Paint Covers a Multitue of "Sins"

Finally, after nearly 40 years (!), I've managed to put trim around this dormer window. It was a bear cutting all the individual pieces to fit around the existing roof structures. Thank goodness for siliconized caulk.

 

 

 

There's a Hole in my Ceiling, Dear Liza

Today, civilization ended at my house, and it was awful.  More prosaically, I had to turn the water off for most of the day.  It was after 8 PM when I finally turned the water back on. But, to be safe, I'm going to turn it off when I go to bed.

Several days ago, the refill tube in one of the toilets gave out, and so the valve would spray water wildly inside the tank when flushed. And, as it turned out, a small part of that wild spray was escaping the tank and pooling on the floor.  So, I had to buy a whole new ballcock valve because one little piece of plastic got stressed-out.  

I hate that in Current Year nearly every thing contains at least one very small, very cheap, but very crucial, and usually non-reparable, part/component made of plastic.

After replacing the ballcock valve inside the toilet, I discovered that the shut-off valve below the tank was now leaking.  After a few attempts to tighten up its parts, it was still leaking.  No problem, I'll just replace it.

Also, for a long time now, I've been meaning to replace the main "house side" shut-off valve, as I stopped working properly many years ago.  So, to do this, I had to close the other main valve, the one on the "city side" of the water meter.  No problem.  Until ...

It was no problem until I tried to connect the new valve to the two pipe-ends where I had cut out the old valve.  The length of the old valve plus the pipe-stubs was longer than the new valve, thus I couldn't get both ends seated properly.

It required a visit to all three "big box" home supply stores (probably close to two hours in total) to eventually find a coupling fitting that might solve that problem.  The fitting I used says it's for use with CPVC tubing, implying that it's not for use with copper tubing; but it seems to be working OK. 

So, on to replacing the toilet's shut-off valve.  Ugggh.  Double Ugggh -- 1) it turns out that the valves in the basement to shut off water to the second floor don't work: water still flows even when they are shut (or, at any rate, the cold water). So, I had to again shut off the water for the whole house.  And, 2) the old valve wouldn't unscrew from the CPVC stub-out. Instead, the stub-out, and the fitting it was glued into, broke ... inside the wall.  

No problem, I'll just break through the wall from the other side, from the inside of a cabinet in the other 2nd floor bathroom, and cut out the broken tubing from that vantage, leaving no visible damage to the finished walls.  

But, it was a problem after all.  Just as I had almost finished cutting the tubing, it shattered again; perhaps due to internal stress: as there was so little space to work in, I'd had to flex the tubing (this was fairly rigid CPVC tubing). 

With this second breakage, there wasn't enough tubing above floor-level to work with, and even less flexibility to attempt to cut out the break  So, NOW I'll have to cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling to get access to the tubing from below.  And, of course, I had to make another trip across town to get the fittings I'd need to put everything back together.

The plumbing is now back together, and the coupling above the kitchen ceiling joining the old CPVC tubing to the new PEX tubing seems finally (!!) to be properly seated, and not leaking.  I'm still going to turn the water off before I go to bed, just in case.

 =======================

When I was in 8th grade, I was compelled to perform "There's a Hole in my Bucket, Dear Liza" with a girl whose name was Liza. For the performance, I was 'Henry'.

There's a Hole in my Bucket, Dear Liza

The 'Pope of Atheism' Accidentally Shows Atheism to Be Self-Refuting

The 'Argument From Reason' is also my favorite argument against God-denial.  There are several old posts on this blog explaining how the fact that we can reason shows that atheism is the false view of the nature of reality.

I formulated a 'strong' version of the 'Argument From Reason' -- seemingly on my own -- some years ago. On the conviction that "there is nothing new under the sun", I was certain that I couldn't be the first person in history to realize that the reality of human reason shows atheism/naturalism to be false-to-reality. And, after a bit of investigation, I saw that my thinking had been sub-consciously influenced by years-prior readings of C.S.Lewis and possibly Francis Schaeffer, and more indirectly by encountering "Darwin's Doubt" (which David Wood does discuss in the linked video) many, many years ago. And, I also learned that Arthur Balfour, a one-time Prime Minister of Britain, had written a book back in 1895 in which he argued that naturalism is refuted by the reality of human reason. 

David Wood:   Oops! Richard Dawkins CONFIRMS My Favorite Argument against Atheism!

A Long-Delayed Update On Progress Re-siding the House

(click on photos for a larger image) 

In the most recent ( July 14, 2025 ) update of the re-siding project, I showed the progress to that time on the west side of the main house.  Later that summer/fall we moved on to the south side, and this summer we have mostly finished the project; I still have a few small and/or odd shaped and/or difficult-to-reach pieces of siding to cut and install and quite a bit of trim and a lot of painting.  But, we've made real progress, and it's looking really good.

This photo is from late October 2025, showing the southwest corner of the house, with the south/back wall, other than the patio wall,  mostly complete. It required five levels of scaffolding (each level is 5 feet tall) to reach the highest points; Karen caught me in the final stage of dis-assembling the scaffolding.

To the left/west side of the above photo is a quick-and-dirty retaining wall I built to make it easier to put up the scaffolding when I get back to working on the west wall of the house; the difficulty is due to the at least five feet of difference in ground-level from the corner of the house to next place where a scaffolding frame would go.  The following photo shows the start of building that retaining wall, just to give you an idea of how quick-and-dirty building it was.  I drove T-posts into the ground and slipped construction-grade clay tile (which were once used as the basement-interior foundations of the house) over the posts, then filled the chambers with expanding foam.  This summer, I built a dry-stone wall, which leans into the clay-tile wall, and which I hope will allow this retaining to do its job for decades.

 

By way of contrast, the next photo was taken in July of 2025, before we had ripped the old wood siding off the south wall. I've since had that huge black walnut tree, arching through the upper right of the photo, removed.  It's much more sunny back there now, which is both positive and negative.  On the one hand, all that shade did work to keep the house cooler. On the other hand, all that shade, along with debris from the tree, fostered a thick growth of moss on the fairly flat roof of the sun-room, which was a maintenance nightmare.  And, had a storm taken out that tree, it would have done immense damage to the house.  So, sadly, the tree had to go.

 

 

In an earlier post of last year ( July 2, 2025 ), there is a picture of the gable-wall of the east bedroom, showing how I had rebuilt the window trim using PVC.  I was very satisfied with the result.  But, after that, and as I got to the point of rebuilding the trim for the kitchen windows, I realized I could get an even more dramatic result by making the verticals of garage-door trim applied backward, with the fluted side out, as shown below (though, I haven't yet completed the "topper" for these windows).

The next photo may give a better idea of how this treatment looks when finished.  Isn't that just gorgeous?  Sorry about the angle: this window is essentially on the third floor, and I had already started to dismantle the scaffolding before I thought that I ought to take a picture.

 

Continuing east around the house, almost everything visible in this photo is an addition I have made; only that bit of gable peaking out in the upper center of the photo is original.  In the center of the photo is the east wall of the "great room".  To the left of that is a covered patio, which I intend someday to be  a "three-season room". And on the right side of the photo is the breezeway between the "great room" and the garage/apartment addition, with the apartment's bathroom above the breezeway.  I plan to have an open-to-the-sky deck accessed through that door in the corner.

 

This is what the inside of the lower part of the "great room" window in the above photo will eventually look like.

 

 

 

This is the south/back wall of the garage/apartment addition. While I did continue the idea of fluted verticals for the window trim, so far I have decided to not make the "toppers" of these windows as elaborate as on the larger, more forward facing, windows.

 

This is the northeast corner of the garage/apartment addition (and, of course, more trim yet to install).  At first, I had not intended to paint that band of yellow between the grey of the body and the blue of the gables.  But the more I looked at it, the more I considered that a band of yellow between the grey and blue would help continue the "theme" of the original house, even tough this is siding rather than trim.  I'll probably eventually decide that I simply must also paint that white aluminum fascia yellow, to further consolidate the "theme".

This is the southeast corner of the garage/apartment addition.  I recently built that little roof the ladder is leaning against mostly because the roof above the small porch for the garage's man-door just ended, with a flat triangular "pediment".  I thought it was unattractive/unappealing.  There is no deck under this roof extension as I'm planning to built a small spring-use greenhouse there.  Also, a deck/porch in that location would be mostly pointless, as it's not near living areas.

And this is the north-ish wall of the garage/apartment addition ("north-ish" because it is at an angle to the main house).  That big window in the apartment was once, long ago, in the living room, its original spot now being a doorway between the living room and the "great room".  I still have the wooden upper part of the trim I had built for that window, and it's in great shape. I'd like to reuse it, rather than building new of PVC, but so far I haven't found nails long enough to properly install it (it's very heavy).

 

This is the north wall of the "great room" addition in the foreground, which connects to the attached garage/apartment addition in the background.

This photo is from July 2025, of the north side of the original house, showing the wood siding I had installed in about 1990; it's the last side we'll get to. 

And this is how that wall looks now, still unpainted and with the trim not yet complete. I decided that I could rescue and reuse the wooden upper parts of the window trim, rather that trying to build new of PVC [it's amazing how much that stuff costs], as the roof overhang protects them from the worst of the weather.

 

This is a photo I took this past spring, from the street in the valley below the hill on which the house sits. The photo doesn't quite capture just how different the two elevations are.  This shows the south/rear side of the house.

 

And this was taken from the next street to the south, on the other side of the valley.

This is a picture my sister Karen took last fall, looking northeast toward the Town Square and the old industrial area in the distance  I think that the old factory you can just make out in the distance is the building in which the set was built for the filming of the cell-block scenes of 'The Shawshank Redemption'.

And she took this while standing on the (flat) highest roof of the house, that above the sun-room.  I'm pretty sure that the point isn't the scenery, but rather the roof-lines of my additions to the building.

And this is one of the fawns born this year (there were at least three born this year) to those damned deer which live in my yard.

Socialism Further Simplified

Socialism Further Simplified: A system wherein those few people who control "the government" assert by force and violence their ownership of your labor, and thus the fruit of your labor. The older and more honest name for such a system is 'slavery'. The distinction between old-fashioned slavery and socialism is that the socialists pretend to be enslaving you "for the common good", rather than for their own narrow self-interest.

Aside from being a more modernist iteration of the human sin-impulse to live by the sweat of another mans brow (i.e. to enslave him), socialism is a means by which the less successful and/or incompetent persons who consider themselves "elite" attempt to use "the masses" as a tool or weapon with which to supplant the successful/top-tier "elites".

Always remember and never forget: To the socialists, you are not a person, made in the Image of God; you are a tool ... or an inconvenience to be disposed of. 

 ZeroHedge: Socialism Simplified: A System Where Government Uses Your Money To Solve Everyone Else's Problems 

Bats in my ...

... toilet?

Some people are said to have "bats in their belfry".  Apparently, one can also have bats in one's toilet.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a bat flying around in my bedroom. I managed to get him out of the house.  A couple of mornings later, I heard the noise of what I thought was a large cricket-type insect coming from a toilet.   It turned out to be a bat (whether the previous or not); and I swear he was wearing scuba equipment.

I have long understood that raccoons have a civilization of sorts in our storm-drain system.  I suspect that they sometimes invade the homes of humans and replace them, taking their place in wider human society.  Certainly, some of the people to whom I delivered pizzas were not exactly human; I could smell some of these people, or their homes, from the street.  So, I wonder, was the bat an advance scout, or even a commando, for a planned invasion of my house and replacement of me? For a number of years, raccoons *have* been trying, and sometimes succeeding, to get into my house.  Just the other evening, two raccoons were on the side porch trying to get into the attic above the front room -- one was already in the rafters above the porch, while the other was trying to figure out how to climb a pillar to join him up there.

Grifting race-baiters at it again

In the linked video, Jason Whitlock explains what Ben Crump and Al Sharpton are really up to regarding Nolan Wells' death.

Also, at about 6 minutes into the livestream, he says that the murderers of Emmett Till included both white *and* black men. I'm nearly 69 years old and I have never once heard that little inconvenient fact.

While all honest and rational people are rightly disgusted by the antics of Ben Crump and Al Sharpton, doing everything they can do to turn Nolan Wells' drowning into a RAYCISSS!!!! issue -- with much profit to themselves, of course -- we should not forget that his "grieving parents" (and I'm convinced, specifically his mother) started this and are keeping it going.

 

Here is the brutal honest truth that no one wants to see and understand -- women tend (*) to view men, including their own sons, *instrumentally* And among black American women, this tendency is even more pronounced than among white American women.

 

(* Notice to the morons: I didn't say *all* women)

 

 

Side-note: One may recall that when "Reverend" Al Sharpton burst into the national consciousness flogging the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, he was very fat. But, for many years now, he has been skeletal ... long before Ozempic made the scene. What might explain such a dramatic transformation?

 

Jason:Whitlock: Sharpton & Crump Hijacked Nolan Wells' Funeral to Shake Down Mississippi 

 

Megyn Kelley: Nolan Wells' Family's Private Autopsy Results REVEALED 

Before it's memory-holed

As of July 20, it has been about two weeks since the WalMart parking-lot shooting in Florida, in which black woman and a white man were squabbling over a parking spot ... and which ended with the black woman shooting and killing the white man. She hasn't been charged with any crime, and she probably never will be charged, because, while they *both* were assholes and *both* aggravated the situation, there appears to be enough reasonable doubt about his death indeed being a crime. That is, she almost certainly has a strong self-defense defense against any potential charges at any degree.

So, what's my point here? It is precisely this -- the race-baiting grifters will *never* allow this case to be a data-point undermining their "America is inherently RAYCISSS!!!!" narrative. To this day, they lie about the Trayvon Martin case, and the Saint George of Fentanyl case. and the Karmelo Anthony case, and on and on. But *this* case goes down the memory-hole.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

In the linked Michael Knowles video, he plays a clip of Elissa Slotkin (D-Commiesville) saying this about the SAVE Act: "[It will] literally allow this administration to rig Our Democracy [TM} so that it would be hard for any Democrat in any State to win any election."

Of course, this assertion is both absurd and a lie. The goal of the SAVE Act is to reduce, with an ultimate goal of eliminating, the casting of illegal ballots/votes in federal elections. But, consider the "fear" she is voicing: if illegal votes are eliminated from federal elections, then all Democrats in all States will be hard-pressed to win any elections.  Really?  Democrats in California, Washington, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, all the New  England States, Illinois, Minnesota, and down the line will be hard-pressed to win any elections if the SAVE Act is enacted.  Look, one doesn't need to be a rocket surgeon to understand what she's really saying, what her fear really is: Democrats "winning margin" may well come from illegally cast and/or illegally counted ballots.

She goes on the repeat the Dem talking-point (i.e. lie) that the SAVE Act would "disenfranchise all married women in the meantime, by the way."

Here is how you can tell that the Dems themselves don't believe that particular "talking-point" -- According to Pew Research, linked below, 50% of married women vote or "lean" Republican, but only 45% of married women vote or "lean" Democrat.  According to the internet, there are approximately 68.45 million married women living in the US. Here's the math:50% of 68.45 million is 34.225 married woman who "lean:" Republican, and 45% of 68.45 million is 30.8025 million married women who "lean" Democrat.  So, that's 3.4225 million more married women who "lean" Republican than "lean" Democrat.  

So, if the Democrats *really* believed that the SAVE Act will disenfranchise all married women, they would be supporting it. After all, from their point of view, what's not to love about the delicious irony of a Republican initiative which results a net loss of 3.4225 million Republican votes?

Michael Knowles: Democrat ADMITS Election Fraud Is How They Win

Pew Research: Partisanship by gender, sexual orientation, marital and parental status

Some Questionable Family History for my Cousin

This is info I had put together for a cousin back in 2013, based on my father's remembrances --

Our "Grandma Brown" is, of course, Eunice J. Price ... as to her given name, when my father called her "Eunice 'jay' Price", I don't know whether the 'jay' is an initial "J.", or just the letter "J" itself (in the manner of your father, L B Miller), or whether it's the surname "Jay", or just the word or sound "Jay" because her parent's liked the sound of it.  I've tended to think of her as "Eunice Jay Price", but I'm not aware of any "Jay" family in her ancestry.

Grandma Brown was born on January 27, 1892 (or 1891), near Lutts (on Horse Creek), in Hardin County, Tennessee.  She died on February 5 (or 6), 1981, in South Bend, Indiana (where she is buried).  Her first husband was Westley Scott, who died in 1918 (their children were Earl Scott, who died young, aunt Clura Scott Brown, and uncle Brownloe (or Brownlow) Scott); her second husband was your grandfather, ?? Miller (their son was your father, L B Miller); her third husband was my grandfather, Joseph Haley/Hailey, who died in 1936 (their sons were Jackson William B Haley, who died young, and my father, Samuel Jefferson Richard Joseph Hailey); her fourth husband was (Charles) Benton Brown.

Grandma was 1/4 Jewish by ancestry (by way of her grandmother, Caroline Franks), and according to your father, she was part Indian.  When I was a kid, I asked her if she was part Indian, because to me she looked exactly like an old Indian woman.  She denied it -- but the *way* she denied it, I didn't believe her.  At my mother's funeral, I asked my uncle, L B Miller, her son, whether Grandma was part Indian, and he said that "her people" were ... his manner indicating that *everyone* knew that.  I've read that at one time, if you were "white", it was more socially embarrassing to have Indian ancestors than to have black ancestors (which may explain why my mother didn't know until after her father died that his mother was Indian). 

Grandma's parents were William Price (per the information added below, apparently born in 1870) and Drusilla ("Drew") Frazier (per the information added below, apparently born in 1873, and her name actually being 'Drucella J Frazier').  I don't know which spelling of "Frazier/Frazer/Fraser" they used.  I've read that "Frazier" is an American spelling, with "Frazer" and "Fraser" being the spellings used in Scotland.  The name/spelling "Frazier" *is* associated with Hardin County, so I think that's the one to use.  My father thought that William died in 1910, in Wayne County, Tennessee, and is buried at Lutts, in Hardin County.  My father thought that 'Drew', as he always called her, died in 1911, in Hardin County, Tennessee, at White Hollow.

William Price's father was Edward Price (the family were probably originally Welsh) and his mother was Caroline Franks (who *may* have been born in 1844 ... I found a Caroline Franks in Hardin Co in the 1850 Census, but I don't yet know that she is our Caroline) (her first husband was a Harris).  The Franks family were Jewish, part of a small small clan of inter-related Jewish families who are among "our people" -- so, Grandma was 1/4 Jewish by ancestry.  My father thought they were originally from Germany (though, I've read years ago, that the Jewish surname 'Frank' originated as being what the Ashkenazi, Northern and Eastern European Jews, called the Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal ... I suppose because they arrived in German by way of France).  Caroline Franks's family lived along Horse Creek, in Hardin County, Tennessee.  

Drusilla Frazier's father was Edward Frazier (he may have been known as 'Jim'; the family was Scots-Irish, which means they were Scots/English who had migrated to Ireland in the 17th century, before migrating to America in the 18th or 19th century; the family name may have been O'Frayer at one time), my father thought he died about 1950, at the age of 104 (though the information below says he died in 1933); her mother was a Murphy (My father didn't know her Christian name, according to the information below, she was Mary A. Murphy).  

===========

When I was a kid, my father told me about an old family joke: when you heard that So-and-So Franks was getting married, you were supposed to ask, "Who is the other one?"  The joke being that as there weren't that many Jews in Hardin County, the Franks would tend to marry cousins.  

Both sides of my father's family are related to the Franks family. On the Price side, with Grandma being a granddaughter of Caroline Franks. On the Haley/Hailey side, my father's uncle and aunt (half-siblings of my grandfather Joseph Haley), both married grandchildren, via her first marriage, of Caroline Franks, children of her daughter Mary Harris and Saul Shuburte/Shuburts (both of whom I understand to have been Jewish) -- my great-uncle Byron (or Byrum) Ward ("Uncle Barn") married Mary Jane Shuburte and my great-aunt Zubie Sesile Ward married J Walter Shuburte.  Another two daughters of Mary Harris and Saul Shuburte, married brothers named Brown -- Henry Brown married Lizzy Shuburte, and William Brown married Cass (Catherine?) Shuburte.  Henry Brown and Lizzy Shuburte were the parents of our aunt Clura Scott Brown's husband, Carl Brown.

These Browns, related to both of my father's parents, are also related to the Bensons.  But, I know next to nothing about your mother's people, so I don't know just how the relationships work out.  For instance Edward Brown, a brother of the Henry and William mentioned above, married Nancy Benson, but I don't know how she may be related to your mother -- Nancy Benson's mother was Lizzy Hatley, whom I take to be a 1/2 sister to Arthur Hatley, married to Rosey Esther (Ethel?) Price (Grandma had a sister, whose name I have written as Rosey Ethel Price; I found an obituary for a Will Price, who is definitely Grandma's brother, which lists his surviving sister as Mrs Ethel Hatley), and "Tude" Hatley, who married another Franks woman, and "Queeny" Hatley, who married "Jap" Copeland, 1/2 brother of Henry Brown, William Brown, and the Edward Brown who married Nancy Benson.  Someone my father called "Icey Dora" Benson (I suppose that's Isadora) married James Brown, a brother of Grandma's fourth husband, Charles Benton Brown.  Idella Brown (a sister of James Brown and Charles Benton Brown) married a John Scott (whom I suspect is related to Grandma's first husband).  Their sister, Louella Brown, had a son named Jack Horton, who married a Della Benson.

============

I did find a webpage [back in 2013, but which no longer exists in 2026] about an "Ed Frazier", who was married to a "Mary A. Murphy"  -- they had a daughter named "Drucella J Frazier", born in April 1873 ... making her old enough to be Grandma's mother.  Ah-ha! "Drucella J Frazier" married William Price on April 23, 1891 in Wayne County, Tennessee (which is next to Hardin).  So, she is our great-grandmother, and I've been misspelling her first name all these years; and perhaps the "J" in Grandma's name stands for the same middle name as hers (Grandma would have been their first-born).  

According to these linked pages:

1) William Price was born in Tennessee in 1870. Drucella J Frazier was  in April 1873 in Manteca, San Joaquin, California.  They married in Wayne County, Tennessee, on April 23, 1891. (My father thought that William died in 1910, which would have made him about 40 at death, and "Drew" in 1911, which would have made her about 38 at death.)

2) Edward Frazier was born in April 1848, in Tishomingo County, Mississippi (which I believe is where our aunt Clura lived; it's adjacent to Hardin County, Tennessee, and Lauderdale County, Alabama), and died on October 1, 1933, in Lilbourn, New Madrid County, Missouri. Mary A. Murphy was born in 1846 in Martin Mills, Wayne County, Tennessee, and died in April 1890, in Martin Mills, Wayne County, Tennessee.  They married June 18, 1867, at Martin Mills, Wayne County, Tennessee; they had 14 children, with Drucella being the youngest (and he had another seven with his second wife, Mary Emma Brown ... who appears to be related to some of the other Browns in our family, and to the Franks, and to the Murphys -- pioneer families tended to be interrelated, for example: James Sylvester Frazier, son of Edward Frazier and Mary A. Murphy, and brother of our "Drew" Frazier, married Emma Tilley, daughter of Catherine E Brown, who was the sister of Mary Emma Brown, his father's second wife).

3) Edward Frazier was a son of "J Peter Williams" (born in 1811 in Lauderdale County, Alabama ... my father was also born in that county ... and died in 1859 in Martin Mills, Wayne County, Tennessee) and "Catherine" (born in 1818 in Lauderdale County, Alabama and died in Wayne County, Tennessee); they married in 1835.  Of their seven children, the first (William, though he's also listed as 'William Williams') and fifth (Edward) have the surname 'Frazier', the others have the surname 'Williams' ... I don't know that that's about.

[Note added in 2026: -- A Ward second-cousin once told me that my grandfather, Joseph Haley/Hailey lived most of his life as "Joseph Ward" ('Ward' being the surname of his step-father, his father having died before he was born), and was in fact buried under that name.]

4) Mary A. Murphy was the daughter of "Murphy" (born in 1820, in South Carolina) and "Elizabeth Lizzie" (born in 1826, in Newberry County, South Carolina).