Last week was when a big political rally for Trump went awry. Or was that Trump that went awry? Sedition? Coup? Who did this? Blame who you want, it looks like it is time to pay the bill. I do not know how much damage was done to our Capitol building but it was significant. But even more so was the damage to our reputation as a stable democracy. You can forget that “light on a hill” stuff for now. Maybe we can relight that beam again. Sometime or other. But do not hold your breath.
Read moreIt was on April 12, 1944 when the radio announcer alerted us to an upcoming and important news bulletin we paused and listened. Yes, Franklin Roosevelt had just died and the new man taking his place was a guy named Harry Truman. Who? We worshiped FDR and this Truman, a nondescript Senator from Missouri, did not look like a president.
Read moreChristmas is the greatest time of the year. In 1938 my parents moved us (Mom, Dad, Gerald, and me) from Allen to a town called Centrahoma. There I met Letha Mae. It was there I started paying attention to Christmas. But like some other materialistic folk my age over there, I was really concerned with the season for Christmas gifts. Santa Claus became a big mysterious person of interest.
Read moreChristmas is the greatest time of the year. In 1938 my parents moved us (Mom, Dad, Gerald, and me) from Allen to a town called Centrahoma. There I met Letha Mae. It was there I started paying attention to Christmas. But like some other materialistic folk my age over there, I was really concerned with the season for Christmas gifts. Santa Claus became a big mysterious person of interest.
Read moreBurl Ives can sing his little heart out about having a merry-little Christmas this year but how merry can it be with Covid-19 dictating the way we live and what we do. Never been a Christmas like this one. After struggling through an awfully hard year, many Americans are just now discovering that this Pandemic is affecting them in another personal way. Tens of thousands of survivors have severely damaged lungs and will never recover to their old healthy ways. Sadder still are the thousands who had loved ones die. In many cases they died and were buried without funerals. Such is our state of fear.
Read moreThanksgiving is a kickoff date for the holiday season. So much to be thankful for. God and country and pure clean cold water as near as our tap. Back in 1964 I moved to Allen. I had checked the town out fairly good, I thought. I even asked about the town’s water. “Lots of it, and it is cheap,” came the Chamber of Commerce reply. However, right after we moved from Ada customers down at the Pharmacy started bringing us empty 1-gallon jugs. “To haul water from the springs,” they told us. “You’ll need these jugs.”
Read moreI was listening to a preacher recently and he spoke on what we perceive as news and what someone else sees as less important. He used as an example, a news date from September 5, 1997. Princess Diana Spencer had been killed in a car wreck in Paris, France a few days before. And now it was her funeral day and CNN was doing a real bang up job covering every little aspect of it. They showed the London skyline, the sound of famous bells tolling and snippets of her eulogies by all sorts of famous people. They showed little girls crying and in tears and explained to the viewing audience on that September day how griefstricken the whole world was over this tragic event.
Read moreAnd so there is. In the Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes, a famous King and familiar Bible character, King Solomon, wrote a book on philosophy. You can read a lot of different ideas into this book in the Old Testament. But the most familiar thing is that word time. He basically reminds us early in this book that there is a time for all things. Dying and living and everything in between. Last week I wrote a little story about mine and Gerald’s quest as boys to look at where the Butterfield Stage’s Station on Wolf Mountain down in Leflore County, Oklahoma was located. Marshall’s Station was the first stage stop after the stage crossed into Oklahoma—an outlaw infested area.
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