brecho cheapchic: June 2009

Multi-colored glass church window, header

Blue glass church window, header

Duty and also the history of Father's Day.

There was a boy in Glasgow apprenticed to a gentleman who made telegraphs. The gentleman told me this himself. One day this boy was up on top of a four-story house with a number of men fixing up a telegraph wire. The work was all but done. It was getting late, and the men said they were going away home, and the boy was to nip off the ends of the wire himself. Before going down they told him to be sure to go back to the workshop, when he was finished, with his master's tools. "Do not leave any of them lying about, whatever you do," said the foreman. The boy climbed up the pole and began to nip off the ends of the wire. It was a very cold winter night, and the dusk was gathering. He lost his hold and fell upon the slates, slid down, and then over and over to the ground below. A clothes-rope, stretched across the "green" on to which he was just about to fall, caught him on the chest and broke his fall; but the shock was terrible, and he lay unconscious among some clothes upon the green. An old woman came out; seeing her rope broken and the clothes all soiled, thought the boy was drunk, shook him, scolded him, and went for a policeman. And the boy with the shaking came back to consciousness, rubbed his eyes, and got upon his feet. What do you think he did? He staggered, half-blind, away up the stairs. He climbed the ladder. He got up onto the roof of the house. He gathered up his tools, put them into his basket. took them down, and when he got to the ground again, fainted dead away. Just then the policeman came, saw there was something seriously wrong, and carried him away to the hospital, where he lay for some time. I am glad to say he got better. What was his first thought at that terrible moment? His duty. He was not thinking of himself: he was thinking about his master.--Henry Drummond.

Christograms or Christian monogram clip art

The Labarum or Chi-Rho, for black web pages

The Labarum or Chi-Rho, for white web pages

The term Alpha and Omega comes from the phrase "I am the alpha and the omega" (Koiné Greek: τὸ Α καὶ τὸ Ω), an appellation of God in the Book of Revelation (verses 1:8, 21:6, and 22:13). Its meaning is found in the fact that Alpha (Α) and Omega (Ω) are respectively the first and last letters of the Classical (Ionic) Greek alphabet. This would be similar to referring to someone in English as "the A to Z". Thus, twice when the title appears it is further clarified with the additional title "the Beginning and the End" (21:6, 22:13).
Therefore the letters Alpha and Omega in juxtaposition are often used as a Christian visual symbol. We have included four clip art versions of this symbol for white web pages here. For versions of the Labarum designed for black web pages go here.

Intolerance.

We should be thankful that such conditions as those described below no longer exist:

No religious meetings outside the ordinary services of the Church could be held without a license under the Toleration Act; and those taking part in such meetings, in order to secure the right to hold them, had to register themselves as Dissenters. This law extended to America, and so the first Methodist Church in the United States was adorned with that very unecclesiastical bit of architecture-- a chimney. When a Methodist church was built it had to disguise itself as a house in order to secure the right to exist. W. H. Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century."

Gingerbread For Christmas

The gingerbread illustrations are original to my collection. Read my own Terms of Use and agree to these before downloading the illustrations here for your own personal use.

Gingerbread is a sweet that can take the form of a cake or a cookie in which the predominant flavors are ginger and raw sugar. Gingerbread was introduced to Europe long ago by the Crusaders.

The town of Market Drayton in Shropshire, UK is known as the "home of gingerbread" and this is proudly decreed on the welcome sign. The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the town dates back to 1793; however, it was probably made earlier as ginger was stocked in high street businesses from the 1640s. Gingerbread became widely available in the 1700s.

Originally, the term gingerbread (from Latin zingiber via Old French gingebras) referred to preserved ginger, then to a confection made with honey and spices. Gingerbread is often translated into French as pain d'épices (literally "spice bread"). Pain d'épices is a French pastry also made with honey and spices, but not crispy.

As a cookie, gingerbread can be made into a thin, crisp cookie (often called a ginger snap) or a softer cookie similar to the German Lebkuchen. Gingerbread cookies are often cut into shapes, particularly gingerbread men. Traditionally it was dunked in port wine.

A gingerbread is used to build gingerbread houses similar to the "witch's house" encountered by Hansel and Gretel. These houses, covered with a variety of candies and icing, are popular Christmas decorations, typically built by children with the help of their guardians.

Another variant uses a boiled dough that can be molded like clay to form inedible statuettes or other decorations. A significant form of popular art in Europe, major centers of gingerbread mould carving included Lyon, Nürnberg, Pest, Prague, Pardubice, Pulsnitz, Ulm, and Toruń. Gingerbread molds often displayed the "news", showing carved portraits of new kings, emperors, and queens, for example. Substantial mould collections are held at the Ethnographic Museum in Toruń, Poland and the Bread Museum in Ulm, Germany.

The lesser known bread form tends to be a dense, treaclely (molasses-based) spice bread. Some recipes add mustard, pepper, raisins, nuts, and/or other spices/ingredients to the batter. In one variation, the bread omits raisins or nuts and is served with warm lemon sauce. In the United States, the bread is more often served in the winter, particularly at Christmas time in the central parts of Pennsylvania.