Breaking news from Cote d'Ivoire

From the BBC:

Forces loyal to the UN-backed president of Ivory Coat, Alassane Ouattara, are pressing on the main city of Abidjan from several directions.

Their offensive threatens to make a battleground of the city, the last stronghold of presidential rival Laurent Gbagbo.

From Al Jazeera:

Cote d'Ivoire's Alassane Ouattara said forces under his command were "at the gates" of the country's main city Abidjan and called on the remaining loyalists of his rival Laurent Gbagbo to switch sides to prevent further suffering.

Heavy gunfire was heard throughout Abidjan on Thursday as pro-Ouattara forces advanced towards the city. It was not clear whether the troops had already entered Abidjan.
...
Guillaume Soro, the head of Ouattara's parallel government, told Reuters news agency that Gbagbo has just 2 to 3 hours left in power.

"Two or three hours and I think it will be finished … the game is over for Gbagbo. It is finished," Soro said in Yamoussoukro, the country's official capital which fell to pro-Ouattara forces on Wednesday.

I'll keep you posted. Prayers continue.

Letter to Lillian, July 13, 1922

Introduction to Letters to Lillian

Sampson Mine

Llanada Calif.

July 13th 1922

Dear Lillian - Although I wrote only last night, much has occurred since. I had just finished your letter and was writing to my aunt to tell her when to expect me, when I thought of my watermelon. I called the gang and we had melon. About 9 P.M. I was down at the bunk house sitting around just having finished eating when I heard a vehicle approaching. The road forks just as it enters camp and the truck stopped. Consequently we knew that it was a stranger. We called and directed them to come over on our side of the creek. He did so and we found that it was a carry all with eleven men including the cook. The driver said that he wanted to go back that night. I called the cook and the gang ate. I fixed them up with beds and then filled the truck and the carry all went back to San Francisco empty.

     About 11:30 AM today I was working in the laboratory and I heard a vehicle approaching. This time it was a Ford with the truckman driving and five new men including the cook. The first cook went to the upper camp which had been doing without a cook. The boss then fired the cook here and replaced her with the other one. I showed him around and then went back to the laboratory. The boss said that he would take the cook who was leaving to Idria, about two or three miles from here in a straight line or about 10 miles by auto. He had not figured on her trunk so I dug out the flivver and took the trunk. I eventually got there. One little pitch required three attempts to climb and another was so steep that I had to monkey with the engine to make it run on four cylinders instead of the customary 2 1/2 or 3. Coming back it saw that there was no further need of four cylinders, so only three ran. I stopped on the way back to put some water in the radiator and it was scarcely boiling.It is quite unusual to run any vehicle, including shank's mare, in this country without the engine getting hot.

     Judging by the influx of men I will leave here Friday noon, getting to town Friday night late or Saturday morning early. If I can convince the boss that there should be another person to look after the store I would have more time to myself, although lately I have not been very busy from a theoretical standpoint. I have certain ideas along that line but I guess that they will be discarded as impractical.

Mining tramway in Oregon

     My store has been doing a rushing business today. I sent a couple of thousand pounds of provisions, or at least it seemed that much, to the upper camp. It took three men the best part of an hour to carry the stuff to the tramway. Some of the material is still at the upper end of the tramway, not having been taken to the cookhouse yet. In addition I have to send more tomorrow, as I did not send some things. Now my job of getting supplies will be exciting as I will have from thirty to forty to feed. One fine thing though is that I have two good cooks, both men. Take that any way you like, but not personally. The one in the lower camp is well experienced in ordering, so he will know just what he wants.

     Tomorrow is mail day again and I have to flivver down. I wish that the flivver would run uphill as well as it does down.

     Well I must cease as I am quite tired tonight for a change. So write to

          Your Jim. B.

About 8 more days.

I'm so glad it's sunny

Things were starting to get too tall for the cold frame. I had to move them to the side porch.

What we've got here are tomatoes (five varieties), cosmos, jalapeno peppers, and the tall things are sunflowers. Can't wait to get digging!

Tuesday book blogging: Teaser Tuesday Two-fer

I still have about 200 pages to go in All Clear, volume 2 in Connie Willis' WWII time travel magnum opus. It's such a page turner, I am getting to bed way too late these days. But I have to finish before the anonymous historian oft seen commenting on this blog returns from France so we can spoil the plot to our heart's content. (The anonymous historian was FORCED to go to Paris to evaluate study abroad programs, poor thing.)

Here's a non-spoiler teaser:

"Absolutely not," Mary cut in before he could ruin things even more completely, "and I fail to see how making a wrong turn constitutes expert driving. And the reasons we met was because I couldn't tell a flying bomb from a motorcycle."

Meanwhile, in the mornings (once I finally wake up), I'm reading Brene Brown's book The Gifts of Imperfections which is delightfully unsappy,a rarity in the "self help" genre. Here is your teaser:

I gasped the first time I stepped back from the poster paper and took it all in. It was the worst kind of sticker shock. I remember mumbling, "No. No. No. How can this be?"

By the by, I want to thank any of you who have been clicking on these book recommendations. I'm an Amazon associate, so if you buy books through this blog--or even look at them, apparently, I get a little credit. Yesterday I got a gift certificate from Amazon for $12.57! Whoo hoo! I'm rich, I tell you! Rich! Thank you all very much.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading where you can get all the details.

Monday Morning Preacher: The Woman at the Well

Samaritan Woman at the Well by He Qi

I am so grateful to the preacher I heard yesterday for how she talked about the woman at the well. She talked about how often this woman has been labeled a sinner, a prostitute, a fallen woman, and how that seemed unnecessary and possibly cruel.

I remember one of those sermons. It was during a preaching class in seminary, all of us in the class women, and one preached on the woman at the well in just that way. Five husbands! The shock! The horror! The sin of it all! When we gave our critiques at the end, I remember saying that I could just imagine this woman, perhaps barren, being divorced or abandoned by husband after husband, expelled from her family, shamed by society, living on the absolute fringes--and then we preach about her as sinful. And I found myself crying.

I'd forgotten about that until yesterday.

A Facebook friend asked if anyone had made the connection between the woman and Elizabeth Taylor. I hadn't. She said, "I would have preached it in terms of how people remember women more for their scandals but not the work, the Woman for her witness and Elizabeth Taylor for her AIDS work." I think that's accurate, and that scandal is used to minimize the work that women do.

Liz Taylor has proved an amazingly rich mine for sermonizing. I loved Dirty Sexy Ministry's entry this morning, Big Girls Need Big Diamonds,which you need to read.

"All of us have our big diamonds, our jewels within our souls that can gleam and glitter in the world - our gifts, our passions, our vocations. We all have jewels within our souls, those treasures that God has mined and entrusted to us. We are born with them, and our life experiences, our delving into the abyss where we stumble and recover the treasures of our life, give us access to them to share with the world."

Easier said than done, I'm afraid. And the women of DSM know the consternation that faces women when they claim for themselves that they are more precious than jewels, husband or no husband.

All of this comes with a backdrop of a phone conversation I had on Saturday with a friend who has recently gotten out of an abusive marriage and who is getting, oh, let's just say no help from the church. Over and over she said, "I need to heal. I need to heal." I'm afraid I didn't have much to offer her. I hope she finds Jesus at the well. I hope she gets some of that living water.

Church, dear church, so often you talk a good game about helping the oppressed. So often you fail to recognize them, much less help. I think that's why I cried that day in seminary. It's why I'm crying now.

Sunday Funnies

At last! Truth in advertising!

h/t Ellen DeGeneres

Quote of the Day

Regarding potential Republican presidential candidates:

These days you don’t just throw your hat in the ring. You put the hat on a coat rack in the general vicinity of the ring, and then you have your supporters move the coat rack closer and closer, until it is finally time to take the hat down, put it right next to the ring and wait for a strong gust of wind.

-Gail Collins

I can't believe it's already time to gear up for another presidential campaign. Can you? Oy vey.