Offsite Comments

FenelonSpoke: ...charlatans and prestidigitators...

In matters religious, as a rule, the ones making the biggest noise don't tend to be the ones who are the holiest. Funny thing about the quality of humility. : D

DynamiteDan: ...Hampton Inn & Homewood Suites ...HQed in the old Enquirer building, one of the earliest examples of Art Deco architecture in this fair city. ...best of both worlds for me.

Wow, Dan, that sounds like just what you needed. God bless you with success, and in your book, too.

FenelonSpoke: ...I am firmly and unapologetically a Christian, but I do think there is something of the holy that unites people of great faith and love and prayer across traditions....

Don't have much truck with most gurus. Charlatans and prestidigitators and self-aggrandizers, as a rule - not much different than too many "Christian" preachers in that regard, I suppose. (heh)

But I've a special fondness for Ram Dass's guru, what I've read of him. He was stern but funny, quirky, and as in the story I related, he emphasized love, and family, and always pointed toward God.

Moreover, as it says elsewhere in Miracle of Love...

"Maharajji's love of Christ was unearthly....

You never knew what a devotee's statement would evoke. A boy came one time and asked, "Maharajji, did Jesus really get angry?"

As soon as Maharajji heard the word 'Jesus,' tears came to his eyes....

Since the thread is aging, my self-plugola of the week. I don't claim to be much of a writer, but I writ sumpin' once.

Link in nic to the table of contents for Invulnerable, a short, science fictionish thing in pictures and words about a young fellow with a strange kind of power. Comments may be left at the bottom of the ToC and PayPal donation buttons which theoretically work are on every page.

Mindful-

I probably mentioned it (about St Pio) because I tend to read books on the same subject or the same books over and over again. Yes, bilocation is the ability to be seen by several people in several places at the same time. Apparently, St Francis of Assisi was credited with this too. I like your story of the Indian guru. People across religious traditions have been examples of this. I am firmly and unapologetically a Christian, but I do think there is something of the holy that unites people of great faith and love and prayer across traditions.

It's not so much that I'm fascinated by these strange phenomenon of Pio. It's more the fact that he could tel people their sins before the confessed or that he spent hours in prayer or that in his body he showed the wounds of Christ and Doctors testified that he was not hysterical and the wounds were not made by auto suggestion. I guess I find that identifying with Christ so very powerful, but the most important thing is not those sorts of things but that he was always pointing people to Christ which changed their lives. George Whitfield and Francis Asbury and John Wesley had gifts of the Holy Spirit which were used by God to draw people to Christ in powerful ways and they didn't have the ability to bilobate.

Because of what's happening in the world I think we need spiritual revival in the Christian Churches now and these people I read-Protestant and Catholic were instruments of that in their time..

All Hail Eris 'way back at #18: Grammie Winger, this book may be of more practical application:
http://tinyurl.com/j7mtcdf

Milady and Daughter were chortling over an old book received for Christmas - Saturday Evening Post cookbook. Recipe after recipe that starts with Jello. Many celebrity recipes, including, Richard Nixon's Guacamole Salad, which is a Jello mold. Many of the salads are actually Jello things. Daughter was more amazed and amused than the older generation who lived through those trying times.

Told 'em they should write it up for the food thread.

Insomniac: My personal rule of thumb is if it's longer than a youtube link, I use tinyurl.

Anna Puma: As for URLs. If Pixy lets me post the real link I do to inform others before clicking. If Pixy does not like it, then I post the TinyURL Preview version.

I know Pixy will tell folks sometimes to shorten up a line, but it apparently is not catching some too-long lines. Yours, Anna, usually have hyphens, too, I've noticed, and at least in my browser will wrap on those.

Using short links is best practice, of course. Just wondering what the worst limit is. For the survival guide, which I need to update.

http://bit.ly/aoshq-csg

Pardon an O/T comment, but I noticed Anna Puma posting one of her frequent links above, and wondered...

Sherry McEvil got chastised the other night for a long link blowing out the margins for cell readers. Cob went in and edited it. Don't think Sherry's link was much longer than Anna's usual.

Sometimes people will type a long stretch of text (ARGGGHH...HHH) that will enwiden the boxes.

Wondering
a) just what the length-limit is, about, any idea? and
2) if there's a difference if a link contains something, e.g. hyphens, browsers can use to wrap on? (Anna's, at least, wrapped in my Opera browser.)

Wrap = divide across lines, FYI.

Brown Line: ...at one point describing "acres of parking" around Wrigley Field: oy veh!

Perhaps he was thinking of Cominsky [sic]?

You might enjoy my brother-in-law's Chicago-set stories. He was a cabbie there, so, knows the streets, and the geography of the city figures into the stories. Former resident of your neighborhood. Often plays at the Grafton on Tuesday open mic nights.

http://bit.ly/jack-clark

(Link to Amazon, should have Ace kick-back in URL.)

FenelonSpoke: Padre Pio... could apparently bilocate...

I wasn't even aware that "bilocation" was a thing, or there was a term for it, until reading about this here, probably in a FenelonSpoke previous mention of Padre Pio.

I'd read about an instance of it, though... did I tell this before? It was in Miracle of Love, a posthumously-collected book of tales of the Neem Karoli Baba - the guru of Dr Richard Alpert (acid head cohort of Tim Leary), a/k/a Baba Ram Dass, the "Be Here Now" guy. There is a PDF of the book online at Hanuman-Foundation.org, but I'm going to tell this from memory rather than look it up.

The guru goes to a barber who gives free haircuts and shaves to holy men. While the guru is in the chair, the barber talks about his son, who is far away and from whom the barber hasn't heard in too long.

Halfway through the shave, the guru excuses himself to go urinate, then comes back and the barber finishes the shave.

Days later, the barber's son shows up. He tells his father that he was approached by a crazy old man with half a beard telling him that he had to immediately go see his father.

I always liked that story. ... That is m/l what "bilocation" means, right?

mindful - Thank you for the review "The Time Traveller's Wife". I'll be sure to put it on my queue. As it happens, I'm a lifelong north-sider, in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, and it's always amusing to see my part of town pop up in novels.

BTW, Jim Butcher sets his Harry Dresden books in Chicago, but clearly he has never set foot here - at one point describing "acres of parking" around Wrigley Field: oy veh!

Oh, forgot to mention a very personal aspect of re-reading Time Traveler's Wife - the main "present time" and place for the story is North side of Chicago, in the early 1990s. Milady and I moved there in 1980, had our three kids, and fled in 1994. Familiar scenes, driving past the Green Mill, dining at Ann Sather's, the museum or the lake shore or downtown.

Those were (mostly) good years for us, in some ways the best life we ever had. Well, not to compare, because I enjoy our humbler Oklahoma rural life so much, but, you know, the early days with our kids, and the advantages a city has. Can hardly stand to even go back to visit, but it was a good time and place to live.

At our daughter's for dinner earlier this month, I sat down near her bookcase and picked up a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife. Been a while since I first read it, and I found myself immediately drawn back in.

So, found our copy at home and have been reading that. Time travel romance. Being aware of how it turns out this time makes it different. Still, enjoying the journey.

Couple of thoughts:

There's no real explanation for the time traveling; no mechanism or even as much the psychic technique in Time and Again. He just jumps. And only his body travels; he arrives naked. Only other case of that I can think of is the Terminator.

I also suspect TT's Wife was the inspiration for one of the better things they've done in the modern Doctor Who series, giving the Doctor a girlfriend, River Song. They are both time travelers and meet out of order through the years. The last episode, the Christmas special, was one of the best Dr Whos, funny and sad and a great wrap-up of the River Song story.

So much to read, and I'm doing a re-read. Well, I can't stop now.

Good morning, Bookies.

"The Boy Scouts of America was founded Feb 8, 1910"

And destroyed in 2015.

Good to see your report, Vic.

Oops. Yes. Yay.

There was a 1am sighting of Vic on the ONT. Can we hope for a news report today?

Having proved useless tonight, I now retire.

So long, strangers.

Hard copy of texts.

With my Android phone, I use MightyText app and can then view and send texts in the desktop computer browser (all major browsers; e.g. I use Opera on Windows). I can print or save texts from there.

Never mind. First item returned on search, S&G America karaoke. That was too easy.