APPRECIABLE ORDINARY THINGS; Coalinga-CA

Cold this morning … BRRR

I got a text yesterday afternoon that my new frames were ready for pick up - so, we made plans to drive into Hanford to get them, in the morning.

It was cold 😱 this morning when we woke up; hot coffee ☕️ was more than welcome … and I pulled my big, heavy, Carhart coat on before walking out the door.

The cold is playing havoc with both our bodies: Holland's knee was burning & my lower back area was on fire, but we needed to get the glasses and grab a couple items 🛒 🛍️ while in Wal*Mart - so, we went 🚘 Aside from the frames pick up 👓, the rest of the pick up's was ridiculous 🙄

We got most 📝of what was on the list, but we were feeling so much pain 😟 we just wanted to get back home and enjoy the warm, easy-paced comfort of our little house on wheels 👍

While standing in a long line, a floor walker redirected us to cashier #27 who had just started her shift: we walked that way and started unloading the cart … immediately it seemed, the computerized side-panel card reader literally fell off the item monitor screen 😳 so, she dinked around with that for about 20 minutes trying to keep it in place until it reconnected and stayed put. Then while bagging groceries, the garlic bread 🥖 slid out of it's bag - and thankfully landed in our grocery bag; I slid it back into it's original wrapper. While all this was happening, our pain levels were escalating the longer we stood.

Gimping our way across the parking lot to Betsy, I fancied I could smell holiday spirit 🎄 in the air. Groceries stashed in Betsy's back seat area, we drove across the parking lot and nipped into In-N-Out Burger drive through, for a lunch treat. Then we drove back across the parking lot to munch on our burgers and fries. While eating, I admired the turning tree leaves decked out in holiday season colors 😉

Walked around Wal-Mart shopping …

Festive-looking trees in Wal*Mart Parking lot; Hanford-CA

Most people chase big moments thinking that’s what makes life meaningful, but the real magic is usually in the small things we overlook: a quiet morning, a good companiable conversation, a simple meal, time spent next to someone you love. When you start paying attention to those everyday moments, life opens up in a way that feels richer and more peaceful 🤗 Ordinary things don’t stay ordinary 💝 once you learn how to appreciate them.

Back home, purchases put away and relaxing comfortably in Independence … a cozy appreciation for ordinary things settled over us as bodies were eased, blessings were counted, and relaxation began in earnest 😉

Holland spied this Snickers flavored coffee … so, it came home with us 😘

He also bought this prepaid Money Card for, "your vintage movies, Baby" 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

I bought this cheetah print case to match my new frames 😊

My new glasses frames.

Scrolling movies, I decided on a vintage mystery movie to watch while working more rows on my WIP.

The Door With Seven Locks~1940: 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw6b6V_Gulw)

HEDY LAMARR~The Big Screen Beauty Genius Behind Wireless Communication

Hedy Lamarr

I like old movies - I've seen many of Hedy Lamarr's movies.

Hedy was probably my mother's favorite Big Screen Actress.

Hedy was a beautiful Genius … and the thrust behind the modern age wireless communication 😁👏

********************

People noticed her beauty long before they realized what her mind was capable of.

In 1933, a young Austrian actress shocked the world. Running naked through the woods in a film called Ecstasy, she became an instant scandal. Audiences whispered. Hollywood gasped. Entire countries banned the film.

MGM’s Louis B. Mayer called her “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Even Mussolini refused to sell his personal copy.

Her name then was Hedwig Kiesler—a woman so breathtaking that rooms fell silent when she entered.

But behind that face was a mind sharper than anyone imagined.

She grew up the only child of a Jewish banker. Math came naturally. Engineering concepts made sense to her long before she ever saw a script. She watched. Listened. Calculated. And she learned quickly that being beautiful made men careless around her.

Including dictators.

She married Friedrich Mandl, one of Austria’s richest arms manufacturers—controlling, paranoid, and deeply connected to the rising Nazi regime. Mandl dragged her to dinners with Hitler and Mussolini. She sat quietly, pretending to be bored by their talk of radio-controlled weapons.

She wasn’t bored.

She was absorbing every word.

Mandl tried to imprison her in his castle-like estate. But Hedwig Kiesler was no prisoner. In 1937, wearing her maid’s clothes, she escaped—using her jewelry to fund her flight to London. There she met Louis B. Mayer, sailed to America, and was reborn under a name that would define Hollywood’s Golden Age: Hedy Lamarr.

She became a star.

She dazzled the world.

She shared screens with Clark Gable, Judy Garland, and Bob Hope.

But behind the glamour, she was haunted by the rise of the regime she had fled—haunted by those dinners with dictators. And she decided to fight back.

1942: While the world saw her as a beauty icon, she sat at a table working on a way to outsmart the Nazis. She wanted to create a radio communication system that couldn’t be jammed—a way to guide Allied torpedoes reliably to their targets.

She already knew the problem: A single radio signal was too easy for the enemy to intercept or block.

Her solution? Spread the signal across many frequencies. Hop between them so quickly that no one could jam it.

One challenge remained: How could the transmitter and receiver switch frequencies at the exact same time?

So she turned to George Antheil—a composer who once synchronized twelve player pianos in perfect unison. Together, they built a frequency-hopping blueprint using piano-roll mechanisms.

On August 11, 1942, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Patent No. 2,292,387 to George Antheil and Hedy Kiesler Markey—Hedy Lamarr’s legal name.

The world had no idea.

One of Hollywood’s most glamorous women had just invented the foundation of modern wireless communication.

Her design became the basis for spread-spectrum technology, the backbone of:

• Wi-Fi

• Bluetooth

• GPS

• Modern cell phones

Every time you connect to your home Wi-Fi or slip in your wireless earbuds, you’re using the idea she sketched out while the world fixated on her beauty.

She once said, “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”

But she never stood still.

And she was never stupid.

History called her many things:

A scandal.

A beauty.

A movie star.

The truth is far greater: Hedy Lamarr helped invent the wireless future we live in today — while the world was too busy staring at her face to notice her genius.

✨ ✨ ✨ ✨ ✨

My mother was a 5-foot, curvy city girl, before marrying my bio-father: before she cut her hair in the 1970's & poodle-permed it … she styled her dark auburn (so dark, it looked black - my granddaughter Alyna was born with the same color hair) hair like Hedy Lamarr's iconic hairstyle. My mother was a very good looking woman with her dark hair, her dark skin, and her lips tinted with Montezuma Red Lipstick; the official color for women in America's Armed Forces … as well as the wives of the men serving. My father served in ALL branches of America's Military; my mother wore Montezuma Red Lipstick as long as they were married (14 years).

My mother liked wearing tailored skirt suits with heels/short button-wrist gloves/veiled hats, a fox throw (complete with head, paws & tail), fancy gowns with/without gloves, & fancy pant suits: all that ended when we moved to WA State, but I remember her glamour days.

And I like Hedy's movies too. I think tonight will be a Hedy movies marathon 🙂

Hollywood's Brightest Bombshell - The Hedy Lamarr Story: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghc6uab1EX4)

DARWIN vs WOMAN'S INTELLIGENCE

Antoinette Brown Blackwell

In 1871, Charles Darwin declared—under the banner of science—that women were intellectually inferior to men. Four years later, one woman dismantled his argument so completely that he never dared respond.

Her name was Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and by the time she challenged Darwin, she’d already made history. In 1853, at 28, she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States, stepping into a pulpit that centuries of theology insisted belonged only to men.

But Antoinette was never content to stay in one lane. Her mind ranged across philosophy, theology, and science—especially the emerging theory of evolution. When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, she read it closely. In 1869 she published Studies in General Science, one of the first serious engagements with evolutionary theory by any American thinker, let alone a self-taught woman scientist. Darwin himself wrote to thank her for her insight.

Then came The Descent of Man in 1871—and with it, Darwin’s claim that women were biologically and intellectually inferior. He argued that evolution had produced men who were more courageous, inventive, and intelligent, while women had evolved to be emotional, nurturing, and limited in abstract thought. These weren’t cultural beliefs, he insisted—they were scientific fact.

Victorian society accepted his conclusions immediately. Scholars cited him. Doctors invoked him. Politicians used him as ammunition against women’s education and suffrage. Darwin’s authority turned old prejudice into “proof.”

Antoinette refused to let that stand.

For four years, she gathered evidence, dissected Darwin’s logic, and built a counterargument stronger than anything the scientific establishment expected from a woman. In 1875, she published The Sexes Throughout Nature—a direct, devastating refutation of Darwin’s claims about male superiority.

She demonstrated that Darwin had cherry-picked species where males were larger or more ornamented, then treated those cases as universal. She showed that in many species—spiders, birds of prey, insects—the females were larger, stronger, or more complex. She exposed Darwin’s unexamined Victorian assumptions, revealing how he’d mistaken cultural bias for biological law.

Most importantly, she argued that women’s limited opportunities—not evolutionary destiny—explained the differences Darwin called “natural.” Denied education, barred from universities, and excluded from scientific societies, women had been systematically prevented from developing the very qualities Darwin claimed they naturally lacked.

“It is the special philosophic problem of the ages,” she wrote, “to account for anomalies in human society created not by nature, but by the artificial conditions imposed on women.”

Her critique hit the foundation of evolutionary sexism: male scientists had assumed male superiority, interpreted the natural world through that lens, and then declared nature confirmed what they already believed.

Darwin never wrote a word in response.

But Antoinette’s book circulated among suffragists, educators, and early women scientists. She proved that even the most towering scientific figure could be challenged—if the evidence was sound and the reasoning airtight. The male scientific establishment ignored her not because she was wrong, but because she was a woman who had proven them wrong.

Still, Antoinette kept going. She wrote widely on science, philosophy, and women’s rights. She traveled the country lecturing. She raised five children while sustaining a formidable intellectual life. She became not only a critic of sexist science but a pioneer of women’s suffrage.

Born in 1825, she attended the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1850. Seventy years later—in 1920, at age 95—she cast her first vote. She was the only woman from that convention still alive to see the movement’s victory.

Antoinette Brown Blackwell lived 96 years proving that women’s intellect was not limited by nature, but by the barriers men built around it. And when Darwin tried to claim otherwise, she didn’t just say he was wrong.

She proved it.

Methodically.

Brilliantly.

Irrefutably.

MAINE COURT RULES MOTHER CANNOT RAISE DAUGHTER IN CHRISTIAN FAITH

Thanksgivinghttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/court-rules-12-year-old-s-mother-cannot-read-her-the-bible-take-her-to-church/ar-AA1RnQ7c?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=a82a127747434004b2302b833a720a57&ei=8

The Maine Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments concerning the case of Emily Bickford, who was blocked from taking her 12-year-old daughter to church.

Bickford received a custody order from a lower court forbidding her from taking the girl to services for Calvary Chapel, an evangelical Protestant fellowship of churches centered on expository Bible preaching.

The order also "allows prohibiting the daughter from reading the Bible," according to a Nov. 12 release from Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group assisting Bickford in court.

The custody order gave Matthew Bradeen, the girl's biological father, the "sole right to decide about whether his daughter" attends any Calvary Chapel services, whether she can review video messages or literature from the denomination, or even whether she can communicate with any members, according to Liberty Counsel.

The order indeed encompasses “any other church or religious organization, or exposure to the teachings of any religious philosophy or of the Bible in general.”

Bradeen hired Dr. Janja Lalich, a California sociology professor and "expert on cults," to convince Maine District Judge Jennifer Nofsinger that Calvary Chapel is a cult because of its biblical teachings on hell, demons, and spiritual warfare.

"Dr. Lalich told the judge that cults usually have a charismatic, authoritarian leader who teaches about a 'transcendent belief system' that offers answers, and 'promises some sort of salvation,'" Liberty Counsel said.

"She further testified that she had 'studied' Calvary Chapel Church and found that the church’s pastor was a 'charismatic' speaker, spoke 'authoritatively' in his messages, and that he asserted his messages were objective truth."

Lalich therefore concluded that the girl could experience psychological harm by attending the church.

This was despite the fact that all true Christian churches affirm that the gospel is the only means to receive salvation and that the Bible is the source of truth.

Liberty Counsel noted that Nofsinger repeatedly wrote "god" rather than "God" in her order, and that Bradeen did the same in his complaint.

The legal nonprofit is therefore seeking "a reversal of this unlawful custody order and restoration of the mother’s First Amendment right to pass on her religious beliefs to her child."

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver affirmed that the custody order "banning Emily Bickford from taking her child to a Christian church because of its biblical teachings violates the First Amendment."

"The breadth of this court order is breathtaking because it even prohibits contact with the Bible, religious literature, or religious philosophy," Staver added.

"The custody order cannot prohibit Bickford from taking her daughter to church. The implications of this order pose a serious threat to religious freedom.”

*************************

This order by an obamanite judge in Maine, IS ILLEGAL ... and puts ALL Christians who adhere to Biblical living at risk of losing parental rights. It is also another example of WHY Christians should not marry outside of thier Faith.

barak hussain obama, & joe biden were the WORST THINGS to happen to America. And Maine is just off the charts across the board, in defying American Law.

Constitution of the United States First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."