There seem to be a LOT of silent monks singing The Hallelujah Chorus lately, as I spotted at least a dozen on YouTube alone! LOL. Must be one of their favorite renditions. I watched some of them, and many of them were much more polished than the video I posted here… but I like mine because it’s done by kids and they make it very fun.

Then today, I visited Karen’s blog who had posted a video of The Hallelujah Chorus as done by students in Alaska. Wow! These kids are terrific and I laughed out loud a number of times.

What a great video!

I looked up the history of Handel’s Messiah and found it so intriguing that I thought I’d share it with you. Handel’s full name is George Frederic Handel, and he was born in Halle in 1685. He’d been a relatively successful composer, but had difficulties with his royal patrons (all music composers were supported by various royal houses of Europe at this time) and sometimes lost funding. Handel also became severely ill (so he said) from a stroke, and suffered debt, financial ruin, and severe depression. Handel retreated to a private life in London and stopped composing music.

George Handel with King George of England.

In his depressed state, Handel came across a piece of music written by Charles Jennens. The work was entirely Biblical verses put to music. Handel read the verses and was “deeply affected.” He plunged into creating a composition about the Messiah, Jesus Christ: the first part involved prophecies from the Old Testament (the book of Isaiah, specifically) that gave information about Christ’s coming to earth. The second part dealt with Christ’s birth, ministry, death, and resurrection. The third part centers on the New Testament book of The Revelation, and concerns Christ’s next coming. Handel’s work is SIMPLY AMAZING. When Handel wrote the Hallelujah Chorus, he said, “I did think I saw heaven open, and saw the very face of God.” That is exactly my response, too. It’s nothing short of inspiring.

Handel performed Messiah for King George of England, who was so overcome with awe and praise for the King of kings and Lord of lords that he stood up when the singers sang The Hallelujah Chorus of the composition. Back in those days, when the king or queen stood up, EVERYBODY stood up, so the entire audience stood with him for the entire performance. This has become a tradition whenever The Hallelujah Chorus is sung.

Me, I want to jump up and down. HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!

1. I worked at Chuck E. Cheese. AS CHUCK E. CHEESE. Yeah, I wore the costume. In the restaurant. In Philadelphia. I lived there for one month. It was all I could take. I lived there my friend who I’d met through a Star Wars fan club– we were pen pals for a few years. After graduating high school, she invited me to live with her in her parents’ home in Philadelphia. So I did. I intended to stay there the entire summer, working at Chuck E. Cheese. But I couldn’t stand the city, I couldn’t stand my friends’ lifestyle, and I couldn’t stand Chuck E. Cheese!! So I left after 4 weeks. I wrote more about my experience in my post Upchuck E. Cheese. lol

2. I went to drama school. I attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan in the mid 1980′s. I still can’t believe I did that– where did I get the chutzpah to leave my rural Upstate NY home and live in the nation’s largest city, knowing absolutely NO ONE? But I survived. It was quite the experience.

3. I suffered a house fire. It was arson. Without getting into too many gory details, my family life was, shall we say, “dysfunctional.” My stepdad went bonkers after my mom left him, and he set the house on fire. Thank God, no one was home at the time (although it was pretty hairy for a while because we couldn’t locate all of the family members at first, and the firemen were nervous about that), but the house burned to the ground. It was a really rough time in my life, but Jesus got me through it.

4. I delivered a 10 1/2 pound baby. For a while, we didn’t think I was gonna get it done, and my son wasn’t terribly cooperative…. at one point during the delivery, the doctor freaked out a little, and hollered to one of the nurses to go get the surgeon immediately. The nurse hesitated. He yelled at her again, but she turned to me first. She told me that the baby was not moving. My husband and I prayed loudly, “In Jesus’ name, get out!” and my son was born immediately. We could almost hear the doctor’s jaw clatter to the tile floor. He later muttered “It was a miracle!” The nurse later told me that if the surgeon had been there, he would have broken the baby’s collarbones. This is a very dangerous procedure, with a high risk of nerve damage, and my son’s limbs could have been paralyzed for life.

5. I was a disc jockey for a few radio stations before becoming a “stay at home mom.” I loved those jobs! I thought perhaps I could get back into radio after the kids were grown, but radio has changed so much. There are very few local stations anymore– everything is nationalized. Local stations no longer have local DJs, but they subscribe to satellite feeds from one centralized station. The local flavor and fun is gone. Such a shame.

6. I’ve been on TV and in a movie filming. I worked with Edward Hermann on a telethon in New York in 1986. I can’t remember what the fundraiser was for, but I was part of a group of fresh-faced drama students who “answered phones” on television. We were instructed to look busy and answer the phones even when the phones were not ringing. Hermann chatted with us students briefly. He has a wonderful voice– he did the narration for the PBS American Experience: Liberty series, and he’s done the Dodge Ram commercials, too. I was also cast as an extra in a movie called “A Christmas Rose.” It starred Della Reese and Randy Travis. It was filmed in Walton, NY, in the winter of… 1984? 1985? The movie never went to the big screen; instead the footage was redone for TV, for a show called “Touched By an Angel.” It was quite an experience.

7. I won a spelling bee. My family had JUST moved to a new town, and I was determined to start a new leaf and become more sociable and active in my school. I wasn’t a very good student– average “B” student — and the new school I attended classified the kids by their average grade. There was the “elite” group of really brainy kids, the “average” group of kids like me, and the “dummy” group full of dysfunctional or lazy kids. I don’t like those nicknames, but those were the nicknames we students gave each other at the time (kids can be so cruel sometimes). Well, only the “elites” entered the spelling bee, but dumb ol’ Rebecca the New Kid had no idea at the time that “average” and “dummy” kids never entered these contests…. so I entered, on a whim, and I won. I think everyone was very surprised that a bespectacled “B” student could outspell the brains. I think I was the most surprised! The prize was $10, a fortune at that time.

8. I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Yep, talking in tongues and praising the Lord. It’s in the Bible, ya know!

9. I was a Bible Trivia champion. Over ten years ago now, back when Microsoft MSN had public chat rooms, I joined a Bible Trivia Chat Group. It was led by a man from California– he’d been a criminal in jail, read the Bible, and became a Christian. He was so overjoyed that God had forgiven him that he started a special chat room dedicated to knowing the scriptures. It was so much fun– a moderator began by asking a Bible question, and the first one to answer correctly got to ask the next question. We went in rounds. It was great. I was awarded the champion because I knew so many details about the Bible (especially Old Testament history). It was a great opportunity, too, to share the gospel with other people. Boy, it was fun!

10. I can trace my genealogy back to the Scandinavian tribal chiefs from 900 AD. Weird, I know. Some of my ancestors include a King of Jerusalem (Guy Lusingnan), the kings of England, and a signer of the Mayflower Compact.

I’d really like to know what your unique accomplishments or experiences have been! I am in my 40s, and I’ve had a lot of time for experiences, lol. But everyone has some unique things that have happened– what are yours?

As a homeschooling parent, I have had my fill of difficult English grammar, year after year after year. :brudder: It’s not been easy, especially struggling through the participial poohbahs and diagramming doldrums… so I can’t say I have much love for the many snarls of English language grammar. But just because something takes great effort doesn’t mean it should be eradicated.

The kids have this saying about the English language, a running gag between us:

The only English grammar rule that does not have an exception is that every English grammar rule has an exception.

:duncehat: LOL. It’s true!

I finally figured out how to label parts of speech when I was teaching my youngest son 8th grade grammar. He’d been struggling to understand why the word “their” could be both a pronoun and an adjective, and how could you tell the difference when labeling?! I realized that when labeling parts of speech, you must look at the entire sentence to determine the word’s intention and placement, and not just interpret the singular word and it’s particular definition.

Yeah, after 35+ years of English, I finally figured that one out! Sheesh!

BUT….

Good grammar and spelling are important!

As a student, I loved English classes in school but struggled with grammar (who doesn’t?!) because it was so difficult to remain consistent and interpret it accurately. English is a crazy amalgam of languages, a mish-mash melting pot of Dutch, German, Latin, French and slang. It was a very loose language until the printing press, when the spelling and grammar was managed by printers who used their own preferred style of writing. Various regions had their own styles of grammar and spelling. Even after the printing press, the language was still extremely flexible. Go read excerpts of Lewis’ and Clark’s journals of their expeditions, and you’ll see what I mean. Talk about creative spelling!

There have been many movements over the centuries to forcefully change English grammar and spelling. One notable modern movement began in 1906 when wealthy steel magnate Andrew Carnegie started an organization called the “Simplified Spelling Board.”

I wonder how TR would have liked changing the way he signed his name to "Theodor Rosevelt."

He wanted to get rid of the effluence of letters in the English dictionary such as the unnecessary silent letters: “e” in “are”; “h” in “ghost”; “hy” in “rhyme changing it to “rime,” and etc. Theodore Roosevelt latched onto it and commanded that the government printing office make the changes immediately. He was voted down by Congress, lol.

In the mid-1960s, another guy wanted to radically alter a great deal of English spelling words, such as change friend to frend, and head to hed. It didn’t go over well in the United States, but the Australian government adopted much of the idea.

I personally prefer to leave traditional spelling and grammar alone, unless there is good reason to alter it. I dislike the social engineering philosophy in general.

I’ll share a MAJOR pet peeve with you, while I’m thinking about it- the metric system. I hate the metric system! For one, it was introduced by a bunch of humanists during the atheistic French Revolution. They’d disliked the Biblical system and wanted to overhaul everything even remotely traditional.

The French Revolution's first act for liberty and tolerance was to eradicate the liberty of thousands of "intolerants."

They even placed a dancing girl on a dais and named her the Goddess of Reason. Not a very good track record of temperance and intelligence, if you ask me.

Anyway, the United States has remained staunchly on the side of the traditional English measurement system. And I hate this push to make everything in my country metric! Our household measuring tools are even metric, and I can’t (and won’t) make heads nor tails of them. I wouldn’t mind it, I guess, if the metric system was on the back of the measuring cups and all as a choice for our European friends, but no– the metric system is on the FRONT of our measuring tools! I have to turn the tools around and hold them in my left hand to use them! :-p I hate that kind of sneaky social engineering. I stubbornly resist! lol! And you KNOW if you go to Europe they don’t have measuring cups with the English system on the fronts and metric on the backs!

Ah, I feel so much better getting that off my chest. lol

I think English grammar and spelling is important. It’s a good discipline. It’s the best method we have to communicate with each other, to make sure that we are all communicating on the same level.

And that’s why I’m proud to be a part of the grammar police. HAHA!!

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security….

Is boredom merely a plague of the modern era? Or is boredom more prevalent in wealthier societies? I did a little digging about boredom in history. Of course, this is not a comprehensive study– I’m too busy with work to dwell much on the subject of boredom! But it’s a good start to answering my questions about what boredom is, why it is, and what causes it.

“Boredom” comes from the root word “bore,” which, a few hundred years ago, was a description of a dull, tedious, annoying person in formal society. Think of the era of “Pride and Prejudice.”

Boredom: Sense of “be tiresome or dull” first attested 1768, a vogue word c.1780-81 according to Grose; possibly a figurative extension of “to move forward slowly and persistently,” as a boring tool does. From the Online Etymological Dictionary.

The first recorded use of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, in which it appears six times, although the expression to be a bore had been used in the sense of “to be tiresome or dull” since 1768. The French term for boredom, ennui, is sometimes used in English as well.

According to Dictionary.com, ennui is: a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom: The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.

I find that when I am very busy, I am more alert and more productive. Have you ever gone out to a store or restaurant during a slow time, and it seems that the service people are more careless, sloppier, or slower with their service than during busy times? My husband, who has worked many years in the service industry, noticed it. He always says when business is slow, so is service. It’s a psychological condition: people just slow down when they are not occupied, and become “bored.” Thus, their work suffers.

I don’t think human nature has changed at all over thousands of years, so I tend to think boredom is universal. The Egyptian Pharoah accused the enslaved Israelites of stirring up trouble because they were bored.

Exodus 5:17
But he said, “You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.’

The word “idle” here is Hebrew “raw-phaw” which means “slackened,” “weakened,” “lazy,” or “slothful.”

Pharoah didn’t think the Israelites were working hard enough, so he piled on more work.

According to this site,

In 1926, after a study of factory workers, the British Medical Journal published that boredom was a form of mental fatigue caused by repetition and lack of interest in monotonous tasks….The first laboratory testing of boredom occurred in the late 1930’s and was then deduced to be a form of fatigue which was dissipated through the use of stimulants. In 1951 a book was published claiming that boredom was actually due to the repression of an individual’s natural drives and desires. After this date the research into boredom fell from grace and it wasn’t until 1986 that a psychologist developed the first full psychometric scale called the ‘Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS)’ as a method to measure boredom as an individual trait.

Some folks hail boredom as a wonderful way to rest and relax; others view it as a plague that stifles innovation and creativity (I tend to believe the latter). Some people tend to boredom more than others. Children in a passive environment (such as a public school setting where education is doled out in a cookie-cutter regimen) experience boredom; innovative workers stuck in a routine experience boredom. The push toward social engineering (where workers are mere cattle and exist only to keep the machine running) encourages boredom especially among creative people stuck in the “worker” classes.

It makes sense that electronic gadgets and toys do not help solve societal boredom. Think about when you were a kid, if you are older than 45 years old. Think about the toys children had 100 years ago. What kind of toys were children offered? Blocks, Lincoln Logs, a rag doll that didn’t talk or do anything…. what toys do kids have today? Remote control cars, buildable action figures like Bionicles, talking and walking dolls, etc. The main difference between toys of yesteryear and toys for modern kids is that older toys encouraged imagination and innovation. Today, toys simply entertain. They are constructed in a specific way or merely do a specific thing, and then…. that’s it. There’s no real creativity to the things we hand our kids today. No wonder they are bored. Gadgets (and TV and movies and music) should be tools that we use to improve or advance us spiritually, personally, or socially. But the gadgets have become mere entertainment, which leads to boredom, which stifles creativity and innovation. Human nature is always crying out for moremoremore! Objects only entertain for so long before boredom sets in. And are you bored by now, reading all this text? Did you skip sections?

To be honest, I am rarely bored. I was very bored as a young child and teenager. I read a lot of books to stave it off, but even that was boring after a while. I just didn’t have any incentive to DO anything. But then I became a born-again Christian, and my life has really changed. I’m much more motivated, much more curious about how and why things work. I think God cured me of boredom! LOL. And I am so busy. If I am not working, then I am creating more work for me to do. There’s always something to do, something to learn, something to think about. I see boredom as an enemy to my growth as a Christian.

How about you? Did you suffer from boredom as a child? Do you still? What helps? Do you enjoy boredom; do you think it’s a good condition?

Yes, this is my house! Photo taken in 1910.

Well, that IS a silly question. It’s a take-off on that old phrase from American Graffiti (what a stupid movie, by the way), “Where were you in ’62?”

1855 was the year my house was built. :D I have done extensive research on the property as well as the architectural style, because I am terribly curious like that. If you are curious, too, you can read about it here. But this post is not about my home’s history. It’s about what happened IN history. That year. 1855. Because it seems like a million miles away–a long time ago in a galaxy fa—

Er, never mind.

I’m reading this book on Queen Victoria. I love biographies, and I have read several on Victoria already. I’m up to the point in the book where it’s just about the time my house was built, when Victorian England was beginning to bloom. It seems like eons ago, eons. It was *only* 150+ years ago now. In the scope of time, that’s just a vapor. But the world was so different back then!

So WHAT happened in 1855? What was the world like?! Here’s what I discovered!

• Congress approves $30,000 to test camels for military use. Not the first nor the last of Congress’ goofy ideas…


Later, Congress would declare all-out war against a camel named Joe...

• Abraham Gesner patents kerosene.
• 1st train crosses 1st US railway suspension bridge, Niagara Falls. Yaaaah, I wonder who were the first brave souls who rode the first train over that bridge!
• Soldiers of the Royal Canadian Rifles at the Tête du Pont barracks clear ice from Lake Ontario and use field hockey sticks and lacrosse balls to play what is reputed to be the first game of ice hockey. Cool!
• Wisconsin Supreme Court declares US Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional.
• Isaac Singer patents sewing machine motor. Woohoo! Shouts of joy from women around the globe on this one.


My mom had one of these. She said it was far better than any of the newer electric models.

• The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota (a crossing made today by the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge).
• New Zealand is hit by the strongest earthquake ever recorded in New Zealand (Magnitude 8.1 on the Richter Scale); five people died.
• David Livingstone becomes the first European to see Victoria Falls in what is now present-day Zambia-Zimbabwe. Neat! Livingstone was a great missionary to Africa, and loved the people very much. An interesting note about Livingstone is that, after his death, his body was buried in his native Scotland, but his heart was buried in Africa.


David Livingstone won the hearts of Africans when he fearlessly battled an attacking lion.

• Alexander II of Russia ascends the Russian throne, upon the death of his father Nicholas I.
• Ottawa, Ontario is incorporated as a city. I had no idea Ottawa was so young!
• In Brooklyn, New York, the first edition of Walt Whitman’s book of poems, titled Leaves of Grass, is published.
• Castle Clinton in NYC opens as the first U.S. receiving station for immigrants.
• Crimean War in Europe was in its second year. I know a lot about history, but I have no idea about what this was about!


Charlotte Bronte was a preacher's daughter.

• John Bartlett publishes “Familiar Quotations.” Now I know why there are no movie quotes in it.
• Charlotte Brontë, at the age of 38. She authored Jane Eyre.

So it was an “OK” year. And it was the year that my home was built, by a man for his young bride. Unfortunately, they never had children, so the big bedrooms remained empty, and the wife died about 20 years later. When was your house built?

HEE HEE! Lame, I know. But cut me some slack– it’s Friday!!

Do you know where the term “computer bug” came from? This is from WikiAnswers:

The term ‘bug’ was first used by Grace Hopper on September 9th, 1945 when a real bug, a moth, short-circuited an early computer on relay number 70 Panel F, of the MARK II Aiken Relay Calculator, in the Harvard University. The operators of the computer said they had “debugged” the computer, and ever since then the terms has not changed.

The government took out the moth, taped it to a book, and recorded the event saying they had “debugged” the computer.

Leave it to the government to meticulously record it and TAPE it inside a book…. :wha: That, or someone in the government has a sense of humor…

…nah, just not possible.

But look! They even snapped a photo! Here it is! This is from the Naval History website:

The First “Computer Bug”

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: “First actual case of bug being found”. They put out the word that they had “debugged” the machine, thus introducing the term “debugging a computer program”.
In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.

Courtesy of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA., 1988.

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Well….. so… now I guess you have something to discuss over dinner tonight, don’t you?! I know I do!! LOL. Happy Weekend, everyone!

The website is called eBook Search Queen. It’s amazing! Try it out here. The website allows you to search and sift through e-books, documents, and e-book databases in formats including PDF files, PPT, TXT, DOC and RTF formats, among others. You can search pdf files and other electronic files with the Search Queen search engine, by keyword, by the most recent search, by country, and more. The Search Queen will look for your book with just a few keywords (I am notorious for forgetting the titles of books, I only remember keywords) and allow you to search the files, preview them, and download them if you want to.

For example, I was looking for the writings of Mercy Otis Warren. Ever hear of her? Yeah, only .003% of the U.S. population has heard of her. She was the daughter of James Otis of Boston, an influential lawyer and contemporary of Sam Adams, and she married Joseph Warren, a patriot who died at the very beginning of the quest for independence from Britain in 1773. She wrote many plays and also wrote an extensive history of the American Revolution; her writings are rare and mostly unknown. But the Search Queen knew of her! I did a search and I was directed to several e-books and online documents about her! Very impressive!

The eBook Search Queen is a nice, simple search engine designed specifically for e-books. And I think it’s a terrific tool for homeschoolers and researchers. Check it out!

Anyway, tonight he told me of a funny note he saw in the bakery. Taped to the refrigerator door was a note from the management that said, “DON’T PUT CRACKERS IN THE REFRIGERATOR!” Scribbled in small print underneath the directive, someone has written “White people don’t keep.”

P.S. The story is especially funny to us, because my husband is so white his skin is almost transparent. I am olive-skinned and Mediterranean-looking, so I’m always calling him “cracker.” LOL. Me and my terms of endearment, eh?

May 12, 2008, marked the death of a 98-year-old lady named Irena Sendlerowa. She was born in Germany Poland in 1910. During WWII, Irena, a German Polish woman, received permission from the Nazis to work in the Warsaw ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive…

Irena knew the Nazis’ plans for the Jews and smuggled infants out in the bottom of the large tool box she carried. Larger children were placed in a burlap sack in the back of her truck. Also in the back was a dog that she had trained to bark each time the Nazi guards allowed her out of the ghetto and back in.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and its barking covered any noise made by the infants and small children. Irena managed to smuggle out approximately 2,500 children before she was finally caught.

When she was captured, the Nazis beat her severely, breaking both her arms and her legs.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the children she smuggled out of that Warsaw ghetto and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents who may have survived so she might reunite the child with its family. Most, of course, did not survive the Holocaust, and the vast majority of the surviving children were placed in foster homes or adopted.

Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but she lost to Al Gore, who won the award for presenting a slide show on the philosophy behind global warming.

Read more at a website dedicated to Irena.