Maruchan Ramen Wins Nobel Peace Prize

NOTE: This is a work of satire.

Somewhere in Scandinavia, on a crisp October afternoon, Nobel Committee chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen, emerges from locked doors after hours of deliberation, to announce the laureate of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Journalists with cameras and microphones ready eagerly await the results.

"I am proud to announce that this year's Nobel Peace Prize goes to Maruchan Ramen for its efforts to save millions of American college students from death by starvation. Before Maruchan came along, it was expected that college students would go on a Gandhian diet in order graduate, provided, of course, that you survived. Maruchan changed this by deciding that instead of barely subsisting on breadcrumbs and apple cores, college students should subsist on paper noodles and sodium power. Those whose rib cages were otherwise showing could now maintain a minimum ninety pound body weight. It is certainly the miracle of our times that the wealthiest country in the world depends on a Japanese ramen company to feed its citizens seeking basic education necessary to participate in the economy. If anything, Maruchan has saved as many, if not more lives, than Mother Teresa and Norman Bourlag combined."


Questions soon followed.

"Aren't you disturbed by the fact that many take starvation to be an expected condition of basic college education?"

"Starvation builds character. Just ask Gandhi."

"Doesn't it bother you that knock-off Japanese cuisine is more affordable for college students than healthier alternatives like fruits and vegetables?"

"Your Orientalism is showing. Who are we to critique the Japanese by our standards of what is healthy? Don't they live longer than most?"

"Instead of relying on cheap noodles, shouldn't we pressure our political leaders to find solutions to the problem of hunger on college?"

"If college students were well-fed, Maruchan would go out of business, and all the Japanese robots who make ramen would be unemployed. We live in a globalized economy now, and your protectionist complaints would surely lead to a trade war."

"Are the rumors true that Maruchan will have a sexy anime waifu as its new mascot?"

"Of course they're true, it's a major part of the reason why they won the prize."

"Will there be hentai?"

"There's always hentai."

Journalists had attempted to get the reactions of college students to the prize, but at the very mention of food, they proceeded to try and eat the journalists. Alumni who had survived college on a Maruchan-only diet had all died of diabetes before journalists could get to them, as they were too busy paying off student loans to afford dialysis or organ transplant. When journalists tried to get in contact with Maruchan for their reaction, they were too busy fighting over whether their mascot should be a tsundere or a loli to be bothered.

2665, Front Line!

We bring the #SummerOfTanks to a close with the wonderful Front Line by Coleco, a run and tank game kinda similar to Commando (which will be an episode in 2045). I hope you enjoyed the #SummerOfTanks because that will be the last themed season that I do on this show. It just happened to work out that way. Next time I'm covering Bobby Is Going Home, a very special PALcast requested very gently by my friend Rama. Please send in your feedback no later than 6 pm EST on 11 September. Thank you for listening and enjoy the rest of your summer, of which we have three more weeks. No matter what schools and pumpkin spice lattes say.

Pertinent Tanks

Front Line on Random Terrain
Front Line on KLOV
Ed Temple interview by Scott Stilphen, Joe Santulli, and John Hardie
Jim's Ferg demo. Thanks Jim!
No Swear Gamer 472 - Front Line
No Swear Gamer Front Line gameplay
Eugenio's interview with Brian Colin
Zero Page Homebrew Video Games on Facebook

[Three Hexes] The Mystery World At Beta Omega 8

Campaign: Probes sent to the system Beta Omega 8 discovered that the body orbiting the star was actually a Dyson Sphere, whose interior is a haphazard set of different terrains and features, but apparently uninhabited! An Imperial Science expedition has been dispatched to this system to explore the sphere and learn more about it and those that built it. Opportunities for wealth beyond measure have electrified the members of fleet, who are engaged in plots of political intrigue and a "gold-rush" approach to gaining the secrets of the sphere.

Homebase (Hex 0) (0102): ESS Scott - The medium class capital scout ship is docked to a large access hatch to the insides of the Dyson Sphere, manned by six guild companies and many independents. Captain-General Maximo wishes to gain control of the exploration fleet by finding valuable technology and is eager to gain any advantage over the guilds. Baron Nascimento believes a great evil lives within the sphere, based on his mage-astrologer-psychic and resists Maximo at every turn, secretly hiring independents to sabotage expeditions within. 

Three Hexes
(Hex scale is 24 miles)

Location 1 (0302): Base Camp 003 - The camp is the site of a mysterious massacre of an entire company from the Steel Guild, who are now offering great rewards for independents to recover the dead and find out the cause of the loss. The site is in a great forest area, populated with silent robots tending the flora and fauna. A glowing ball of light was observed over the site before the massacre, according to recordings, but the only clue to its source is a strange small ruin at the center of the forest and surrounded by quiescent armored mechanical figures.

Location 2 (0200): The City - This area is so nicknamed for the collection of hundreds of impenetrable buildings found in this area. Robots and flying drones move about from building to building, somehow entering within them to perform unknown tasks or tending to parks and fountains of strangely colored liquids and plant-life. Psi-talented explorers who have entered The City have vivid nightmares of evil beings contained within the buildings. 

Location 3 (0004): The Farm - Strange large mushrooms are growing here whose gills shed huge spores that seem to contain some sort of living creature. Huge tentacled robots collect the spores and take them to a central building that admits only the robots inside. The robots resist efforts to take the spores or enter the building, but the Verdant Guild is willing to pay a high price for the recovery of a spore or information on what is inside the building. 

---

"Three Hexes" are simple campaign starters to show that you don't need to do a lot to have interesting settings for people to play in. Feel free to use these in your game, campaign or as ways to spur on your own creativity and imagination!

I've purposefully left a lot of detail out because these are supposed to spur on your imagination! The scale is what I would use in my own world, but if something else suits you better, then go for it. I may have the features moved about on the hexes for clarity, if they don't suit you, move them!

Three Hexes by Michael "Chgowiz" Shorten (chgowiz@gmail.com) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Brazil Is On The Right Path.

Paulo Ribas as seen at CBGE's Brasil Esports Forum held at Marriot Copacabana hotel.

"It is vital for esports to grow, but it can only grow in a structured and regulated system". This was the opinion as expressed by International Esports Federation (IESF) president, Colin Webster. The view was further endorsed by Hernán Berisso (Diputado de la Nacion - Argentina), who has expressed his personal desire to see esports promoted by the existing national federation as a sport in his home country of Argentina.

The Brasil Esports Forum was thus an absolute success in uniting the opinions of delegates from Argentina, Brasil and Chile.

Without doubt, South America is a slumbering giant in the world of esports, and Brasl, with a massive population of 212 million (out of 431  million for  the whole of South America).

Thus it is with much joy that the esports world is able to see the founding of a national federation (CBGE) by no less than five (5) of the twenty-nine (29) states that make up Brasil.

Paulo Ribas - deep in conversation.

Under the guidance of Paulo Ribas, the CBGE seems to be makinng all the right noises.

Having implemented good governance and democratic systems, CBGE is desireous of affiliating to IESF.

Such affiliation will see Brazil enter into the IESF family of nations, and will assist Brazil to further promote esports as a fully accredited sport.

It is already believed that the sporting of authorities in Brazil have great interest in seeing esports regulated by a national federation.

Mind Sports South Africa (MSSA) president, Amanda Pakade, has also expressed her interest in seeing Brazil enter membership of IESF. "Should Brazil become a member of IESF, all five (5) BRICS nations shall have active esports federations, and there is no reason whatsoever for the five great nations to not work closely together to further promote esports", Amanda stated.

Tech Book Face Off: Python For Data Analysis Vs. Python Data Science Handbook

I'm starting to dabble in machine learning. (You know it's all the rage now.) As with anything new, I find it most effective to pick out a couple of books on the subject and start learning the landscape and the details straight away. Online resources are good for an introduction, or to find answers to specific questions on how to get a particular task done, but they don't hold a candle to the depth and focus that you can find from reading about a subject in a well-written book. Since I'd already had some general exposure to machine learning in college, I wanted to work through a couple of books that focused on how to do data analysis and machine learning in a practical sense with a real language and modern tools. Python with Pandas and Scikit-Learn has a huge community and plenty of active development right now, so that's the route I went with for this pair of books. I selected Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython by Wes McKinney to get the details of using the Pandas data analysis package from the author of the package himself. Then I chose Python Data Science Handbook: Essential Tools for Working with Data by Jake VanderPlas to get more coverage of Pandas from another perspective and expand into some of the Scikit-Learn tools available for machine learning. Let's see how these two books stack up for learning to make sense of large amounts of data.

VS.

Python for Data Analysis

This book covers all of the fundamentals of doing data analysis with Python using IPython, Jupyter Notebooks, Matplotlib graphing, and the main data analysis packages: NumPy and Pandas. It stops short of going into the other major data analysis and machine learning library, Scikit-Learn, because it had already filled over 500 pages with the intricate details of NumPy and Pandas. Wes McKinney is the original author of the Pandas library, so we're getting all of those details straight from the source.

The book starts out with the perfunctory chapters on installing Python and other packages, how to use IPython and Jupyter Notebooks, and running through the basic Python language features. It's filler chapters like these in nearly every programming book out there that makes me think that I no longer need to read introductory books on new languages. I can just go directly into books on applications of any given language, confident that they'll introduce me to the syntax and features I need to know anyway. It's not wrong, exactly, but the result is an awful lot of books with the same extra introductory material filling up pages that will mostly go unread.

Then there's a big chapter on using NumPy before moving on to Pandas for the rest of the book, with a chapter on the Matplotlib graphing library thrown in somewhere in the middle. The main focus is on Pandas, which is a huge library with tons of invaluable features for messing around with data. The book covers everything from reading and writing data, data cleaning, combining and merging data in various ways, doing complex calculations on the data with aggregation and groupby operations, and working with time series and categorical data.

The number and types of operations you can do on a data set with Pandas is pretty incredible, and that makes Pandas an excellent library to learn to use well. As McKinney says in the book,

During the course of doing data analysis and modeling, a significant amount of time is spent on data preparation: loading, cleaning, transforming, and rearranging. Such tasks are often reported to take up 80% or more of an analyst's time.

With all of that time spent on low-level data tasks, Pandas makes the life of a data scientist so much easier and more enjoyable. Data can be cleaned and transformed much more easily and reliably, and you can get down to making inferences about the data quickly.

Beyond covering all of the ins and outs of Pandas, McKinney sprinkles in a few good tips on other tools that can speed up your data analysis tasks. For instance,

If you work with large quantities of data locally, I would encourage you to explore PyTables and h5py to see how they can suit your needs. Since many data analysis problems are I/O-bound (rather than CPU-bound), using a tool like HDF5 can massively accelerate your applications.

Other than these scattered tips, the book is actually fairly dry and uninspiring. It reads a lot like the (excellent) online documentation for Pandas, but doesn't add too much more than that. Even most of the examples for different features are just drab randomly generated numbers with boring labels. You could just as easily read the online docs and get all of the same material. It may be a little nicer to have it all in book form so that you can sit down and focus on it, but that's a slight advantage. I was hoping for something more, that secret sauce that you sometimes find in books on software libraries, to make the book a greater value than just reading the online docs.

The book does have a chapter at the end that goes through some extended examples of data wrangling with publicly available data sets, which is a nice way of bringing everything together, but it's a small part of a large book. All in all, it's a no-nonsense, comprehensive exploration of the Pandas library, but not too much more than that. I wouldn't recommend it because there are better options out there that add something more than the online documentation can give you, like the next book.

Python Data Science Handbook

The Python Data Science Handbook covers most of what Python for Data Analysis does with somewhat less depth, but then goes much further into using Scikit-Learn to analyze data sets with machine learning techniques. The book is split into five large chapters, only the first of which delves into introductory minutiae by introducing the IPython interpreter. Thankfully, the book assumes you know Python already and doesn't bore the reader with another summary of lists, dicts, and comprehensions.

The next few chapters cover the use of NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib, and while the Pandas material is somewhat reduced from Python for Data Analysis, the Matplotlib material actually gets into the cartography drawing capabilities of this library. So, there are trade-offs in the number of topics covered in this book, as I would say the author gives more breadth while sacrificing some depth. The last chapter explores a good amount of Scikit-Learn with explanations and discussions of ten different machine learning models. This chapter added significantly to the book, grounding the features explored in the previous chapters with machine learning applications on real data sets of hand-written digits, bicycle traffic, and facial recognition. Seeing how different models performed better or worse in different applications was fascinating and enlightening.

The writing style of Jake VanderPlas was much more engaging as well. While reading the book, I felt like I was being guided by a mentor who wanted to make sure I understood the reasons behind different decisions, and why things should be done a certain way. While Python for Data Analysis focused on the "what" and "how" of programming with Pandas, the Python Data Science Handbook really addressed the "why" of data science programming, from explaining some of the reasons behind little decisions:

One guiding principle of Python code is that "explicit is better than implicit." The explicit nature of loc and iloc make them very useful in maintaining clean and readable code; especially in the case of integer indexes, I recommend using these both to make code easier to read and understand, and to prevent subtle bugs due to the mixed indexing/slicing convention.

To carefully describing the big issues with training machine learning models:

The general behavior we would expect from a learning curve is this: A model of a given complexity will overfit a small dataset: this means the training score will be relatively high, while the validation score will be relatively low. A model of a given complexity will underfit a large dataset: this means that the training score will decrease, but the validation score will increase. A model will never, except by chance, give a better score to the validation set than the training set: this means the curves should keep getting closer together but never cross.

This conversationally instructive style was quite comfortable, and made the whole book an enjoyable read, even though the material was understandably complicated with a lot of different features and concerns to think about. VanderPlas helped it all go down easily. It was a lot to take in, but it was never overwhelming. He also had plenty of words of encouragement, knowing that when real problems with data arise, it could get discouraging:

Real-world datasets are noisy and heterogeneous, may have missing features, and may include data in a form that is difficult to map to a clean [n_samples, n_features] matrix. Before applying any of the methods discussed here, you must first extract these features from your data; there is no formula for how to do this that applies across all domains, and thus this is where you as a data scientist must exercise your own intuition and expertise.

It's easy to tell that I much preferred this book over Python for Data Analysis, and I would recommend anyone looking into data science and machine learning take a look at the Python Data Science Handbook. It's a great overview of the subject, and you'll be able to get up and running with Python quickly, experimenting with some real applications of machine learning, and learning some of the critical issues of feature engineering and model validation.

Only the Beginning

These two books, Python for Data Analysis and Python Data Science Handbook, clearly only scratch the surface of machine learning. They teach you how to use the main Python libraries for data analysis and machine learning, but they don't go much further than that. There's a ton more stuff to learn about how to do machine learning well and what goes on under the hood in all of these various models. I've got my eye on more machine learning books like Python Machine Learning by Sebastian Raschka, Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn and TensorFlow by Aurélien Géron, and The Elements of Statistical Learning by Trevor Hastie, et al, among many others. There's a vast amount of literature out there now on machine learning, covering everything from practical applications to the theoretical underpinnings of the models. Suffice it to say, this is only the beginning of the exploration.

DAILY DEVOTION AND CHURCH NEWS: Thursday, May 23, 2019

DEVOTION:  Acts 2 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Coming of the Holy Spirit

2 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. ² And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³ And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested^[a] on each one of them. ⁴ And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

⁵ Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. ⁶ And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. ⁷ And they were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? ⁹ Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, ¹¹ both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." ¹² And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" ¹³ But others mocking said, "They are filled with new wine."

Peter's Sermon at Pentecost

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. ¹⁵ For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.^[b] 16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ "'And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams;
¹⁸ even on my male servants and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
²⁰ the sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
    before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
²¹ And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

²² "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— ²³ this Jesus,^[c]delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. ²⁴ God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. ²⁵ For David says concerning him,

"'I saw the Lord always before me,
    for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;
²⁶ therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;
    my flesh also will dwell in hope.
²⁷ For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,
    or let your Holy One see corruption.
²⁸ You have made known to me the paths of life;
    you will make me full of gladness with your presence.'

²⁹ "Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.³⁰ Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, ³¹ he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. ³² This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. ³³ Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. ³⁴ For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

"'The Lord said to my Lord,
"Sit at my right hand,
³⁵     until I make your enemies your footstool."'

³⁶ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

³⁷ Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" ³⁸ And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." ⁴⁰ And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." ⁴¹ So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

The Fellowship of the Believers

⁴² And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. ⁴³ And awe^[d] came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. ⁴⁴ And all who believed were together and had all things in common. ⁴⁵ And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

 

https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.klaustermeier/videos/10156293286443803/

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

CALENDAR:

Thurs- Karate 5:45-7:45

Sun- Worship 9; Fellowship; Adult Bible Study and Sunday School 10:15; Worship 10:45

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WORSHIP WORKERS: 

 

 

Sunday @ 9-

Organist- Barb Dreyer

Acolyte- Isabelle Morris

Ushers- Rich Talbert, Tom Linke, Don Hance, Kent Jacobsmeyer

Communion assistant- Dave Tinnin

Lay Reader- Don Nolte

Projectionist- Erv Yoder

Altar set up- Cheri' Hofeldt

Tellers- Team #4

 

Sunday @ 10:45-

Acolyte- Luke Rausch

Worship Assistant- Dave Winter

Projectionist- Loren Howard

 

Monday, 6:30-

Acolyte- Nova Luebke

Worship assistant- Sam Johnson

Projectionist- Terry McKenzie

Altar Clean up- Cara Klaustermeier

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY'S QUIZ:  Name a verse from Proverbs that talks about money and wealth.

____________________________________________

NEWS AND NOTES:

 

BUILDING PROJECT MOVING FORWARD!!

The voter's assembly approved the plans to expand our narthex entryway, move our fellowship hall, offices, and kitchen up towards the front of our church property and closer to highway 47, and expand them in size.  Please pray that God continues to work everything out for our good and his glory as we continue to move forward with this project!

 

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OPEN HOUSE FOR CARA KLAUSTERMEIER IS SUNDAY, JUNE 2, Noon-3pm

Everyone is invited to an open house to celebrate Cara's graduation from high school!  No gifts please!  Just come, enjoy some good food, wish her God's blessings, and celebrate with us! 

_____________________________________________________________________________

VOLUNTEERS STILL NEEDED!!

We could definitely use more people in many areas!!

 

Altar guild- We need more for set up and to clean up! (Set up can happen anytime Friday or Saturday or even early Sunday morning as long as it's done before 9am worship. Clean up can happen anytime after Monday night worship.)

 

Tellers/ Offering Counters- Usually happens after 9am worship on Sunday morning.

 

Readers- We can always use more readers for our 9am worship and if we ever get a lot of them, we'll add them to the 10:45 and Monday services as well.

 

Projectionists- We can always use more of them for all three of our services.

 

Pianists/guitarists/instrumentalists- We are always looking to enhance our worship and use all the gifts that God has given our congregation.  We could especially use music leaders for our 10:45 and Monday services. 

 

Please consider serving the Lord in one of these areas!!  Get involved! 

 

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QUILT RAFFLE TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW!!  CALL OR COME BY THE CHURCH OFFICE TO PURCHASE THEM FROM TERRY OR ONE OF THE QUILTERS WHEN YOU SEE THEM!

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OPERATION BACKPACK FOOD FOR MAY IS CANNED FRUIT.

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CHECK YOUR MAILBOXES AND THE SHELVES BELOW THEM FOR YOUR OFFERING ENVELOPES!!!
Some of you haven't emptied your church mailboxes in a while.  Others of you might not even know that you have a mailbox.  If you are an adult member of St. John's you have a church mailbox!  Your copy of the new constitution is in your mailbox and your 2019 offering envelopes are on the shelves underneath the mailboxes.   Get your stuff!!! 

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 PRAYERS:

 

For JEFFERSON CITY. As they deal with a devastating tornado that destroyed A LOT of property, homes and businesses.

 

THANKSGIVING FOR SAFETY from tornadoes here in Warrenton.  PEACE AND COMFORT for those who lost loved ones in Golden City.

 

For ALL WARRENTON KIDS as today is their last day of school. 

 

For JACK VERSEMANN as he is nearing the end of his life and for his family, especially Donna Lindsey, as she cares for him and her mother.

 

For PATRICE HUTCHENS, a neighbor and close friend of the Robines who is hospitalized with a severe and aggressive form of cancer.

 

For Barb Dreyer's friend CATHY, who is recovering from heart surgery.

 

For the FELDKAMP FAMILY as they are mourning the loss of Lew's brother.

 

For PAT MANESS who will be in rehab for the next two months recovering from three fractured vertebrae.

 

For KELLIE WRIGHT CARTER, a friend to Jennifer Figura and others at St. John's who is in the ICU recovering from a stroke.

For JOHN HOENIG, who is recovering from jaw surgery after an accident at work.

 

For those dealing with cancer and treatments ALAN HOFELDT, RAY STARK, HAROLD ANDERSON, JOHN MORRIS, father in law of Elise Morris; GEORGE HOELSCHER, MARILYN FOSTER, PASTOR RON LEHENBAUER, MARY BREUER, MARI GILB, both friends of Sandy Robine, and hundreds of others who are dealing with this dreaded disease.  That God would provide healing and relief, but that God would also work through the pain and suffering to bring faith and in crease faith in those who need it.   .

 

For DIANNE FELDKAMP'S SISTER, DONNA MAYES, who has been diagnosed with ALS, and her other sister, DEBBIE BURGER, who has been diagnosed with Grave's disease. 

   

 

 

PRAYERS FOR OUR MILITARY PERSONNEL:

For COLTON FIGURA AND DANNY DREYER who are both home but remain on active duty in the military.

 

For CONNER FIGURA going through tech training for the Air Force. .

 

For DAVID TATE stationed in Japan, and ALEX WALTERS, stationed in Tennessee.  That God would bless their service to our country and keep them safe as they all await possible deployment.

 

For CALEB FIGURA AND VINCE MASTERS who are both serving our country in the National Guard and take time out of their

 

 

 

The Wagons Rolled Out ....

Bridge? Check!
Convoy? Check!

The Supply Train has 5 weeks to get to Huzzah! but its ready to roll.
1 carriage, 5 carts, 4 pack horses. The rest will stay home.

In case anyone thinks comments have no effect, I had just about talked myself out of putting in the work to make the bridge sides thicker but Fitz-Badger's comment spurred me to go ahead. I was right, I had to add 2 layers to each side but it was worth it.

Thanks for all the other comments as well, they are always welcome and read with intent.

I like an old fashioned look to go with my glossy toy soldiers so I went old school, just a bit of fine sawdust for texture over the cardboard and masking tape and then paint. Its not art but I like it and it'll fit with my houses.  I suppose that's the next concern, how few buildings can I get away with and do I need to add anymore?

and it works with my 54's. 

Since not everyone will know or remember the great old Lighthouse song that gave me my blogpost title, here, for your listening pleasure, is 1849 by Lighthouse.  Another old favourite of mine from the 70's.