Tuesday, January 15, 2019

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My father-in-law gave my wife and her sister Grandma and Granddad's old farm house in the mountains, and so we had to do some restoring on that little special spot. And since we were able to be there only occasionally, my wife decided to plant accordingly. She said, "I'm planting perennials." Now I'm kind of horticulturally challenged, so my wife had to explain a little further. I'm beginning to understand better now that you can actually plant annuals or perennials. Annuals will bloom for a little while - let's say, like geraniums (How am I doing?) and then they'll be gone. Unless you replant geraniums the next year, which is extra work and hard to do when you're not there. Nope. We need perennials. So my wife planted things like crepe myrtle, and she planted azaleas, she planted honeysuckle. (Hey, I'm getting good at this.) Now as you might guess from their name, those perennials are not going to die on you. Perennials will always be there for you! We all need perennials!

Friday, January 11, 2019

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It was 3:00 A.M. in the multi-family house in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a fire started as fifteen residents slept. A Deputy Fire Chief was first on the scene. He arrived alone in his car and discovered a building ablaze with its residents unaware of that deadly danger. The chief realized he didn't have time to put on his usual protective gear. Minutes were precious at a time like this, so he rushed into that burning building and began pounding on doors, and screaming for people to get up and get out. One older man was unable to get out by himself, so this valiant rescuer carried him down the stairs, out to the street and then went in for more. All fifteen people got out alive. The man who saved their lives did not. 

Monday, January 7, 2019

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For a while, it seemed like it was just a head cold. But suddenly my wife's chest started to hurt, and a serious almost uncontrollable cough developed, and minor activity even made it hard to breathe. I had suggested she see a doctor earlier in the week, but she was about as good at taking those suggestions as I am. But eventually she got so miserable, she called for an appointment. "You've got pneumonia, girl!" That's what the doctor said after that chest x-ray. Sure enough, there was this dark stuff, camping out in her lung, causing all this trouble. 

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

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Every once in a while as you're cruising down the highway, you'll see one of those trucks—the ones that are carrying a truckload of smashed cars. We're talking, you know like, steel pancakes. Sometimes you'll drive by the scrap yard where these junkers end up, and there you'll see row after row with stacks of these flattened old vehicles. "Junk," you say. Today it is, but there was a day when that hunk of steel was someone's dream come true. It was the new wheels they'd hoped for and saved for; a prize they wouldn't let anyone touch…now flattened. 

Friday, December 28, 2018

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When our daughter and son-in-law became parents the first time, they also became an aunt and uncle. Their niece was a little younger than their first son, but you can imagine that both sets of parents enjoyed swapping stories about their first child. For example, he would set out a toy or a puzzle on the floor. He'd select one of us adults as his designated playmate. It sounds like this - now, he called me "Dada" because he couldn't say "Granddad" - he would go, "Dada pay." That's "play" for those requiring translation. And he patted the floor exactly where he wanted me to sit and "pay." Apparently, their niece was issuing similar invitations to the adults in her world, like her Daddy, for example. He was moving around the living room doing whatever, and she would look up at him with big eyes and asks a simple question, "Papa down?" She really wanted her father to come to her level. And he did.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

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One Christmas, a friend gave us one of the most unique ornaments I'd ever seen. As soon as you see it, you think how beautifully and exquisitely this glass decoration is painted. But what's amazing is that none of that artwork is on the outside of the ornament. It's been painted entirely on the inside! For centuries, I guess the Chinese have perfected this "inside painting." Through a small opening in that ornament, the artist repeatedly inserts a miniature brush to paint the artwork. Of course, the process is painstaking and time consuming. It takes two days just to paint one ornament, but the result is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind miniature masterpiece.

Monday, December 24, 2018

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It was World War I. It was Christmas Eve. The German and British soldiers were dug in just hundreds of yards apart. But it turned out to be much more than just another tense and violent night on the battlefield. There had been so many of those. It actually began when one German soldier began singing "Silent Night" from his trench. Pretty soon he was joined in German by many more of his fellow soldiers. Amazingly, the voices of hundreds of British soldiers began to join in the carol from their trenches, sung in two languages - same carol. Now that has to have been a moment those soldiers never forgot. Just think, opposing armies singing "Sleep in heavenly peace" in the middle of a battlefield.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

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"Avalanche." "Tsunami." "A cultural watershed moment." "A day of reckoning." Those are just some of the words the news used to describe the increasingly relentless accusations of sexual misconduct by powerful men. That quake has been shaking cultural epicenters of this country from Hollywood to corporate boardrooms to state capitals to the halls of Washington D.C.. And most observers believe this is only the tip of an iceberg.

The blizzard of revelations is new. Men using power to exploit someone sexually; sadly, that's not new. From athletes to politicians, from bosses to clergy sometimes. Tiger Woods outed an abuser's rationale when he went public with his extramarital relationships. He simply said, "Normal rules didn't apply...I felt like I was entitled."

Monday, December 17, 2018

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When you stand at the edge of the overlook, gazing across at the mighty Niagara Falls, listening to its liquid thunder, you can't help but be impressed with its majestic beauty and its tremendous power. But that's as close as I want to get. A person who somehow fell into those churning waters would have little chance of survival; maybe no chance. That didn't seem to bother the famous tightrope walker known as the Great Blondin. No, back in 1859, he made history. He crossed the gorge of the Niagara River on a tightrope. At one point, he executed a back somersault. His next tightrope trip across the Falls, Blondin crossed on a bicycle, he walked across blindfolded, then he pushed a wheelbarrow, and he cooked an omelet in the center. He made the trip with his hands and feet manacled at one point. Then came his ultimate performance. He announced he would carry a man across the Falls on his back. Most of the folks believed he could do it. No one wanted to be the one who went on his back, though, except his manager who climbed on the back of the Great Blondin, and to the amazement of all who watched, he arrived safely on the other side.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

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Narnia was a mythical land, created by C. S. Lewis, where the animals talk and where four children experience a series of incredible adventures. The seven-part series, The Chronicles of Narnia, have long fascinated children and adults alike. (I'm one of them.) And then came Disney's movie version of the first Narnia story, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," and it was a blockbuster. In the story, the wardrobe is the closet through which the children discover Narnia. The witch is the evil ruler of the land. She's creating an endless winter where it says it was "always winter but never Christmas." And the lion is Aslan, the great son of the Emperor from across the sea. He is, in C. S. Lewis' imagery, the Christ-figure of Narnia. As the children begin to experience the icy and dangerous world that Narnia has become under that evil ruler, one of the animals announces that there is hope on the horizon. Hope turns out to be five words: "Aslan is on the move." Indeed, he was, and Narnia would soon be set free.