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On the Sunday before Easter, my pastor was talking about the donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And my mind wandered (that's never the pastor's fault) to a horse that I met one day in Texas.
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Winter came early to the mountains where we were spending our summer vacation. Of course, that's to be expected if we're on vacation; in the summer, it's probably going to get to be winter. But one night the temperature actually dropped into the 30s and no one was prepared for that. We're in this little cabin, and all of us… suddenly we are snuggling under this warm, Hudson Bay blanket. Therefore, we actually didn't have any awareness of how cold it was outside, because, well, we were warm.
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They keep it under glass that seals out any air getting to it. And when it's not on display, it's kept underground in a vault - actually a bombproof vault. It's the most important document in the history of the United States. Of course, it's the Declaration of Independence.
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I know I really need to exercise. My blood and my pulse - they don't really get going very fast as I sit many days doing my work. You know, like what I'm doing right now. I'm sitting at a microphone, and I haven't made too much progress in my form of exercise since my childhood. Well, you know, I used to chug around on my bicycle when I was a little kid. And when I was little, it was for fun or just basic transportation.
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One time Andy told me about the worst Christmas he ever had. Oh, he'd always had a hard time waiting for Christmas morning. I think most kids do. He felt that Christmas Eve was the longest night of the year just waiting. But there were a lot of long nights before then. And he was a little unsure of that Santa Claus business, and didn't quite have all that figured out.
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When our kids were growing up we occasionally had our own personal emergency room at our house! Our youngest son dislocated his ankle in football, so the doctor put an air cast on his ankle for about six weeks for support. Oh, and then the oldest son, yeah he had surgery for a knee injury that he got in sports. So they recommended that he wear a knee brace whenever he played a game where he had to pivot much. So, let's see. You've got your ankle cast; you've got your knee brace. It's all based on a simple principle that prevents further injury.
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At first I thought some apocalyptic event had hit our town. Schools were all empty, wasn't a school bus in sight, lots of people suddenly disappeared. Not to worry. It was just Spring Break.
Of course, for many of America's young people, Spring Break is code for "party like there's no tomorrow, baby." Well, after downing lots of booze and sometimes drugs...your internal censors just go off duty. So a lot of folks come back from break with little memory of some big mistakes. Partying that lasts for a night; regrets and scars that can last a lifetime. Going for "break" and coming back broken.
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Each of our three children learned the Heimlich maneuver in school. You probably know what that is. If someone is choking, you get behind them; you do the magic squeeze to dislodge whatever they are choking on. It keeps them from choking to death.
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Maybe it's because of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Yeah, as a boy watching that show on TV, I was fascinated watching my Mountie hero racing across the snow with his dog team. I even wore pants that were marked "husky."
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I was at a Christian conference center where the children's program included gymnastics instruction. No, no, I did not get involved personally; my leotard doesn't fit any more. But there were some kids who were getting the hang of the forward rolls and the backward rolls. And there were some kids there who weren't getting the hang of it as well. They paraded them all out one night for a little show. And one girl raised her hands as she was supposed to, very gracefully, got into position to do a forward roll, and stayed there. She couldn't quite get the roll rolling, until the instructor got behind her and pushed her forward again, and then again.
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The Indy 500 is probably the most exciting American automobile race of the year. I mean, you can almost feel the anticipation growing during the time trials and the qualifying events that lead up to the big race. And then, on the day itself, the engines rev, and the fans and the promoters cheer, and the cars make their first drive around that legendary track in Indianapolis. But there's really no race until that first lap.
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So, our whole family had to go for blood tests. It was time to check everyone's cholesterol levels, we were told. Now, as our son's blood was being drawn, he suddenly said, "I'm feeling a little weak." Well, that's unusual, because this son was probably the strongest member of the family.
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When Walt Disney animated the story of Snow White, he created seven memorable, even if short characters - the seven dwarfs. I'm not one of them! Now, I'm not going to ask you to name them; we'll save that for a game of Trivial Pursuit or something. But I always loved that little song they sang on the way to work.
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After Whitney Houston's sudden death, the world has fixated on replaying her iconic and now more poignant performances of her signature songs. And what stuck in my mind is the video they have shown of one of her first performances and the video of one of her last.
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I know you shouldn't yell, especially on a Sunday, but I did. On a Sunday a few months ago during the Super Bowl.
But, hey, my New York Giants were playing for the championship. And they needed my help, right, my encouragement, and my suggestions of course. How could they hear me if I didn't yell? I know it's, okay, just earth stuff, but it was fun to watch them win; especially since I have a special attachment to the Giants that goes back to our years in the New York area, when I used to speak for some of their pre-game chapels.
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So after the Super Bowl everybody wanted to talk about the commercials. Great! I wanted to talk about the Giants.
Yeah, my team won the Super Bowl! Who cares about the commercials? Answer: the news, the blogosphere, social networks, gazillions of people at the water cooler! Of course, at $3.5 million a pop for a 30-second ad, advertisers were hoping we would talk about their commercial and buying what they were selling.
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Some days I wear a shirt and tie, because, well, that's kind of appropriate for the meetings I'm going to have that day. Now, you go home a little later and get into jeans and an old shirt. Why? Well, because I don't want to do all the work I'm going to be doing there in, you know, my dress up clothes. It will be appropriate for the work I have to do there.
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I remember not long ago, this hot summer day when my oldest son and I were out working in the yard. I was doing the mowing; he was doing some clipping around the rocks; working just a little bit behind me where I had just mown. And I noticed that he was working pretty hard, and I glanced at him. I was pretty pleased with how he was doing, and I just kind of gave him a quick smile and went back to work.
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Some years ago, we learned a great way to make our vacation dollars stretch, and that's important these days! We ordered ice water with our meals instead of like Coke or something.
Now you say, "Well, that's no big deal." Yeah, it is. We finally talked our kids into it because the five of us, we figured, could save three or four dollars every time we ate out. And pretty soon you add those up and you've got enough to eat another meal out. We also learned it was a good idea to do that throughout the year. Hey, listen, drinking water is good for you.
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"So are you planning to go on a cruise sometime soon?" It was the guy checking me out at the drugstore, and he was pointing to the newspaper I was buying and sort of asked that with a wry smile. Because on the front page was this haunting picture of that capsized Italian cruise ship that went aground a few months ago.
