Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

August 8, 2006

Today’s announcements

We are welcoming another new poet to the Storytime Tapestry family.  C.J. Wylie becomes writer # 346; and we are glad to have him.

A happy birthday wish goes out to our writer Carol Meeks, c_pmeeks@hotmail.com

A happy anniversary wish goes out to Magdalena (our writer) and her husband Jim James from your friends at Storytime Tapestry: wt@wynter.ca

Prayer Request from our writer Barbara Weymouth

Dear Prayer Warriors:

I got the letter today that the unemployment department has not accepted my appeal

for my claim, which I've been denied.  I am now facing having to appear before an appeals judge.  No income since my unfair dismissal from my job on July seventh.  I spent last Sunday writing a ten page appeal report which should have taken care of this whole matter.  Instead now I have to go through more persecution, which has been what seems to be a whole lot lately, when I've done nothing wrong.

On Wednesday, July 9th, I will have my knee surgery, which with the ongoing pain in my knee and the upcoming surgery made it impossible to get another job and then quit for my surgery.  It has been very discouraging for me.  I am feeling very angry!  Here they herd people in and out like cattle even when you have paid insurance.  I live alone so I'm facing a whole lot right now and I need your prayers, Please!! 

Love all my wonderful Prayer Warriors,

Barbara Weymouth

weymouth@surewest.net

Now onto the good stuff!

Today’s Queue Stories

~**~**~

The Missing Stamps

By Janice Bumbalough Marler

I have heard ghost stories from the time I was a young girl.  When we had sleep over’s we would take the flashlight, hide under the covers, and spin tall tails about the man with the golden arm.  It would cause us to have nightmares.  I wonder if that man ever found his golden arm.

As an adult I forgot all about that man.  Whenever a few of my friends came to visit, we would bring up the subject about ghosts and wonder if they really existed.  I am here to tell you that they do, because I have encountered several along my life’s journey.  The Bible tells us we do not war with flesh and blood, but with spiritual beings.  God himself is a spirit.  We have the Holy Spirit that hears our prayers and takes them back to God.  Then we have the spirits that refuses to leave the earth. 

Several years ago I lived in Augusta Georgia.  This was my first real experience with such an enigma.  There were no explanations.  It began in September of nineteen seventy-seven, when I married Kevin Bartlett.  My daughter lived with me at the time and I took her with us to Georgia.  We moved into a beautiful, red brick house that sat about two hundred feet from the road.  As you came into the driveway there were houses on either side that sat approximately seventy to seventy five feet from the road.  A single wide trailer was a good one-hundred feet away on another piece of property.  All the houses used electricity for everything.  I tell you this so that you will understand what I am about to reveal to you.

‘THUD!’  It was a thunderous sound.  It sounded as if something had fallen in back of the house.  The sound reminded me of a large fuel container, the kind people use to heat with.  My new husband and I searched the perimeter of the house and could not locate anything that remotely looked like that.  In fact, we never found anything that could have caused such a deafening sound.  If the noise had come from the surrounding houses it would not have been as earsplitting.  We went back inside scratching our heads.  It didn’t make a lick of since.  (By the way that’s a southern expression). 

My daughter met a young enlisted man when she visited her sister in Maryland this past summer.  He was three years older than Kelly.  The age difference was cause for serious consideration and I was upset about it.  Then again, nothing last forever, or so I’ve been told. She wrote him faithfully every day.   The night we heard the ‘thud’ Kelly wanted to go to the corner grocery store to buy some stamps.  When she came back, she laid them on the kitchen table where we were sitting.   Kevin was seated across the table from me, Duke was sitting next to his father, and Ms. Harris sat at the south end of the table.  Kelly was sitting at the north end.  She put the stamps on the table, went to the kitchen sink for a glass of water, and when she returned her stamps were missing.  The kitchen table was approximately five-feet from the sink.  “Who took my stamps?”  We told her we had no idea where they went.  She turned to Duke, age ten, and asked him if he had taken the stamps. “I don’t have them.  Why do you accuse me of everything?  You probably put them in your pocket.” “No I didn’t!” I told her not to get so upset that they would turn up somewhere.  She had probably misplaced them.  She stormed off to her room pouting.  “Mom, come here!  They're in my trash can.  I know Duke put them there.  Who else would have done it?” “Kelly no one left that table.  Not even Duke.”  It would be a mystery that would soon have answers.

Several days I heard a friend of mine call to me from the kitchen three times.  I was in the bathroom putting color on my hair and told her I would be out soon.  When I put the towel on my head, I discovered my friend wasn’t there.  About five minutes later she pulled into the driveway.  “Girl you aren’t going to believe what just happened.”  I don’t think she believed me.  She looked at me as if I was crazy.

The door bell would ring when no one was there.   It would lock me out of the house.  I had to take a key with me whenever I went outside. The thermostat, in ninety degree weather, would come on.  Radios would raise and lower their volume whenever you stepped into the children’s rooms.   It would change the station on Kelly’s radio.  Doors would slam shut, so loud that it knocked my ‘tub-and-tile’ cleaner into the bathtub.   All the doors were open. The lamp would come on automatically.  On and on it went.

There was no doubt left in my mind, or anyone else’s that lived in the house, we had a ghost.  I’m not Catholic, but I did have a priest come to the house and bless it. He told us during the Civil War many lives were lost on Augusta soil.  The house, no doubt, sat on such soil. He told us the book and movie, ‘The Exorcist’, was based on a true story.

The ghost never hurt anyone, but it did let you know who it liked and who it disliked.

I am definitely a true convert.  I DO believe in ghosts.

Janice Marler

poetrybyjan@aol.com or if that doesn’t work

poetrybyjan@msn.com

~**~**~

~ OMG ~

Joyce Lock

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.  For in thee, O Lord, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.

Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.

I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.  I will also praise thee with the psaltery, even thy truth, O my God: unto thee will I sing with the harp, O thou Holy One of Israel.

Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God.  For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand.  I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore.  I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.  O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

Thou art my God, and I will praise thee: thou art my God, I will exalt thee.  I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever.  While I live will I praise the Lord: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.  Therefore I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me ... and he will hear you, too.

Glimpses of God © 2005 by Joyce C. Lock
http://our.homewithgod.com/heavenlyinspirations/

~**~**~

Poetry Section

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'POWER TO BE'

C.J.Wylie

Figuratively speaking

What is it that you see?

in un-written words

That could chain thee

Given in kindly jest

To speak wisdoms muse

In a worldly way

From words written within

expressed in their power

TO BE.

C.J.Wylie

2006

artjwca@yahoo.ca

~**~**~

'FORGIVEN'

C.J.Wylie

To kiss the morning With complete freedom

And carress the night

With content

Is but a moment in eternity

To simply Be

Not of a harmful nature

And learn by choices made

To carry no weight

And only give out

What you wish for yourself

As all life is natures law

That everything returns

to its' source.

C.J.Wylie

artjwca@yahoo.ca

2006

~**~**~

'YOUR GARDEN'

C.J.Wylie

In your garden

What is that you tend to

The seeds planted

Are a forgotten tale

How is it that you water them

And yet they do not grow

Shaded in plenty

But not knowing why

Looking past the fence

You gaze upon your light

And embrace the remembrance.

C.J.Wylie

artjwca@yahoo.ca

2006

Readers Feedback

 Great column by Hart Dowd! ... Carol, at one time the military and/or Navy was the only place where men got tattoos. Or at least this is what my dad told me. Men during World War II also didn't start smoking until they were fighting in that war. Again, at least my dad didn't start smoking till he was in the war. What a mistake that was...

Rosanne

Prayer Requests and Updates

Senior Writers

Chief writer: Sharon Bryant

Chief researcher/historian: Hartson Dowd

Agee, Vance; Apted, Violet; Baker, Kathy; Batt, Al; Berry, Nell; Blaine, Pamela; Boda, Ginger; Booher, Paula; Buhagiar, Victor; Cassady, B.J.; Costner, Joan Clifton; Cavalera, Robyn; Crider, Mark; Dees, Mary; Deming, Barb; Doherty, Maria;  Dowd, Hartson; Dowd, Helen; Gilbert, Robert, Jr.; Gold, Ron; Goodier, Steve; Grisham, Mary-Ellen; Braun-Haley, Ellie; Harris, Kathy Anne; Henry, Linda Ann; Hunt, Sharlett; Hymes, Christina; Jacobson, Gary; Kiser, Roger Dean; Kerens, Claudia; Kevin, Tim; Jenkins, Pamela; Liles, Norma; Lily Jodi Flesberg; Lock, Joyce; Marlor, Janice Bumbalough; Mazzella, Joe; Mizrany, Mary Carter; Morris, Deepak; Ojeibge, Georgewaters; Petry, Dianna Doles; Roberts, Susan; Shiveley, Debra; Shaw, Bob; Sims, Richard; Streidel, Saskia; Swarner, Ken; Vaknin, Sam; Verhoeff, Jan; Walker, Bill; Walker, Joe; Warner, Gordon, K; Walsh, Sue; Weymouth, Barbara J.; Whirity, Kathy;

Wainland, David; Westerfer, Clara; White Robert;

Storytime Tapestry Staff

Carol Roach - Founder/publisher

Thelma Hartselle - Co-Founder, Moderator

Clara Westerfer – moderator

Bob Johnston - moderator