Good morning from a northern suburb of Chicago awash in heavy rains. Here is a weekly assortment of links to stories, nearly always found by Kris and friends who send links my way.
Veterans in St. Louis recently received free home repairs from a group of volunteers, who say it’s their way of saying “thank you” to those who served the country.
The Home Depot Foundation, which invests millions into veteran causes, and Rebuilding Together‘s St. Louis chapter, which helps repair homes for people in need, teamed up on the project, according to NewsNation local affiliate KTVI. On Friday, they repaired veteran Kenneth Young’s home, putting down new floors and painting walls.
“It literally is the most fulfilling day of my career,” said Home Depot employee Chris Wendling. “Not only is it fun, you’re giving back, and you’re giving somebody something that maybe they couldn’t have done on their own or didn’t have the means to do it.”
Since the game launched in October 2021, there’s been plenty of speculation about the optimal word to use when starting a game. One mathematician created an automated bot to test over 12,000 words, while online urban legend suggests words like ‘Irate’ or ‘Salet’ are best because of their vowels.
In creating their WordleBot, though, New York Times has found ‘Crane’ to be the best place to start while ‘Crate’, ‘Slate’, ‘Slant’ and ‘Trace’ are also very good guesses, as are ‘Lance’, ‘Carte’, ‘Least’ and ‘Trice’.
However, ‘Crane’ has never been the actual answer to Wordle.
Explaining their work, New York Times said: “WordleBot solves the 2,309 possible Wordles using the fewest number of guesses when it starts with ‘Crane’ in normal mode and ‘Dealt’ in hard mode”, a version of Wordle where “any revealed hints must be used in subsequent guesses. “
Of course, a bird story — this one about Monty:
CHICAGO — Monty, the beloved piping plover who has made Chicago his summer home the last three years, has returned.
Recently, watchers have discovered new piping plovers, an endangered bird, coming back to Chicago beaches after a long winter.
Watchers have been patiently waiting to spot the return of Chicago’s most famous bird couple — Monty and Rose. The couple has graced Montrose Beach for the last three years.
On Thursday afternoon while covering the story, WGN News photojournalist Jason Vicks spotted the return of Monty first. WGN sent an image of him to the Ornithological Society, who confirmed the plover’s identify from his orange, purple and green bands.
Monty had been spotted last in Texas several days ago — but migrated north to arrive on a beautiful Chicago day.
“When they arrive, it is a big deal in Chicago,” a bird watcher named Amy Lardner said. “What it really celebrates is how conservation can make a difference
CHICAGO — During our cold, delayed spring, the leaves have yet to sprout on tree branches around the Chicago area. But on West Melrose Street in Roscoe Village, there’s a tree bursting with color, filled with more than 50 hand-painted birdhouses.
Randall Bates is a retired teacher who changed his daily walk routine so he could pass by the colorful tree.
“This is a joy, a gift to the street,” he said. “I was just noticing there seems to be more.”
Jordan and Jenny Dolin are behind the painting project. It started as a way to pass time during the pandemic.
“When Covid hit you couldn’t do anything inside, so everything was sort of outside,” Jordan Dolin said. “My kids were all home from college because of Covid, and they painted some, and I’m like, ‘wWell that seems like fun.’ And I painted one. And then it just grew from there.”
The couple and their kids hung a few from a tree in front of their home and noticed people would stop and admire them.
Only one of my Brown University graduate school professors who assigned me readings about African American history, the history of poverty, and the lives of the marginalized identified as a Christian, and none were evangelicals, but in many ways, their interest in studying the lives of those who lacked political power reflected the concerns of Jesus to a much greater degree than my earlier interest in studying the rise and fall of empires did. The Bible has a great deal to say about imperial ambitions, none of which is positive. It is the Bible, after all, that chronicled the tears of the oppressed long before any secular historians became interested in the topic. So, one of the Christian principles that I learned from secular liberals in the academy was a realization that we’re more likely to see God’s story in the lives of the marginalized than in the statecraft and political decision-making of the powerful. …
And perhaps above all, I learned to listen well to other points of view. I eventually began to realize that the supposedly secular worldviews that I had once thought I needed to oppose in actuality contained a great deal of Christian truth – often because they could trace their intellectual lineage to liberal Protestantism. And the supposedly Christian worldviews that I had once accepted in actuality contained a great deal of secular conservative thinking that was not necessarily Christian. But even when I was confident that I was standing on firmly biblical ground in my beliefs, I learned to listen carefully to other points of view and seek to understand where others were coming from.
My friend, Mike Bird, reflects on his own mini-celebrity status and considers what keeps him humble:
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that there is part of me deep down that can think and act like a celebrity. The sad reality is that I’m more likely to demonstrate hubris than suffer from imposter syndrome. I have a sharp wit and can deploy it to build up and to tear down. I do revel a bit in being a theological agent provocateur. I can be a tad too quick to publish critical thoughts on a topic rather than allow the dust to settle on some dispute before offering an opinion. I do like promoting my own work and ideas, partly because I believe it is a genuine ministry and people find it helpful, but also because it is gratifying when people talk about you.
No, I’m not a celebrity, but I do experience the temptation to think and act like one.
I see the dangers for others and myself. I know that success is a dangerous basis for self-esteem and a poor source for identity. It is unhealthy to think that productivity and ministry are the same thing. It is selfish to invest more time in your platforms rather than in the people who need you.
In my own head, I’m a celebrity, so how do I get outta here? How do I think and act like Christ’s servant and not like a guy who is destined to end up on Preachers in Sneakers?
I’m sticking to my personal alternating WORDLE starting points — CANOE and ALIEN.