Thursday, January 7, 2016

January 7 Link Log

(Blogjob tags: C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape LettersKathleen Norris’ Cloister Walkmanta ray,Neil Gaimanpoems of Emily DickinsonSandra Bland homicidesunflower seed brittleugly (irregular) fruit and vegetables.)

Finally the end of the e-mail backlog is in sight. It's a Twitterday, but I had to Twitter fast! Categories: Obligatory Fundraising Links, Animals, Books, Christian, Food (Yum), Frugal, News, Politics.
Obligatory Fundraising Links 
No money to contribute? Share these links.
Animals 
Sloth Sanctuary update. (I like sloths.)
Manta rays...remember The Black Pearl?
Books 
Neil Gaiman:
(Buy it new to show respect--if you use these Amazon photo links to buy new books, in theory I get a small referral commission.)
Christian 
Sermon and video clips:
On Twitter somebody posted the claim that solitude isn't Christian, that it's "how the Devil finds us." According to the Bible, Jesus went out into the wilderness to meet the Devil, but didn't find him without forty days of fasting! Jesus' habit was to pray alone. The Bible doesn't suggest that Moses, Elijah, Paul, or even Hagar were wrong to seek God in solitude, either. Anyway, I posted the observation about Jesus and immediately received notification that somebody out there had blocked me from his Twitter stream. Fine, if that's how he feels. I've scheduled a longer Christian post about "Should Introverts Go to Church?" for Sunday; my Twitter stream can be pretty crowded, and if people want to remove themselves from it, this post will prompt some of them to do so. (Introverts tend to feel that social groups should be pruned regularly, like fruit trees.)
No panics--my conclusion is that introverts should go to church if the church needs and appreciates our help. C.S. Lewis (in The Screwtape Letters), Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk), and many other Christian writers whose help their churches appreciated have written about this topic. But I just had to share a link to this classic American poem:
Food (Yum) 
Peanut-free (and gluten-free) sunflower seed brittle:
What's a "skip-load of ugly parsnips"? (How could people keep up with British slang without the BBC? Follow the Beeb and you'll always know what they're talking about.) Actually, yes, they look yummy. Trendy, too.
Frugal 
Ah, nostalgia...the dear little office room in our quirky (some would say insanely designed) house in Maryland. North window, badly fitted. Not much insulation. Not much warm air from the central heating system. The previous owner had installed a big expensive radiator I didn't trust. I liked that office in winter (not in summer, when the sun beat down on it) because my husband cranked up the thermostat anyway--the cold room was the most enjoyable to be in, if you weren't on blood pressure meds, which he was. Enough reminiscence, a Link Log is supposed to be about things you can use now. Here's a gadget that may save some people the cost of a space heater--and might be safer, depending on who's using it.
And here's a frugal Valentines Day gift that will keep on giving:
News 
Only perjury? (This particular Huffington Post page worked for this computer; apologies if it doesn't work for yours.)
Sheldon Richman's take on Malheur:
Elizabeth Nolan Brown's. (Btw, although the commercial media didn't say much about it, David Koresh's housemates were a majority-minority group, and the Waco story includes one truly outrageous example of race prejudice--when Norman Allison and Woodrow Kendrick were found fleeing the scene of a murder, Kendrick (White, old, armed) was released and Allison (Black, young, unarmed) was jailed. Alice Walker also described a smaller-scale, similar encounter between Feds and Black citizens.)
The idiocy is real. With a straight face they're saying this...
This, however, is beautiful.
Politics 
Fellow Virginians, my comments on state issues are here:

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