Solomon builds a temple for God to dwell in

 1 Kings continues the historical narrative and many archaeological digs have verified material in the Bible. I found it interesting how Israel and Lebanon worked together with Lebanon supplying the cedar and the cypress for the temple. It was a different time when the King of Lebanon was awarded cities in the Galilee for all of his kindness in supplying the material requested. The daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt who was the wife of King Solomon of Israel also had a house built for her by Solomon. It is fascinating reading all of this material now at 81 years of age having read it years and years ago. Often times I have read these passages or heard them read at Church or online Church. But now I can visualize some of it perhaps because my mind is old I do not know. But I am finding doing this reading every morning gives a freshness into my life knowing so much more about God. His presence on earth always welcomed by the faithful and does He let us know He is here sometimes. I always think the wind in the trees tells us God is near. 

Today is Sunday and Church online again and perhaps it will be here or there. I find that it is just wonderful to be able to go to Church although when COVID was first closing us down I read the service from my email at the usual time and that was also special. Perhaps we shouldn't forget that God is flexible and only He can decide what He thinks about anything. He gave us the rules to live by - love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. These two commandments given to us by Jesus Christ His only Son can bring us to that uplifted plain of peace; I do firmly believe that. 

Yesterday another good day on the matches and I have now extracted 45 new matches and I continue today as the lengths are still over 25 cM or even 20 cM depending on the match itself. I seldom do less but again depends on how many of the four siblings tested are matching. A very flexible extraction procedure for sure. 

I finished the lawn yesterday; well actually my daughter did the very last part at the top of the yard by the house. She has to avoid some of the flowering plants/wild flowers this time of year as she is allergic and of course one is working very hard cutting the grass so that increases the effect of the plants on her lungs. She has been like that all of her life really but she works hard at handling it and managing it. I find it hard wearing a mask but she has gotten used to it and manages that very well also. 

Soon the dogs will be here and that will be fun. Fortunately she is not allergic to dogs and loves them as well. But summer research time is coming to an end soon enough and back to work although she has had meetings every week for her work and for her studies (four studies ongoing and two have funding). She works many hours every day on this project or the other or preparing her notes for the fall term. But here she can go kayaking and walking and the house is big enough that she can get lots of exercise plus we have air purifiers which help a great deal especially if there is smoke. 

Church is now I notice so must run. I was late today.  

 

1 Kings

 Solomon has been anointed King of all of Israel and David has died. Again the  historical recitation of all these events is a valuable addition to our knowledge of Homo sapiens. The close relationship between God and the King of Israel continues. To live within the aura of God is to live the perfect life which He commanded. Any transgression is punished. Solomon marries the daughter of the King of Egypt. Early on in 1 Kings is the story of two women who had given birth and one of the women had suffocated her child accidentally in the night and took the other's woman's child as her own replacing her child with the dead infant. Solomon passed judgement and decided that the woman who was unwilling to have the living child divided in half was the true mother of the child. A Bible story that is known by so many. 

Another busy day yesterday and I did cut about half of the lawn in the back yard as well as pulling weeds. There are so many weeds still not done. If it does not rain later I will pull more weeds and cut more lawn. Perhaps next year I will hire a company to do the lawns. But we have managed it this year. 

Worked on the matches and there are perhaps a couple of pages left to look at before entering these new results into my large table. I will probably use AI to separate out the four lines once again. My major task for the AI (Copilot) is to review the matches in each chromosome and extract the relatives in common from the original files  and then group the matches according to this commonality. I shall have to consider how to make those decisions and how much data I want to have to understand those decisions. The AI will be much quicker than I am doing that but I will review the end results. It is just simpler for the AI to drawn out the material and create lists for me. 

Forgot to write a letter to my sister and did accomplish that yesterday and take it to the mailbox. It will be quite late but will try harder this next week to accomplish the letter in good time. I talked about the Blake book somewhat and my theory that the Blake surname was a result of marriage between a John who lived at Knights Enham and a daughter of a Norman family whose surname was Blake (possibly le Blak). The advantage in such a marriage was very large for sure in a country that was now governed by a Norman King and had been for over one hundred years. By then I suspect the British people were used to the Norman overlords who simply inserted themselves into the landscape with a number of landowners/dwellers  in their lordship and the Normans paid homage to the King who was a Norman. Time passed and over time the Normans married into the English families and gradually the English dominated. That is the way of history very often. The Norman kings were gradually replaced by English once again as the centuries passed. The traces of French in England remains like beef/boeuf for the product and cow for the animal which is the english word where the french word is vache. 

 Today is the first day of August and I want to do a Kipp Newsletter issue where I mention that we have sent three containers of Kipp material (primarily BC Kipp) to the Chilliwack Archives in British Columbia because many of the original images were from E Harvey Kipp, Postmaster, Chilliwack BC. They will be available to Kipp researchers there. I also want to do a brief newsletter for H11 mitochondrial haplogroup. 

I cannot decide what to do about the bush that has grown through the fence this summer. I will try to pull some of it out and back into the yard next door but the rest I will cut off as it is hard on the fence. I never really understand why the neighbours let these items grow through the fence as I pull out the things that are mine moving through the fence. But what can I say; one just lives as one lives for sure. Moving on for sure one of these days. 

Solitaire puzzles still to do. I discovered I had not done the 30 April so went back and did that yesterday so I have completed the entire year thus far.  

Thank you God for another beautiful day in God's world. Praise be that the silver mine has now been approved for Ontario - many jobs will be available.