Springtime is a time of new beginnings

Happy Easter

May those who practice the Eastern or Orthodox customs of Christianity have a blessed Easter.

My Greek friends like to remind me that nearly all of the ancient texts that serious translations of the Bible are based from were written in Greek. The primary one written in Latin was called "the Vulgate" translation. Greek was the language of the educated up until 1000 AD. Unless of course you are Greek in which case you tell your non-Greek friends that it has ALWAYS, and still is, the language of the educated.

Baptism

I am embarrassed to report that it just occurred to me that the reason water is used for baptism is that newly born animals (lambs, calves, humans) are dripping wet. It is one of the notable features of them. Slimy, slippery, wet-wet-wet.

It would have been totally obvious to somebody in the middle-East in the year 0 A.D. when every family had sheep or goats. Not only that, but babies were born at home and EVERYBODY knew that newly-born babies were wet. The connection between "dying to our old, sinful selves and being reborn" and being very wet would have been intuitively obvious to that audience.

Stretching the analogy, in cold weather, some lambs become hypothermic and stiff. You can stick your finger into their mouths and it is cold. It is common practice to put them under heat lamps today but I am confident that back-in-the-day shepherds would dry them off if they were wet and then place them by the fire. Then, as soon as they regained their swallow-reflex, start dribbling milk into their mouth. Once again, some of those who seemed dead are miraculously pulled back to Life.

ERJ has his picture taken with a Celebrity!!!

Yesterday's big surprise was pulling into the Charlotte Walmart parking lot and seeing a college track-team milling about a bus. They were on their way to a meet.

I pulled into a  parking spot close to the bus and asked if I could have my picture taken with a celebrity.

They were delighted. Track teams don't get much recognition. Not even the ones from Division I Universities.

I especially singled out the throwing team. Here is my celebrity photo with the discus thrower. Throwers often get forgotten. Most people associate Track (and Field) teams with runners and jumpers. 

Running is fine. I do it myself. But it is nice to have artillery available for those times when retreat is not an option.

I think his name was Dylan. He needs to get more sun.

First tick

I picked the first tick off my head yesterday. It had not embedded.

Clayton

It is no secret that the characters in my stories are modeled after real people. For instance "Clayton" was modeled after one of my nephews.

That nephew (proto-Clayton) is moving his young family out of Lansing. Their offer on a parcel was accepted and they close next week. The parcel is approximately twelve miles west of where I live and five miles west of where another nephew lives.

Happy times.