Monday, June 16, 2008

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Years ago God laid the desperate need of young Native young people on our hearts, and ever since we have been involved with some very special Indian friends. And our summers on the reservation with our "On Eagles Wings" team have given us some moments of unforgettable joy - and some moments of pain and sorrow, too. One of the toughest of those moments was the summer when we heard about Johnny's sudden and tragic death. Johnny was a Lakota young man who we had worked with and had really come to love. In the providence of God, our team was headed for Johnny's reservation in South Dakota when we heard about his death. His parents actually delayed the funeral a couple of days so the "On Eagles Wings" team could be there. His Mom said that some of the best days of his life had been with our team.

Friday, June 6, 2008

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What a deal I got on a masterpiece! I was in Paris, touring what is probably the world's most famous art museum - the Louvre, as they say. All day long I had been seeing these works by great artists like Michelangelo, and Rembrandt, and you know all the biggies! And then I rounded this one corner and I was in this room jammed with people. It was lit with special lighting, it was guarded by security guards. And when I finally got into that room, there she was, the one painting you've heard of if you've only heard of one painting. That's right, the Mona Lisa! There she was smiling at me in a painting that took up an entire wall. At the bottom was this signature - Leonardo da Vinci, the artist. Now, you can't buy the Mona Lisa, she's literally priceless. But I bought the Mona Lisa for .25 that day! Oh, yes I did. It's in a drawer at home. I could show it to you. Well, actually, it's a postcard of the Mona Lisa. What's the difference? Well, the postcard is a copy. It's cheap! The one in the museum is an original, signed by the artist - she's priceless.

Monday, June 2, 2008

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Graduation day was a suspenseful day for our younger son. He wasn't totally sure what was going to be inside that diploma that the college President handed him. See, he had been informed several days before graduation that no one would know for sure that they were actually going to receive their diploma until they returned to their seat and looked inside the cover. The seniors didn't know their final grades, and if there were any unpaid fees they weren't going to know that either, until they opened their diploma cover and found a bill instead of a diploma.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

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In the fall I really got exercise in our yard. We had lots of trees in that yard, and lots of leaves. Our sons were gone, and I got to do just about all the raking. There was this one corner of the yard that was kinda nice to rake because it smelled nice. I'd be raking away and suddenly I'd smell the strong aroma of spearmint. Now, I don't chew gum and I don't wear spearmint scented deodorant usually. So, it had to be coming from what I was raking - and it was! That was my wife's herb garden, and when some of the spearmint plants got bruised by my rake the spearmint scent started to fill the air. My wife told me that that's the way it is with lots of herbs, like with lemon balm, for example. If you take a little piece of that plant and you crush it between your fingers, the air will suddenly be sweetened by this scent of lemon. Crushing a plant releases its scent.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

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One of our sons announced an interesting system of weight control some years ago. He said he would eat what he wanted for a while, and then suddenly declare a day or two where he reversed all engines and he ate nothing. He announced, "Today is a Slim Fast day." Just those diet milkshakes, three times a day. When you like to eat, drinking all three meals is not very satisfying. I was out running errands one of those times, and he went with me. We stopped at this bagel store, and I came back to the car with the aroma of fresh bagels coming out of this bag. Has to be one of the most tempting smells I know. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I did this on this day!" He said, "Oh, Dad, I can handle it. It's only one day."

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

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We knew some folks who owned a convenience store, and they were people who worked some very long hours to make a living, but we enjoyed teasing them about the prices in their store. We'd kid about $5.00 for a half-gallon of milk, $10.00 for a box of cookies, $2.00 candy bars. Now it wasn't quite that bad, but you usually do pay noticeably more for things in a convenience store. See, that is the profit factor in being open at times and on days when other stores are closed. Our storeowner friends were quick to defend those prices. They reminded us of a simple fact of life - convenience costs more. They're right.

Monday, February 25, 2008

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Larry Walters was just tired of sitting in his backyard, watching the same old folks in the same old neighborhood do the same old thing. He was ready for a change. So he decided to do something different. He went out and bought 45 six-foot helium balloons and attached them to his lawn chair, which was tethered to a car to keep it from taking off. Then, he donned a parachute, packed a bottle of soda pop, a CB radio, and a BB gun to shoot out balloons so he could come down. He thought he'd get a great view of his neighborhood. He got a little more than that. When his friends cut his lawn chair loose, he shot a thousand feet into the air in a minute. Before long, Larry and his flying lawn chair were 16,000 feet over the Los Angeles area. That's like three miles up, man! A TWA pilot radioed the tower and said, "We've spotted a man in a lawn chair at 16,000 feet." I can't even guess what the tower must have said back to the pilot. Meanwhile, Larry is yelling into his CB radio, "Mayday! Mayday!" He eventually managed to shoot out enough balloons to come down, where he landed in some wires and caused a power outage in Long Beach, California. He got down OK, he got some TV appearances, and an FAA fine. Not bad for an ordinary guy in a lawn chair.

Friday, January 18, 2008

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Kaitlin just lost her long battle for life. She was born with a defective valve in her heart, and that weakness in her heart pursued her through her all-too-short life. Although she had multiple surgeries and times of physical limitation, she had a positive spirit and, often, a pretty normal life. And then, after seventeen years, that heart just gave out. They said her only hope was a heart transplant before that, and she eventually got one, but it just didn't work out for her. In her last weeks, she sometimes battled just to breathe, but she never stopped fighting. And in Kaitlin's dying, her aunt - a relatively young woman herself - learned a powerful lesson about life.

Monday, January 7, 2008

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It was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and then a major motion picture - the story of one of the most famous race horses of all time, Seabiscuit. While many of us may not be excited about horse racing, the story, set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, illustrates some things pretty inspiring. Seabiscuit was the son of a champion but definitely not like his father. He had been forced to run with better horses so they would gain confidence by beating him. When he raced, he did what he was trained to do - lose. Because of the poor treatment Seabiscuit received, he became an angry, almost uncontrollable horse. Until he was given a chance by a trainer that many considered to be too old and a young man most thought was too big to be a jockey - a man blind in one eye and bitter from his parents' abandonment.

But Seabiscuit thrived in the care of people who believed in him and became one of the greatest horses of all time, along with his jockey. The trainer sees in the horse something that others have missed. He says when Seabiscuit's eventual owner is deciding whether to buy this apparent loser, "You don't throw a life away just because it's been banged up a little." And when the trainer wants to fire his jockey, the owner reminds him, "You don't throw a life away just because it's been banged up a little."

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

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A while back my wife took me to a county fair with her where I experienced another new world. It was a 4x4 pull, where people in all kinds of four-wheel drive vehicles were competing. The challenge: pulling this massive sledge as far as possible. The first event featured standard, unmodified pickup trucks. All the drivers were male, except one. The engines roared for about an hour as one truck after another revved, pulled, and finally slowed down until it could go no further. Do you want to guess who won the 4x4 pull? Uh-huh, the little blonde-haired girl in the blue pickup truck. And I think I know why she beat everybody. She studied every competitor ahead of her; especially that sandy spot in the arena where most of them seemed to bog down. And she skillfully maneuvered around that soft spot and went the farthest, at least partly because she avoided what had sunk others.