|
Posted on 08/01/2011 2:29:55 AM PDT by JustAmy
|
Another sweetie pie, Meg!!
Good afternoon, Jaycee.
I want that sweet puppy!!
I think this guy would also be a great burglar alarm. Thanks for sharing this beautiful WF Guy.
Your Peace Rose is lovely, Conor. Thank you for sharing it with us.
I’m happy to see you here today. Have a WF Wednesday.
Thank you jaycee..and thank you for that darling little girl you posted yesterday..I’ve been working the FReepathon and have been negligent in answering you and commenting..
I am plumb tuckered out ! I don’t do near as much as Onyx and the core team does..It has given me a real appreciation for their hard work to keep Free Republic going.
Lamh Foistenach Abu! My husband is—how should I put this—cheap, once going so far as to reuse the freezer bags our grown daughter Molly left behind after a visit. Needless to say, it gave me a start when, looking through the freezer, I found packages labeled steak, chicken breast, and Molly.
Stormy weather diverted our Dallas-bound flight to another airport. As we approached the runway, the pilot came on the intercom: “For those of you who are not familiar with the area, this is Lubbock, Texas.” Then he paused. “And for those of you who are familiar with this area, I think this is Lubbock, Texas.”
After our air conditioner broke down, we called for a serviceman to come and take a look at it. It turned out he was a high school classmate of my husband’s, a man named Love. He said to ask for him the next time we had any problems. The following year, when we needed service again, we requested Mr. Love. I took the day off from my job to be there. After he finished repairing our air conditioner, he left his work order behind. On it was written my name and the scheduling instructions: “Wants Love in afternoon.”
Unexpected guests were on the way, and my mother, an impeccable housekeeper, rushed around straightening up. She put my father and brother to work cleaning the guest bathroom. Later, when she went to inspect it, she was surprised that the once-cluttered room had been tidied up so quickly. Then she saw the note on the closed shower curtains. It read “Thank you for not looking in the bathtub.”
LOL! Thank you for brightening my day, Dubya.
I sharz wit U! LOL!
Double your pleasure
Double your fun....
It was Halloween night when a driver called our road-service dispatch office complaining that he was locked out of his car. I forwarded the information to a locksmith, along with one more detail: The car was parked at a nudist colony. Of course, the locksmith arrived in record time. But when he called in later, he wasn’t amused. “Figures,” he said. “I finally get to go to a nudist colony, and they’re having a costume party!”
My new credit card arrived in the mail with a large sticker on it, giving the phone number to activate the card. I called the number and got one option: ‘Press One’ to activate the credit card. That led me to a live person, who answered with her first name and the title “Credit Card Activator.”
As I got ready to give her the necessary information, she interrupted me, asking, “How can I help you?”
After giving birth, I couldn’t lose the 40 pounds I’d gained. So I dragged my husband to the mall in search of more flattering clothes. We were encouraged by a sign over a rack of suits: “Instantly hides ten pounds!”
“Look,” he said. “You just need to buy four of these.”
New Noah’s Ark in Ky. aims to prove truth of Bible
HEBRON, Ky. (AP) — Tucked away in a nondescript office park in northern Kentucky, Noah’s followers are rebuilding his ark. The biblical wooden ship built to weather a worldwide flood was 500 feet long and about 80 feet high, according to Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry devoted to a literal telling of the Old Testament.
This modern ark, to be nestled on a plot of 800 acres of rolling Kentucky farmland, isn’t designed to rescue the world’s creatures from a coming deluge. It’s to tell the world that the Bible’s legendary flood story was not a fable, but a part of human history.
“The message here is, God’s word is true,” said Mike Zovath, project manager of the ark. “There’s a lot of doubt: ‘Could Noah have built a boat this big, could he have put all the animals on the boat?’ Those are questions people all over the country ask.”
The ark will be the centerpiece of a proposed $155 million religious theme park, called the Ark Encounter, and will include other biblical icons like the Tower of Babel and an old world-style village.
It’s an expansion of the ministry’s first major public attraction, the controversial Creation Museum. It opened in 2007 and attracted worldwide attention for presenting stories from the Bible as historical fact, challenging evolution and asserting that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago.
“The ark is really a different approach” than the museum, Zovath said. “It’s really not about creation-evolution, it’s about the authority of the Bible starting with the ark account in Genesis.”
Inside the ark’s headquarters in Hebron, a small team of artists and designers are working on the visuals at the new park, but once the project begins early next year, there will be hundreds at the creation, including a team of Amish builders from Indiana who will erect the giant ark. Many of the same people who helped design the museum are on board for the ark project, including Patrick Marsh, who helped build some of the attractions at Universal Studios in Florida.
Zovath said the ark will have old-world details, like wooden pegs instead of nails, straight-sawed timbers and plenty of animals — some alive, some robotic like The Creation Museum’s dinosaurs. He said it has not yet been determined how many live animals will be in the boat during visiting hours, but the majority will be stuffed or animatronic. At their count, Noah had anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 on board.
There are a handful of replica arks around the world, but Zovath said this one will be authentic inside and out.
“When you get to walk through the boat and see how big this thing really was, and how many cages were there, and how much room there was for food and water ... our hope is people start seeing that this is plausible, that the account could be believed,” Zovath said.
A longtime critic of the Answers in Genesis ministry argues the attraction will bring in converts to creationism by challenging scientific findings about the world’s history.
“Many think that since creationism is so irrational and so unscientific that nobody really could believe it, but that’s not so,” said Edwin Kagin, a lawyer in northern Kentucky who is president of a nationwide atheist group. The new park will be “so slick and so well done, you can get people to believe in anything. Creationism, when you’re ready to believe anything.”
The Ark Encounter won’t be the nation’s first theme park inspired by the Bible, or the first with Noah’s big boat. A park in tourism-rich Orlando, Fla., features a portrayal of the crucifixion by actors six days a week, along with Jesus’ resurrection and gospel concerts. The Holy Land Experience opened in 2001, but the nonprofit park struggled with debt before it was taken over by Trinity Broadcasting Network in 2007.
Other replicas of Noah’s famous ship have been built around the world.
A huge fiberglass ark sits at the center of a Hong Kong Noah’s Ark attraction, and another floating ark in the Netherlands is being built by a Dutch man, who wants to sail it to London for the 2012 Olympic games. Closer to home, a church in Frostburg, Md., is building a to-scale ark supported by a steel frame.
But attractions with religious themes can be a risky venture, according to an amusement park expert.
“In some ways it’s a two-edged sword: If you go for the religious market, you already have something that is somewhat unique in the market, and that particular market is known to be willing to make a special effort, to drive an extra distance, to get the church groups to go out and make a special outing,” said John Gerner, managing director of Leisure Business Advisors of Richmond, Va.
“The problem with that approach is you always risk bordering on being disrespectful if not sacrilegious,” Gerner said. “There is a line as far as what you can do in this approach.”
Some in the state hope it will be a major attraction. A feasibility study on the Ark Encounter declared that the park would attract 1.6 million visitors in its first year, Zovath said. The smaller Creation Museum has attracted well over a million people since it opened four years ago.
State officials are banking on the park’s success and the 900 jobs it is expected to create, by making the project eligible for more than $40 million in sales tax rebates if the Ark Encounter hits its attendance marks.
Tying state incentives to a religious theme park has also attracted some criticism, though notably less than The Creation Museum, which received no state support. That facility was built on private donations.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based group, has said the park would run afoul of constitutional law.
“Noah didn’t get government help when he built the first ark, and the fundamentalist ministry behind the Kentucky replica shouldn’t either,” the group said in a statement. But so far they have taken no legal action.
Kagin said challenging the project in court would likely be a losing battle because of the way the tax incentives are structured.
“The legislation is so drafted that they will give this incentive to any organization that is going to increase tourism in Kentucky,” Kagin said. “And there’s no question whatsoever that this group will.”
Zovath said construction on the ark is expected to begin in the spring.
Thank you Amy! I consider this my home and as I add people to the ping list I find them here posting... Thank you for Amy’s Place!
Dear Amy, the Picture you Posted of Marissa is So Beautiful; God Bless her Always!
Your Flower Pics and Frames on Page 1200 of the Thread are Lovely.
Dubya, I Love your Post #1187. Keeping you in my Daily Prayers, FRiend.
(((((((Goodnight to Everyone, and God Bless)))))))
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
