Just Bill

I nearly always wear either a tie bar or a tie chain, although I do have a few tie-tacks. I don't know if this is a chicken & egg thing or not, but where few men wear them, they seem to be awfully hard to find. As a Brother, I think that it is important to keep my tie restrained because it looks slovenly to have it cocked off at an angle beneath my jacket or flying in the breeze. It is also inconvenient to have it hanging free when leaning over anything. The first tie tack & tie bar (both) I ever bought for myself featured a bit of coal from the Exhibition Mine in Beckley, WV. I think I was 16 or 17 and on a mission to return my sister to Michigan after a summer at our grandparents. I think that attention to the details of attire are as important as being freshly shaved or neatly clipped. We need to touch all the bases, if we can, so as to demonstrate honor to Jehovah.

Celtic. I don't even have to look. Same clan as the Kennedy's. Double Irish on one side, Scotch + Cherokee on the other. BTW, where are the Black feet, Asian and so on?

Have him memorize the algebraic order of operations and the properties of addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. I've used ^2, ^3 and so on before. I'm not sure if they are the "official" notation, but people seem to understand them well enough and they are relatively easy to understand. My biggest epiphany came when I realized that there is only one basic math operation - addition - (using either positive or negative numbers) and that all the rest are simply variations on that theme. That said, I never got to calculus so my understanding might not hold true there. As a die-maker, all of my math had to ultimately resolve to real numbers that I could measure directly or otherwise prove.

It might also have links to early drinking mis-behavior in London when a person would make a tour of local taverns, chugging ale from a long, narrow glass at each. The glasses were actually 1/2 yard ... I'm not sure if they were re-filled. I imagine the last couple of stops would be quite the challenge on horseback. But, of course, that was "when men were men". (Another phrase worth considering. A related phrase is "when boxcars were made of wood and men were made of iron'".) When I was a kid (before ever hearing about Jehovah's organization) we had a similar event know as "The Michigan Avenue Crawl" in which one would start in downtown Detroit and have a drink at every watering hole on Michigan Ave. to the "Now Leaving Detroit" sign at the edge of town. I don't know of anyone who ever actually completed the journey, though I came pretty close once. When I had to put the middle key in the middle lock on my car door, I abandoned the quest about a half-mile short of the goal line.

In the meantime, chariots have been found in the Red Sea, Noah's ark found on a mountaintop in Turkey and the both the ark of the covenant and the precise location of Jesus death found near Jerusalem. Supposedly. I mean ... it said so on the internet, so it must be true ... right? So what, exactly, would finding some "missing link" accomplish? We've been waiting over 50 years for science to make good on its promise to discover how to create life in a test tube "in the next few years".

As usual, there is Biblical precedent. Acts 6:8-13; 7:54-8:1 ... and look how that one turned out. I say to go his bail (the congregation can't properly do this, but the friends could probably act privately in the matter ... especially the ones who were shot at, since this could reasonably be seen as outward evidence of inward forgiveness) and explain how the DNC list works. Then pray for him, and let the holy spirit have time to work. It may take years before an awareness of what has happened sinks in, but when your intended victims show kindness to you, it throws a wrench in the gears of your assumptions. We may yet see him on the DC platform with a VERY interesting story to tell. 'Oopsies' happen, but events such as this are why it is important that the DNC list be kept current and available and announced during each meeting for FS.