Other Loves

 

"Love is a many splendored thing."  (Paul Francis Weber, 1955.)  💟💟💟💟💟 Love is so much more than romantic love.

There are special times of the year we highlight "love."  Displays of love are wonderful to ponder throughout the year. W & A is highlighting some of the birthday cakes I made, or at least decorated, for some of the people I love.   🎂🎂🎂🎂🎂

This is pretty simplistic stuff, as I'm aware.  Just frosting out of a tube, often without even the tips you can screw on.  (Kind of parallels the amount of photo editing I do on blogs:  just "Paint" & Microsoft photo apps; not trying to fool anyone!)

At 2, this one wanted a cake with both Clifford & Elmo.  At 21, she welcomed the throwback!

Someone else either wanted or was talked into this:  Clifford jumping over the moon.  Taking the old nursery rhyme a new direction.  All the food dye colored everyone's mouths a lot!

A wish for a New Orleans style King Cake, but later in the year for a birthday.  The candles are faux-crayon candles.

He loved (and still loves) red and Cars.   Skipped the frosting for red sugar.  (At the edge is a Baskin-Robbins Thomas the Train ice cream cake.)

The teen wanted a big cookie rather than a traditional cake.  (I'd done them before, but with less personal decorating, so those aren't pictured.)

Resident artist, with favorite colors of red and blue.  There was a bit of hippy chic going on, too.  The family values religious learning, and that has stayed alive through these growing ages.

Monster theme!  Sometimes Walmart and Kroger affiliates (as well as others) have some pretty fun decorations.  The teen asked for these.

Sweet 16 for the one who loves red & blue.  Clouds drifting by in a blue sky to suggest dreaming and daydreaming.  

Eclectic sports preferences.  (UNM is University of New Mexico; LSU is Louisiana Sate.)

The "idea" was basic on this one because the teen didn't have any preferences.   It caught the age, a favorite color, and the high school colors!

The Barbie Movie was a big deal.  Amazon had cute decorations to oblige! 

At 19, this teen still liked The Railway Series.  "Thomas" is derived from this, but the books have so many more good lessons (and higher-level vocabulary) than the various TV series.

Something literary for this young adult.  Amazon was a help, once again, in finding a creative way to decorate.

A couple more for adults.  

However you celebrate with loved ones throughout this year, I hope it's great!   💟  💟  💟

This Year I'll Be Less Better

 

[An Instagram acquaintance graciously allowed me to put this on the blog]

This new year

I will strive to be

A slightly less than perfect me.

Perfection is a flaw, you see-

My greatest flaw,

We all agree. 

I'll try my best to worry less

Over having much too much success.

I won't complain or overstress

For too many skills that I possess.

And this year

I'll be more forgiving

To those who envy perfect living. 

--B.C. Byron

Home of B.C. Byron – Where I share my odd poems

Mobilus

 

Personally, I hope AI starts feeding on itself and gets caught in it own version of a Möbius loop (strip).  --Marie Byars

   New Year's is a time when we think about "endings" and "beginnings."  Perfect time to ponder the "Möbius strip", a mathematical oddity which has neither.

      If you draw a line down the middle of a Möbius strip and keep going, it will keep going on what appears to be "the other side" at first. But a Möbius strip has only one side and one edge. 

    If you cut this down the middle, you will get one big loop with a double twist (or four half-twists).

    If you cut it 1/3 of the way in, it creates two linked strips. One is a central, thinner Möbius strip.  The thicker has two half-twists. 

     The Möbius strip was independently discovered by two German mathematicians.  You can make your own by taking a strip of paper, giving it a half twist, and gluing or taping the edges together.

Scientific American Möbius Strip

Wikipedia Möbius Strip

     Also, for fun, Marvel Comics has a character named Mobius M. Mobius.  He appears in Ant Man and is very small, apparently.  

Marvel Mobius M. Mobius  

MCU Mobius M. Mobius 

The *Best* Royal Bio

      

     This blog has featured various royal bio-offerings.  Who else should be featured as "Heir" but the King of Kings Himself?

     Jesus is the Heir of all things (Psalms 2:8).   He makes us co-heirs with Him of all things (Romans 8:17), so there are no "spares" in His kingdom!

     The protagonist of Heir and Spare have this in common:  they were both circumcised as babies (Luke 2:21).  Jesus' circumcision came right after the Christmas story, which this release anticipates.  Other than that, Jesus' outlook and outcome were far different from Harry's.

     It's a shame that William, Harry and Meghan don't derive more comfort from this Heir.  Perhaps that will change over time.

   

My Hero

One of these things is like the others:

Warren G. Trump

Jazz Era-themed parties reinforce this connection. 

George W. Trump

Onery Looter

The Multiple Scandals of President Warren G. Harding

Bush Administration Scandals: EBSCO 

Similarities between DJT & Henry VIII:

• Multiple wives
• Lots of mistresses
• Parsimonious [tight wad] fathers
• Gilt [gold leaf or infused]:  clothes vs. buildings
• Fiscal irresponsibility: greatly increasing national debt
• Egomaniacs
• Suspicious
• Cutthroat
• Tall
• Overweight
• Bad eating habits
• Using "sculpted" clothes to detract from girth
• Garrulous [excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters]
• Thinking they're God's gift to the religious world
• Both once had red hair
• Neither was originally the heir apparent to their fathers' holdings

Merci Car

Happy Veteran's Day on November 11th!

This box car is one of 49 original cars of the 1949 "Merci Train."  

 

After helping out France during WW2, US citizens gathered food and relief supplies for the hungry post-war French.  It was gathered on train cars and shipped over in 1948.

In 1949, grateful French citizens sent back these box cars in the Merci ("Thank you" or "Gratitude") Train.  There was one for each of the lower 48 states, plus one for Hawaii and D.C. to share.  French citizens put in whatever they could think of to show their gratitude: their own military medals, dolls, wedding dresses, and all sorts of things.

Different states kept the boxcars in different states of fitness. Some have disappeared completely.  Many states kept the gifts, however, often at state capitol buildings.

This car is Arizona's, located at the McCormack Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale, suburban Phoenix.  A few of the gifts are at a building at this park.  Other artifacts are at the state capitol. 

Some years, this area has hosted Scottsdale's Veterans' Day events.

This interesting park has old train cars, old depot buildings from across the state, and a model train building with many sizes of models. There is also the rare "C" scale train, the largest size considered a model; at this size, the model is rideable!  

Have a wonderful Veteran's Day.

O Scale Merci Car, McCormack Stillman

Mercitrain.org

Merci Train trains.com

Corporate Welfare Queens

 

Also the biggest "globalists."  A representative, not exhaustive, sampling. 

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