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Friday, July 20, 2018

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I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but radio guys like me, we actually make mistakes sometimes. Yep, believe it or not. But you don't hear them. No, I have wonder-worker. Yep, producer, editor. And I have to always be nice to him. See, producers edit out my mistakes, but that doesn't mean they throw away the tape. No, see, the same goes for the random and sometimes crazy things I may say before or after we record a program. You will never hear those! Oh, it's all there. Yeah, he makes sure the tape is always rolling. I mean, one Christmas I was reminded of that in a most vivid way. They put together a recording of some of my mistakes and comments, stretched together in an imaginary interview with a TV reporter, and they played for our whole staff. No, you'll never hear it. Sure enough, if I say it, they've got it. 

Thursday, July 19, 2018

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I don't know if there was ever a time in our son's life when he checked the mailbox so many times. Now I know what you're thinking-a letter from a girl, right? No, it was grades from college. See, this was during our son's last visit home when he was going to college, and the grades for the semester just completed were supposed to be mailed to him at home. Well, it got a little frustrating and as he talked with all his college friends, they were telling him in other parts of the country, that they already had their grades. And every day that they didn't come, he got a little more frustrated. Now why was he so eager to get his grades? He had every reason to believe he had done very well this time. And finally, they came. Best grades by far since he started college, the Dean's List! High fives all around, baby!

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

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If you've ever listened to the fans at a college or professional football game, you know some of them are the ultimate experts at what their team is doing wrong and what they should be doing. It's just amazing some of those fans haven't been hired as like head coach of the team, right? Yeah. After speaking for professional football chapels and getting to know some of the players, I was less than patient with their critics all around me up in the stands. I mean, I knew some of those guys on the field. I knew they had everything on the line when they played and that they were the only heroes in the game. You know, there were no heroes in the stands. Sometimes I just wanted to stand up and say to one of those guys: by the way, I never did because they were all bigger than I am. But I wanted to say, "Hey! Why don't you get out of the stands and get in the game!"

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

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Over the years it's been an honor and a pleasure to speak for a lot of professional football chapels. You should have seen me with the New York Giants. I was like the New York dwarf! Hey, listen, I'm tall inside okay. Their "thank you" for speaking was two tickets for the game; great seats reserved for the chapel speaker – midfield under cover. Of course, any time you go to a public event like a game or a concert or a show, you hope for great seats. On occasion, I've even looked up a seating chart for the facility where an event was being held so I knew what seats to ask for. Unfortunately, well, you've got to pay a little for the best seats, but you get a view that most folks can't see.

Monday, July 16, 2018

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"Please help us." That's what the people stranded on the roof of their house wrote on the sign that they waved over their heads. They represented so many thousands of New Orleans residents who were left stranded and in deadly danger by the floods of Hurricane Katrina. The wind and the rain of that category four hurricane were bad enough, but it was when the levees broke that suddenly major parts of the city were underwater, literally up to the rooftops. We heard the harrowing stories that began to unfold of how people had moved from a first floor to a second floor to escape those toxic waters. Then, as the second floor filled with water, how they moved to their last point of refuge-the roof. And many were stranded there, no food, no water, and increasingly no hope. Then hope showed up in the shape of a Coast Guard helicopter, hovering over their rooftop refuge. Hope was a man coming down a cable to where they were; a man who secured their rescue and saved their lives. 

Friday, July 13, 2018

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If you ask our kids about four or five of the most indelible memories from their childhood, I think at least one is bound to bring up the night of the hurricane. Some friends had offered their home on Eastern Long Island; we could use it for our vacation. I wonder if they had advance word that Hurricane Belle would make it all the way up the East Coast that week and smack Long Island right on the chin? Thankfully, the home we were in was on a cliff above the ocean so we didn't have to evacuate. But we made all the appropriate preparations. We loaded up on batteries and candles, stored water in the bathtub, and lined the freezer with newspaper in case the power went out. The leading winds of the hurricane started blowing in about bedtime that night, and I mean, you could hear it howling around our bedrooms upstairs. The kids were pretty unnerved (including this kid). So, we all moved out of our rooms to the downstairs living room. We laid out some sleeping bags, and we slept side by side together in the living room. The kids loved it! They actually said, "Hey, Dad, hurricanes are fun!" Really?

Thursday, July 12, 2018

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When I was a kid, "Nautilus" was Captain Nemo's submarine in a Jules Verne novel. I knew that because (No, I didn't read it.) Walt Disney put it on TV. Then "Nautilus" became the name of an early nuclear submarine launched by the United States. But not too long ago I saw a nautilus while we were at Ocean City, New Jersey. It wasn't a submarine. It was the original nautilus; the little sea creature with the fascinating shell. We actually saw a lot of nautilus shells in little shops. We bought one for our living room. It's real smooth on the outside, got stripes on it, and it's bigger than my hand. Now, to me, the nautilus shell is shaped sort of like a big, shiny human ear, and maybe we could say it's like an unborn child in the womb, if you can picture that. The original inhabitant is gone, of course, but his fascinating shell-house remains. When you cut a nautilus shell in half, it reveals the life story of the one-time inhabitant. At the center is this circular chamber with a wall around it. That was the original home of a little bitty nautilus. There are circular chambers all the way to the outer edge of the shell, and each chamber is a little larger than the previous one. That little sea creature kept outgrowing his shell, so he left it behind and moved on to the next chamber-and chapter-of his life. 

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

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Look, whether you're a Yankee or a Confederate at heart, you don't take much joy in what happened at what is called the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy." If you're a Civil War buff, you know that's where the Union Army turned back Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Some 15,000 Confederate soldiers marched courageously across a field in a very tightly packed formation, advancing on 40,000 Union soldiers. Only 150 of those Southern soldiers made it. General Lee had made an honest but tragic mistake. See, he'd been trained at West Point in Napoleon's war tactics-masses of men, advancing against imprecise, short-range weapons until they could overwhelm the opposing troops in hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, things had changed since that kind of strategy had won battles for Napoleon. Recent technology had greatly improved the range and the accuracy of the rifles that the Union Army was using, which meant those masses of men were brought down long before they could ever reach enemy lines.

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

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All eyes were on the mountain-the volcano nearby. Our friends' daughter, a missionary, was living in a city that sits in the middle of several volcanoes. And one of them was showing some of those Mt. St. Helen's-type symptoms: the bulging and the boiling that suggests a possible eruption in the near future. Scientists were predicting that could very well happen. So living anywhere near that boiling mountain was, to say the least, like nerve-wracking. 

Monday, July 9, 2018

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O.K., I'll admit it, I'm often in a hurry to get where I'm going. More than once, you know, when Karen and I were traveling in the crew configuration that my wife and I used for years – me pilot at the wheel, her navigator with map. We'd be clipping along at a healthy rate of speed, believing that the purpose of the exercise is to be there, right, not to spend a lot of time getting there! Right? And even though my beautiful navigator may have announced that a turn was coming up soon, I maintain my "got to get there" speed. Then, suddenly, I hear those words, "This is our turn!" Zoom! We blow right past it – sometimes without an opportunity to turn around for several miles. So much for me trying to make good time, right? Too often, I've ended up on the wrong road – just because I was going too fast to turn.

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