Tuesday, October 16, 2001

This past summer I introduced a group of young people to someone they started calling "Evil Bert." You see, Bert was actually a hand puppet I asked one of our more creative leaders to make for me. He was limited to the few materials we had at this training camp, but somehow he managed to create a primitive puppet - who just happened to have very black eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth - and a not-too-friendly expression. Some said he looked a little like "Bert" of "Bert and Ernie" fame on "Sesame Street" - so he was "Evil Bert". And he certainly lived up to his name. He held this styrofoam bat in his hand, and as I walked around the room with Evil Bert on my hand, he kept hitting people with it. But was Evil Bert really the problem?

Wednesday, October 3, 2001

President Ronald Reagan found it out the hard way. He was preparing to do his regular Saturday morning radio address (which by the way, is live radio) - and he offhandedly made some joking comment about bombing the Russians. Unfortunately, that comment went out over the airwaves. Oops! See, he didn't know the microphones were on. Take it from me. I spend a lot of time in a radio studio. That's something very important when you're doing live radio - knowing when the microphone is on - or you can actually end up saying something that you really didn't mean for other people to hear.

Thursday, September 6, 2001

Maybe it's because my father-in-law was a corrections officer for a while, and I've heard his stories about the wasted lives behind prison bars. But whatever the reason I've always admired the men who minister as prison Chaplains. It's tough ministry but it's ministry where it's desperately needed. I've got a new friend, Bill, and he works as a prison Chaplain and he recently told me about an incident that touched me when he told me and it continues to touch me. Bill had been visiting this cell block and he went out in the exercise yard for some fresh air, he said. There was this clean cut, young inmate who walked up to him and said, "Hey mister! Are you broke?" Well, Bill kinda' fished around in his pocket and didn't find any money in there and the inmate said, "It doesn't matter, your money is no good in here anyway. Are you broke?" Only this time the inmate had tears in his eyes. And then here's what he said, "Mister, don't try to minister to people in here if you ain't broke, cause we all are." Now, that's not just inside prison walls.

Caterpillars are ugly. Now I don't mean to be critical, but let's face it, those hairy crawlers are not the beauty queens of the animal kingdom. I've never heard of anyone with a caterpillar collection, have you? Oh, I suppose someone could try a makeover on a caterpillar, you know, just shave off some of that hair, give him a little color. But who could ever imagine that one of the uglier critters around could actually become one of the most beautiful animals in the world - a butterfly! You don't see many pictures of caterpillars on things, but you see pictures of butterflies everywhere! A critter covered with ugly black hair becomes a butterfly splashed with amazing colors. An animal that lives off the leaves on the ground becomes the connoisseur of flower nectar...and a creature that once crawled everywhere becomes one that can fly everywhere. We're not talking makeover here. We're talking miracle!

Sounds crazy at first. People trying to cause an avalanche. Actually, there are people who do that for a living. One of the many things you can learn watching the Discovery Channel! Obviously, people who get caught in the path of an avalanche of tons of snow have little chance for survival. Skiers, snowmobilers, hikers have all been the tragic victims of what is called the white death. Now enter the specialists they call the avalanche hunters. They drive into areas where potential avalanche conditions exist and, using this slender, hand-held cannon, they fire shots into dangerous snow masses. Well, these folks are not crazy. They actually trigger a small avalanche - which removes some of the buildup that can later cause a major avalanche.

I've got this one black blazer that I really like to wear. Unfortunately, it has this one little problem. It's wool. Which means it's sort of magnetic - especially for lint and anything else that might jump up and attach itself to that jacket. I'm having to brush that blazer off all the time. It just picks up all this stuff!

I've traveled outside the United States many times, but I've never had to wash my feet to get back into the country. Except for the last time. It wasn't exactly my feet that had to be washed, but the shoes on my feet-and all the shoes I had worn on my trip to the United Kingdom...because of concern over an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease. So many British cattle and sheep had been destroyed because of that highly contagious disease - and while people can't catch it, they can carry it. So, as an important precaution, all of us travelers returning from that part of the world got to go through a separate line - where all our shoes were washed in a strong disinfectant. And none of us really minded. If we were contaminated, we sure didn't want to drag any disease back home with us.

It was one the causes Princess Diana was most passionate about. A little-known organization that addresses this issue won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's not an issue we think much about, but it's one that costs countless lives every year - land mines. They are the deadly leftovers of old battles, and many innocent people are injured or killed by them. A land mine is, of course, not where you can see it coming. It's buried. You're just walking along and suddenly the ground beneath you explodes, maiming or destroying an innocent person.

It was the end of the day at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics - only a few thousand spectators were in the stadium as the last of the marathon runners were carried off in exhaustion to the first-aid stations. More than an hour earlier and Ethiopian runner had been the first to cross the finish line in this grueling 26-mile event. As the remaining spectators prepared to leave, they were stopped by the sound of sirens going off and policemen blowing whistles. There, entering the stadium came a lone figure wearing the colors of Tanzania - his name was John Akhwari. He was the last man to finish the marathon.

Last fall, we were having a fun family outing at a nearby theme park – until we found out that our grandson was in the infirmary with his parents and with the park’s emergency medical staff. The problem was that he had somehow gotten a small metal object in his eye – which resisted all efforts to remove it. Well, without hesitation, we quickly brought our park outing to an end and headed for the hospital – where, thankfully, a specialist was able to remove that object from his eye. But we had to take it seriously – he had something potentially damaging in his eye – and that could affect how he sees things from now on.