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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

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It's a ghost town now. But in the 1880s, she was one of the boomtowns of California-all because of some silver in the ground. When the price of silver soared, so did their fortunes and so did the population of this little town that we visited not too long ago. But when the price of silver crashed, well, of course, so did the town. Back in some of her better days, a fire hit the town and it burned a lot of it to the ground. The only original buildings still standing there today had one thing in common. In a town that was mostly wood structures, these were the ones that were made of adobe. They've reconstructed some of those wood buildings, but hey, they weren't there long ago because, of course, they couldn't survive the fire. 

Friday, April 6, 2018

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We hear millions of words in our life...especially if you spend much time around me or our family. We forget most of the words we hear, don't we, except for some that are just too important to forget. Like our baby's first words, or the last words of someone we love, or the words that end up changing our life. Our five-year-old grandson called me one day and he said, "Granddad, I stayed up extra late tonight till I could talk to you and tell you what I memorized." It took me a while to recover from what he said, and I'll never forget it.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

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Look, I know I live in a digital world like computers, and I think I have an incurable case of technophobia anyway. But, you know, I've slowly made friends with all of this. It's great stuff! Early in my computer life, some of my non-technophobic friends were explaining a computer installation to me and what they needed to do with it, at least back at that time. They used a lot of words I didn't understand, but then they said, "Ron, we have to install a dedicated line." And I said, "Yes! At last! I understand that word."

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

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Okay, laugh if you will, but when I was in high school, I sang in the chorus. I did! Today, I'm just a backup singer; when I sing, people back up. But back in high school, we had some good times learning our parts, mastering our songs, and performing our concerts. Sometimes, if I was late for our chorus class, I could hear them warming up as I approached the chorus room. And this one warm-up was particularly monotonous: "mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi, mi." Don't change stations. I'm done. I'm not going to do any more singing. But...

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

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Their name calls up some of the most breathtaking spectacles in circus history - the Great Wallendas! This world famous circus troupe has amazed circus-goers with their high wire act, well, for about three generations. I was interested to read in Decision Magazine a while ago about Tino Wallenda's commitment to Jesus Christ. Tino described what he's done for a living - walking on a cable that is 5/8" thick, suspended between 30 to 100 feet in the air, at times suspended over dens of lions, or between buildings, or even over a pool of sharks! Not what I want to be when I grow up! Well, Tino said about his grandfather, Karl Wallenda, who started him out on a wire just two feet off the ground. He said he taught Tino how to hold his body rigid and how to place his feet on the wire and how to hold the pole with his elbows close to his body. But this great performer writes that "the most important thing that my grandfather taught me was that I needed to focus my attention on a point at the other end of the wire; a point that was unmoving and would not shift."

Monday, April 2, 2018

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It was home improvement time at our house, and I have a chronic sense of 'uncoordinitis', so we obviously needed some help. And our friend Tim, he was the man for the job for two reasons. First, he's good at designing and building and problem-solving. Of course, there are a lot of people who are craftsmen like that. The second reason is what really made Tim the man for the job. Sometimes we were gone when he was going to be at our house working. And since he was working in every part of the house, he needed keys to everything, and there was no place in our home he couldn't go. That meant we needed not only someone who could do the job, but right, you got it. We needed someone we could totally trust. And we had someone like that.

Friday, March 30, 2018

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OK, backpacks are basically a good thing. They make it possible for you to carry some essentials while you keep your hands free, right? But backpacks are not always a good thing, especially when you forget you're wearing one! I've seen a lot of the dangerous side of backpacks in airports and airplanes. See, you get used to your body ending at a certain point, and you navigate through a crowd knowing where the "oops, I bumped you" point is. Now you add a backpack and suddenly you have enlarged what is commonly known as your space, but you continue to navigate crowds and narrow places as if you had the same old parameters. So you turn around and "aahh, Oh no!", you clobber someone behind you or next to you with your backpack! I mean, its one thing to carry your load, it's another thing to hit someone else with it!

Thursday, March 29, 2018

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I think it was our older son's first official date with a girl; actually, just a couple of hours at the mall really. The next day he ran into some of the guys from school who just wanted to know one thing about his Friday night. "So how much did you get off her?" They weren't talking about money. They were talking about conquest. Our son actually came home pretty disgusted, frankly. He said, "Man, those guys; they're messed up!" 

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

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In the fall I really got exercise in our yard. We had lots of trees in that yard, and lots of leaves. Our sons were gone, and I got to do just about all the raking. There was this one corner of the yard that was kind of nice to rake because it smelled nice. I'd be raking away and suddenly I'd smell the strong aroma of spearmint. Now, I don't chew gum and I don't wear spearmint scented deodorant usually. So, it had to be coming from what I was raking - and it was! That was my wife's herb garden, and when some of the spearmint plants got bruised by my rake that spearmint scent started to fill the air. My wife told me that's the way it is with lots of herbs, like with lemon balm, for example. If you take a little piece of that plant and you crush it between your fingers, the air will suddenly be sweetened by this scent of lemon. So I learned, crushing a plant releases its scent.

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

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Pam was a young woman who was active in a Campus Life Club I ran some years ago, and she was very lonely. She used to call different ones of us leaders two or three times a week. Pam felt like she was unattractive. She had never had a date, and she had problems at home. And she usually called to talk about her problems and how depressed she was. Until that week she called me and I said to her, "Pam, don't call me again until you've carried out an assignment I'd like to give you." Well, I encouraged her to go to the local senior citizens' facility and volunteer for one night. She was hesitant, but she did it. 

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