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July 21, 2022

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Our then-18-month-old grandson rapidly became a bulldozer on two legs. He didn't actually walk anywhere; he ran everywhere. And no comments about being like his grandfather here, OK? Of course, he didn't always get around like that. First, he only went where one of us carried him. Then the crawling started. He didn't do that for long. He graduated to walking real fast. And, like every baby who ever learned to walk, he began by taking a step or two and then he fell down. I guess he could have said to himself after a couple of falls, "Oh well, I guess I wasn't cut out to walk. It's just too hard. I keep falling down. I think I'll just lie here from now on." Oh, great! Now he's 18 years old, his mother has to vacuum around him. His friends come over and he says, "Hey, you want to roll into my room with me?" No, it didn't work that way. After he went "step-boom," he got back up and went "step-step-boom." And then "step-step-step-step-boom." Now you can't stop him!

July 20, 2022

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So, when we're discussing roller coasters, and some of us were talking about which ones are the best-which means, the wildest ride, of course. Others of us were talking about avoiding roller coasters. One friend said that she just pleads what she calls "an inner ear condition." Now for me, most roller coasters are a non-issue because I stand next to that sign, you know, that shows how tall you have to be to ride it. So far I've never been tall enough. (No, that's not true. I wish I had that excuse.) Actually, some that I have ridden had these moments when I was pretty sure I had made a very big mistake getting on it in the first place. There are some really high ups and some really scary downs.

July 19, 2022

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Some people can skip a meal and barely notice. I am not some people. For example, it's been four or five hours since breakfast, my body very convincingly says to me, "Feed me now!" When I don't eat regularly, I feel it. I take action. The doctor says there's nothing wrong with me, but my metabolism just seems to demand some regular maintenance. It's not like I'm alone in this. I mean, most of us know when it's time to eat again, right? And we usually stop what we're involved in to do something about it. Hunger isn't exactly passive. You know, it goes after something to satisfy it!

July 18, 2022

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On a family vacation, we had some time to do some extra biking. There was a lake nearby. It was fun to go around the lake...well, sort of fun. See, there were these long, downhill stretches, "Oh man, just flying down that hill! It was fantastic! Then guess what came right after that. Yeah, the uphill climb, and that was grueling, sometimes painful. And guess which lasted longer...the downhill thrill or the pain of going uphill?

July 15, 2022

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One of my more anxious moments related to air travel, and it actually had nothing to do with an airplane. It had to do with my two sons, who at the time were pretty young. We were going through the security checkpoint on the way to our gate, and all of a sudden they started joking about the one word you don't mention at airport security.

July 14, 2022

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You know, you can learn something from a cab driver, even if his vocabulary is R-rated-or maybe even X-rated in this case. I was on a trip to an airport in a cab a while back. And well, without even knowing it, I must have hit some trigger in this cab driver. Oh, man! All of a sudden I couldn't believe what started to come out of his mouth. He started to pour out all kinds of racial hatred, and he said, "I don't really care about anything in the world or anybody but myself, and let those starving people starve, and let those poor people be poor." Wow!

July 13, 2022

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Hey. it's a huge job to try to keep the roadsides of interstates and major highways from looking like garbage dumps. That's why someone came up with this great idea: have clubs, and churches, and schools, and civic organizations volunteer to maintain just one mile of the road near them. You've probably seen the signs: "This mile maintained by the Forest Grove Garden Club, or a Boy Scout troop, or the Busy Hands Presby-Baptist Church, or whatever. Maybe it's a family. Separately, none of those groups could ever maintain the entire roadside in their county, but they could do a mile. And if each group makes sure their mile is covered, the whole area will end up looking a whole lot better.

July 12, 2022

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She was just such a sweet little old lady - the housemother who inspected our dorm rooms every week at college. I didn't want her to get hurt. You know? I mean, I was afraid she would, if she opened my closet door. Yeah, you know, you're busy in college with all kinds of important things - who's got time to clean your room? Right? Some days, it was almost impossible to tell that I had furniture in there. Everything was covered with what looked like the fallout from some bomb blast, but not on inspection day. Nope, I managed to get all that junk somehow stuffed into my closet. Sometimes it took three guys to close the door, but eventually what I needed to hide was safely inside that closet. Safe, that is, unless you opened the door.

July 11, 2022

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I had just finished presenting one of our outreach parenting seminars and I had talked near the end about how we tend to copy the ways that our parents raised us. Well, this man came and told me that he had noticed something a little different the first time his wife cooked a roast for him. I wondered where this was going. Well, he said she cut off the ends of the roast! He said, "Well, that's strange," but he let it go. And then, after a few times, he said, "Honey, why do you do that?" And she said, "Well, my mother did it." He said, "Why did she do it?" She said, "I'm going to ask her." So she asked her mother and her mother said, (You guessed it!) "Well, my mother did it." She said, "Well, do you know why my grandmother did it?" The mother said, "Well, actually, while she was still alive I asked her one time." She said, "Yeah, I'll tell you why I cut off the ends of the beef. My pan was too short!" So, here are three generations doing what great-grandmother did long after the reason for doing it was history!

July 8, 2022

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Frankly, I just don't know how mothers of young children do it all. I've realized it again and again. While I was watching our daughter and our daughters-in-law and all they have to juggle taking care of our grandchildren. I mean, one day our daughter was trying to do one of those juggling acts trying to get her 18-month-old son ready to leave on a winter day. She also had a lot to load in the car. So, while she was shuttling back and forth, she accidentally let the door to the house close behind her and it locked. Her son was inside. Her keys were in the house - safe. Every door and window turned out to be locked, of course. Her son was oblivious to the problem. There were no neighbors close by.

July 7, 2022

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Yes, I'm one of those morning people. You know, the kind the Bible is talking about when it says, "If a man loudly blesses his neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse" (Proverbs 27:14). There's so much for the morning people! Actually, I love that verse. I mean, even if you can't stand us morning people, you have to admit there are some advantages to those early hours of the day, getting started on things before there are interruptions, beating the world to the punch, and best of all, the sunrises. Yeah, I love them! I've got a nice view out the east window of my study, and I never tire of watching that sun start to climb above the trees. Sure, once in a while I can't see the sun rising. Maybe I'm feeling sick or well, or I might be feeling excited or "blah," up or down. But take it from a long-time early morning eyewitness, that sun always rises.

July 6, 2022

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Slang words are sometimes difficult to understand. Not so much the words themselves, but their meaning. I mean, there are cool slang words out there. For instance, when I just used the word cool, I wasn't talking about the temperature. If a young person today looked at me and maybe said "Sus!" Now, what is that all about? Well, that means you're suspicious. That's what it means.

July 5, 2022

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Over the years when the Hutchcraft family moved into a motel room for a night we had the same experience: we walk in, the room is all neat and tidy. The five Hutchcrafts are there and all the work that the room fairy did to make the room neat is destroyed in a matter of minutes. See, each person has unpacked their clothes which some put in drawers, most just start littering the beds and the chairs. And as people start using the sink, that becomes chaotic too! We've got brushes and drinking cups and various toiletries, hopelessly intermingled. Now, look, I'm a firstborn. I value order, you know, and this drives me nuts. So I developed a simple system, well at least to make it clear which was my stuff. I announced that my things would always be on the right; the cup on the right was my cup, the toothbrush on the right was my toothbrush, the towel on the right was my towel. And how do you expect your family to always remember that you might ask. Well, I gave them a simple motto to remember, one that I thought would serve them well for years to come, I just simply said, "Remember guys, Dad is always right!"

July 4, 2022

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I have two adult friends who own Princeton University sweatshirts. Al has one because he put in four very challenging years at the university and he graduated from there. And the other day I met a friend, Dave, at the grocery store, and he had his Princeton University sweatshirt on. I said, "I didn't know you went to Princeton?" Well, you know me; I get most of my exercise jumping to conclusions. No, he informed me that he had bought that shirt at a discount store for $12. He said, "Oh, I didn't go to Princeton, I just wear the shirt!"

July 1, 2022

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They thought it would take about three to five days. Yeah, when there was the invasion of Ukraine. That was the prediction of even our military people that because of the mis-match of the size of the Russian army and the Ukrainian forces it would be over very quickly. Well, as we know now, it has been an amazing part of modern history. And suddenly the world knew about a comedian who had become the President of Ukraine. And Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become a hero around the world. Someone called him "Churchill in a tee shirt." And we've all seen and heard him as he's really decided that he would not retreat, he would not disappear, and when the American government said, "We will give you a ride out," because there were three assisination squads stalking him. He said, "I don't need a ride." Remember? "I need ammunition." And he was there to stay! Guess what? Because one man wouldn't retreat, it inspired a nation to fight, and inspired the world to come and help them.

June 29, 2022

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There he was in the homes of some ten million Americans every night. Yeah, it was the TV news anchorman for a major network. The voice that millions trust, or did trust. The most experienced, most watched anchorman in the country, at that time, facing the worst possible question, "Can we believe him?"

June 28, 2022

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I was a young teenager when I faced my first issue with gun control. My dad took me out hunting pheasants. I was a rookie with that 12-gauge shotgun. The first time a pheasant roared out of those cornstalks, it scared me so much, I couldn't fire a shot. I had no gun control.

June 27, 2022

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The scene: the maternity ward in a South Carolina hospital. In one 24-hour stretch, they had five sets of twins born! Did you ever see nurses on roller skates? Did you ever see women in a maternity ward taking numbers? One obstetrician actually met himself coming out of the delivery room! I mean, this is pandemonium! Five moms, ten deliveries, and five totally bewildered fathers! But sometimes the arrival of just one set of twins can make for an amazing night in the maternity ward. Like the birth of Alicia and Jasmin in Queensland, Australia. Yeah, it was in a hospital there. Mom is from a Jamaican-English background, and Dad is German. As for the twins: one is black, the other one is white. I was looking at a picture of them. They're calling it a million-to-one medical miracle.

June 24, 2022

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It was as late as mid-August that year and people in 24 states were watching the water rise. For so many months flash flood warnings or watches, and the rain just kept falling. We were in some of those monsoons. In a nearby community, the water rose a foot every ten minutes. I'd never heard of anything like that. I mean, there was barely time to get out.

June 23, 2022

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I hate to make extra trips back and forth from the car. So I have a tendency to load up with a little more than I should probably carry. (Is this a guy thing? I don't know.) At the grocery store, I would rather not be hassled with taking a cart out into the parking lot. So, if at all possible, I'll just load up all those grocery bags in my arms and start walking. It's then that I especially appreciate a particular convenience that stores have - those doors that open automatically, without you even having to touch them. I mean, you do have to do something...you have to walk toward those doors. Yeah, see, that's when they open.

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