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A lot of people I know of have friends in Joplin, Missouri. So you can imagine that they have been feeling the unimaginable devastation and loss from that huge tornado there on a personal level. And it's always that way when a disaster has a face; it's not just a story on the news.
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Twice in a little over a year we were stunned by news of major earthquakes, and the images we won't soon forget. But they were in two very different parts of the world. The first one was in Haiti. When the ground was finished shaking...well, you remember. The homes, the businesses, even their President's palace were in total rubble. The second quake hit Japan, and for those areas that didn't get the tsunami—just got hit by the quake—most of their homes and businesses were left standing. What's the difference? The materials their structures were made of. You know, a quake has a way of exposing the strength or the weakness of what you're building on.
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Teenage boys aren't known primarily for their neatness and organization, as you probably know. When my oldest son was that creature called "a teenage boy," he had one area that defied the messy stereotype. I said just one area, right? It was his baseball card collection.
Oh, everything else may have been in a state of total chaos, but oh not the baseball cards. They were neatly put away in plastic holders, filed in notebooks, categorized. Why? Well, as he said, "Dad, they're only valuable if they're in mint condition. I want to keep these cards in mint condition."
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This body that you and I move around in is pretty amazing. One of the amazing qualities it has might be called "compensation." In other words, when one part breaks down, it seems as if another part gets stronger in order to help make up the difference.
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In all the years we were raising our family, we didn't have a dog at our house. One big reason is that dogs have a non-negotiable need to be walked. We've had some fish. Our fish never needed to be taken for a walk. We had a parrot. It's very hard to walk a parrot.
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Some years ago our family got to sample an extended period without Mom's touch. Mom had a prolonged illness, and that left a lot of work not being done around the house. So, our three children and I divided up the chores, which is why not a lot of work was not done around the house. But somehow the kitchen sink always seemed to go unattended. Those dirty dishes took on a life of their own!
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With the era of space shuttle flights coming to an end, I was thinking back to some of those original pioneering flights to the moon - the Apollo missions. It was mind-blowing to think that we had reached the point where men like us could actually walk on that moon that had just been that distant light in the night for millennia. It really was a big deal!
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We couldn't figure it out. For some reason, the mice suddenly liked our house so much. All I know is after not having had that problem, we suddenly were invaded. Well, I planned very strategically to be gone, of course, when they invaded the house. In fact the reason we know that they were there is because my wife found, well let's just say some signs of them in the silverware drawer of all places.
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I've never been a mother. You probably guessed that, but I have talked to a lot of them. In fact, one of my very best friends on earth is a mother; in fact a couple of them. And I understand that the nine months of waiting for a baby...I guess it's fun at the beginning, but it gets a little long about the eighth or ninth month.
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A while back I was on my way to an engagement where it was very important for me to be on time, and I really should have had my wife with me. See, we have a little arrangement—works pretty well. I'm the pilot; she's the navigator. She's got a great sense of direction; I can't find my way out of my bedroom in the morning. So it's good to have her along, but she wasn't there.
