too, but not worthy of mention. I plan (if I ever get around to it) to make mother a knex spinning wheel out of the pretty hefty circular center. Knex is sturdy enough that I think it could actually be pretty useful. :-) Mother has this thing about standing up (it's a miracle that she can even walk, due to a back problem, and a risky surgery--but more on that another day) so a drop spindle doesn't work the greatest for her. Ether treadled or motorized, I think a knex spinning wheel would do the trick without costing a fortune. Mom doesn't even know if she likes spinning yet, so the less investment the better.

While the kids were here, Matthew and I slept on the floor, him in his little closet/plant growing room, and me in the office/music room. It wasn't the most comfortable, but we managed. That way, the four oldest kids could sleep in our room. Their parents slept downstairs in the guest/exercise room (notice that a lot of rooms have two functions? it's the key to a useful house) with the youngest. We had contemplated sleeping outside, but since the weather was iffy, and we ended up not venturing out.

Current Events

Right now, Matthew is building outside (ether a chicken tractor, a whizzbang chicken plucker, a whizzbang garden cart, or something else I'm not aware of :-), mom is upstairs doing something I'm not aware of, and dad is somewhere I'm not aware of. Our internet is very spotty now, making it difficult to do web programing. Blogger seems to make it through some though.

Self imposed summer school starts several weeks from now, when I can hopefully finish up my advanced physics and trig. Also on the agenda, calculus, art (one of these times, I may finally learn how to draw!) and music should help fill in the time in between doing computer work, helping keep up outside, and operating my brother's and mine lawn mowing business, dubbed PotterVilla Acres lawn care services. We mow about three of four lawns over the summer (mostly for widows from church, so we don't charge much--however the price of gas is beginning to change that :-<).

Concluding Thoughts

I'm afraid I didn't follow my last post's advice very well, and sorry for the long post. We did have a lot to catch up on, though. :-)

Let's finish off with a verse(actually 2):

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Makes for a nice end of a long post, doesn't it? When the Apostle Paul wrote it, it was in the middle of a letter to the Ephesians. I still like it at the end.

Anyway, we'll talk to you all later (whether by reading your blog or in the comments of blogs or whatever :-) and hope all you mothers out there had a wonderful day devoted to you by people who are always devoted to you.

Thanks for reading,

In His name,

For His glory,

And trying to follow His path,

Jonathan Potter
for PotterVilla Academy