Monday, April 30, 2007

One of our team members is quite the woodsman and the hiker, you know. And one foggy Saturday morning, he volunteered to lead a group of men who wanted to go hike to this distinctive rock formation called Hawksbill Crag. He had the book on the trails in that area; a book written by the man considered the expert. My friend kept consulting the book as they went along, pretty confident that they would soon end up at Hawksbill Crag. They ended up lost in a poison ivy patch, and the fog wasn't helping much. As they tried to retrace their steps, they passed a house set back in the woods and they happened to see its owner outside. My friend called to him and asked him if he would help them get "un-lost." That man went above and beyond. He actually came to where they were, helped them make sense of the map that they had, and pointed them right to the trail that got them to their goal. Of course, it turns out he was the man who wrote the book.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Isn't it amazing how different your second child can be from your first child? Just when you think you've got this parent thing figured out, God sends you a totally different kid. For example, food has always been sort of a necessary evil for our son's oldest, our granddaughter. She can take it or leave it. Since infancy, she hasn't cared much about whether or not she had food. Not her brother! Oh no! This kid is an eating machine. He's only about a year old, but he's been Food King much of his little life. When he was still supposed to be only having milk, he was following every bite any of us put into our mouth as if to say, "So when do I get some of that stuff?" How did he graduate to crawling? One thing that helped was putting some food across the room. He took off on all fours like a firecracker had gone off behind him. The other day, his mom was mixing up his next meal, and he was watching and complaining. As she continued to get it ready, he continued to escalate his expressions of impatience and displeasure. By the time his food was ready, we were dealing with a very loud, very insistent protest.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

It was a wonderful/awful day in my life - the day my mother took my hand and walked me the two blocks over to Park Manor School in Chicago. It was the day I went to school for the first time. Kindergarten, here I come! It was exciting, but it was hard, too. We didn't do any pre-school stuff back then; my family didn't even go to Sunday School. So here was little Ronnie leaving the safety of his apartment, leaving his mother, leaving everything that was safe and familiar for a place I had never been. It sounds a little silly, knowing what I know now. Still, the fears and the feelings were very real then. But if I hadn't left home and stepped into the unknown called school, I would have missed so much!

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Lake Cumberland is a nice place to go in central Kentucky. It's not a nice place to have come to you. And that's what the Army Corps of Engineers has been concerned about. The Wolf Creek Dam holds back millions of gallons of water from Nashville and other communities along the Cumberland River. And the Army engineers have expressed some growing concerns about a possible dam break. They said a break could kill many residents and cause over three billion dollars in damage. A Corps spokesman said that failure of the dam wasn't imminent but that evacuation plans would be a good idea. They're lowering the water level in the lake and they're trying to fortify the dam, because that dam is all that stands between a lot of lives and a major disaster.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Okay, I don't mind winter. It's a good thing since God seems to have assigned me to the North most of my life. I also don't mind snow. It's beautiful! It's even driveable if you know how to handle it. But ice - now I can't think of anything nice to say about ice. And, after the winter of '98, neither could the folks in New England and Canada. They got walloped with a mega ice-storm that left two inches of ice on everything. In Montreal, for example, power lines and poles and trees just collapsed under the weight of the ice, and thousands of people were without power for days; which means many were without heat in the middle of a Montreal winter. In one neighborhood, one man got pretty resourceful after shivering for five days. He marched across the street with a lot of orange extension cord and asked his neighbor if he could plug into their outdoor outlet. The people on one side of the street were without power and very cold. The people on the other side of the street had power and were very cozy.

That power from across the street was enough to start that man's furnace. And within a few hours, from one end of the block to the other, you could see long orange extension cords crisscrossing the street from the cold side to the warm side. Those who had no power were supplied by those who did and then everybody was warm!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Tommy Rieman was a teenager pumping gas in Independence, Kentucky, when he enlisted in the United States Army. Today, he wears the Purple Heart and the Silver Star of an American hero. He was, in fact, introduced to the nation during President Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address. There's been much disagreement about the war in Iraq, but there's no disagreement about the heroism of soldiers like Sgt. Rieman. The day his squad was ambushed by enemy fire in the midst of a reconnaissance mission, they were outnumbered ten to one. Their vehicles kept moving as Sgt. Rieman dove into the backseat and used his body as a shield to protect his gunner. As they sped away from the ambush, they found themselves ambushed again by some 50 enemy attackers. Rieman was shot in the right arm, he was shot in the chest, he had shrapnel wounds to his chest and stomach and ear, and his squad was out of ammo. In spite of his wounds, Tommy Rieman began firing away with his grenade launcher at their attackers. Finally, the enemy's guns fell silent. Then Sgt. Rieman began tending to his wounded.

Monday, April 16, 2007

When you have a commercial flight to catch at a major airport, it's important to pay attention. There are so many flights, so many gates, so many people, and there's only one plane you want to board; the one that's going to your destination. I guess folks must have made mistakes over the years. That must be the reason the boarding agent or flight attendant gets on the plane and often says something like this: "This is a destination check. You're on Flight 88 to Atlanta. If Atlanta is not your destination today, this would be a good time for you to deplane." Yeah, I guess. In other words, this buggy isn't going where you want to end up!

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

When I had the opportunity to visit the White House for a meeting with the President, I learned what everyone learns who is going to America’s Executive Mansion. They really check you out before they let you in there. There’s a background check. There are armed Marines at the door checking you out. You go through a metal detector to make sure you’re not carrying anything naughty with you. Believe me, you don’t just decide to drop by the White House, walk right in and make yourself at home!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

When our friends got married some years ago, they decided they wanted to live and farm in a largely undeveloped area of the Ozark Mountains. They had some interesting neighbors - one in particular. He looked and talked and smelled like a true man of the mountains who had little use for "civilization." After they declined his invitation to dinner a lot of times, they finally consented. It was a memorable night. They stood on the porch of his cabin as he pointed to the hens running around the yard and said, "Tell me which chicken you want for dinner." They did and then they got to participate in executing the lucky winner. The conditions in which dinner was prepared would have given chest pains to any health inspector.

As they sat down at the table, they noticed a dark covering on one dish that they were about to eat. It turned out to be flies! After dinner, the two men sat in the living room and visited. My friend commented on the big holes all along the bottom of the cabin walls. His host explained that those holes were from the mice. "They must be mighty big mice and there must be a lot of them," my friend commented. The host smiled. "Oh, the holes are from me killing ‘em. I just sit here with my old .22 and shoot ‘em when they poke their head out!"

Monday, April 2, 2007

You can read about the Grand Canyon. You can see pictures of the Grand Canyon. But you can't begin to comprehend how grand a canyon it is until you're standing right there at the edge of it, trying to drink in how massive it really is. The moods, the colors, the vastness - it was really something impressive for our whole family that first time we went there together. You stand on the South Rim and you look at the North Rim in the distance - the far distance, realizing you can only look. It averages at least ten miles across! There's no way to get across that canyon. There's no bridge that will take you to the other side.