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I spent my seventh through tenth grade in a small town in Illinois. So I went to junior high there and my first two years of high school. And I hadn't seen my friends from there for 28 years!
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Every New York television station you turned to had the same bold graphic that just said Blizzard of '96. I still remember it. It was barely 1996; we were only six days into the new year when anywhere between 20 to 30 inches of snow unloaded on the Metropolitan New York area. It was like a mega-ton snow bomb.
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Not long ago there were pictures all over the news of these spectacular colors painting a breathtaking scene in the night sky. It was the "northern lights," also known to scientists as the aurora borealis. Now, I'll tell you what! It's worth checking out that view any time you can or at least those pictures. I guess the approach of solar flares from the sun's turbulence sometimes just adds a whole new richness to these lights. Of course, they have amazed people for centuries.
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A Pope's visit to Cuba is not an everyday thing by any means. Pope Francis more recently visited. When Pope John Paul II made the very first visit in 1998, he saw a very different Cuba than Pope Francis saw.
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At first, they were frightened, even bruised faces appearing on Iraqi TV. Early in the Iraq War, there were seven American soldiers and pilots who had been captured by Saddam Hussein's forces and then they were paraded on television for all the world to see. After that, none of us could be sure whether they were hurt or healthy, or dead or alive. Since then, in many wars, there have been too many scenes like that. In this case, retreating enemy soldiers informed American troops of the place where these particular POWs were being held. As the heavily armed soldiers burst into the room, they first shouted for everyone to lie down on the floor. And then, they yelled out an unmistakable command: "If you're an American, stand up!" Seven prisoners stood up, and they were free.
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Most of the courtrooms I've been exposed to are on TV. But there was a moment in a courtroom I will never forget. It began when we learned the whereabouts of a young Native American friend we had been trying to locate for a while. Let's call her Cathy. We learned, almost miraculously, that after a dark time away from God, Cathy was in jail in Nebraska. We got that word on Friday as I was leaving Michigan to meet our Native American summer team in South Dakota on a Monday night. We ate up the Interstate trying to get to Nebraska before Cathy went before the Judge. She had no idea we were coming - until we saw her during her Sunday afternoon visiting hours.
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We were sitting on the runway at O'Hare Airport for a long time, in an airplane that is. I thought we were on our way when we left the gate. I said to myself "Okay, in a couple of minutes we'll be in the air and on our way." And then they routed us across the backside of O'Hare, and I saw some lovely storage facilities. We finally ended up in a long, long line of aircraft. I've got a little problem with impatience, but I sure don't want the pilot to have that problem. See, he knows that you do not take off until you get clearance from the tower...no matter how long that means you have to wait.
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Now there are happy video tape recordings. You know, audio recordings of our kids when they were little before their voices changed, Karen and I giving our vows to each other at our wedding.
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Years ago I had some friends who lived near a heavy industrial area where the mills filled the air with a shall we say very distinctive aroma; well, actually, smell would be a better word for it. It was sort of a sulfur-like, rotten eggs type of odor. When you first went there, you would sniff and you'd go, "What is that?" And the people who lived there would say, "What's what?" See, they'd lived around the stink so long, it didn't even register any more. Well, you know, there are some smells you should never get used to.
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I once spoke for a large youth conference at one of the East Coast's most popular vacation spots: Ocean City, Maryland. The boardwalk, the hotels, the restaurants, the amusements seem to stretch for miles there. My friend told me he'd been coming to Ocean City since the 1970s, when most of what I was seeing wasn't there. Not that many folks used to come to Ocean City at all. I asked my friend what changed that. He said, "Oh, the bridge." The building of what is called the Bay Bridge opened up this beautiful spot to many people who literally had never experienced it before.
