This is a day of remembrance for many, and rightly so.  I was a 5 year old Kindergartner when Kennedy was murdered, and hearing of Oswald's heartless deed is etched into my memory very clearly.  It is perhaps the earliest "clear" memory I have, full of detail and emotion.  The older… Read full post »

I stand here in wait of my friend; 

I wait to bid him a last farewell.

O friend, I long to relish

The beauty of this evening at your side.

Where do you tarry?  You leave me so long alone!

The words were put to music and first performed… Read full post »

 OK, for those of you who played yesterday's "Name That Book" game (here's the link), and chose NOT to use Google to find the answers, here they are:

1.  "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was… Read full post »

Last month I posted a little game called "Name That Book," in which I quoted the first sentence from ten different books, and the reader was to guess what book or story the quote was from.  Today, I am posting the sequel.  Some of the quotes will be pretty easy, some… Read full post »

“These people are friendly gave us nuts bread”

William Clark, autumn,1805

During the autumn of 1805, Lewis & Clark’s Corps of Discovery finally reached the lower Columbia River.  Their first impression of the Native Americans they met there was very positive, espec/… Read full post »

I got divorced this week.  No, not from my marriage.  I am still very much in love with my wife, and can't imagine that changing.

My divorce was with another great relationship, though, one that even predates that which I have with my wife.  I became a subscriber to the Chicago… Read full post »

Whether in word, image, or song, others have expressed it far better than I could ever do. 

Thank you, veterans, for your service and sacrifice.

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And There Was a Great Calm

I

There had been years of Passion--scorch… Read full post »

For more than 40 years, my late father taught New Testament studies and Hellenistic Greek at a theological seminary in Texas.  In the mid-1970’s, he spent a year-long sabbatical leave in Munich, Germany, accompanied by my mother and the teenaged version of yours truly.  My parents too… Read full post »

Halloween has arrived once again.  Tonight, the streets will be filled with vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and a host of scary apparitions barely waste high.  Sure, there will be a few fairy princesses intermingled, but the night really belongs to the monsters and dybbuks who just a few hour… Read full post »

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop.

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all!

Those are certainly some graphic words, huh?  Just what I want to sing my little ones at bed time, a fable… Read full post »

Yesterday I posted a little game called "Name That Book!", in which I listed the opening sentence of 10 different well-known books and stories.  Today I provide the answers.

I was impressed with how well many of you did.  If I did not have the luxury of putting the game together… Read full post »

OK, here’s the drill.  Below are opening sentences garnered from ten different, well-known stories, novels, histories, and narratives.  Can you guess where they are from?  Most are very well known, some more than others, however.  I’m not going to include the most obvi… Read full post »

A small article appearing in today's papers restores in me a small modicum of hope for the future of humanity.  From today's news wires:

A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin's grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people t… Read full post »

When I was ten years old, I began playing the cornet.  For the first few years, it was a fairly insignificant part of my life.  I’d practice a little bit, and I was able to play the songs the band director asked us to play.  Still, playing a musical instrument was… Read full post »

A couple of years ago there was an excellent movie called "Children of Men", which envisions a world where the human race has inexplicably become infertile.  The lack of offspring has left society without purpose.  What is the point of all of our labors if there is no one to whom… Read full post »

I have a big book that lists the news events for each day of the year.  I was browsing through it this afternoon and came across this interesting news story from October 2, 1946:

At a medical symposium at the University of Buffalo, scientists discussed the possibility that cigarette smoking may… Read full post »

It was a cool morning on September 28, 1874, as the sun cast its first shadows over the canyon floor.  The past few days had seen the first hint of autumn’s refreshing relief from the harsh summer heat of the Southern Plains.  The heart-shaped leaves of the cottonw/… Read full post »

When my son was six or seven years old, he was given his first "Magic Tree House" book.  For those who do not have grade school aged children, the "Magic Tree House" is a series of time travel books written by Mary Pope Osborne.  There are about 25 books in the series, maybe… Read full post »

Several years ago, when my son was in first grade, his teacher asked each child to write down who their three favorite heroes were.  My son wrote the following:

Dad

Jesis

Seesr Kokr of Gol

Deciphering his first grade script, the first two names were pretty easy, and I was… Read full post »

When Christopher Columbus sailed out of the harbor of Sanlucar, Spain, to make his way to “The Indies” of Asia, he did not immediately sail into the unknown.  Like many explorers of the 15^th century, his first destination was the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa.  Co… Read full post »

Arrest warrants for more than 120 former soldiers and agents of Chile's National Intelligence Directorate were issued Tuesday for alleged human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, CNN Chile reported.

Quoted from www.cnn.com, Sept. 2, 2009

The news out of Chile is… Read full post »

My mother was born in 1925, in Logan County, West Virginia.  Her father was a teacher, and spent the first half of his professional life working in little schools, often with just a single classroom, that served the small coal mining communities along the border of West Virginia and Kentu… Read full post »

August 26 is the anniversary of one of the great world-altering events in history.  The event itself carried immediate repercussions for those involved, but more importantly it was the spark that ignited a 400 year chain of events that ended with the creation of the modern world.  The event… Read full post »

It was the summer of 1969.  I was 11 years old.  Apollo 11 was ready to blast off to the moon.  The Vietnam War raged, with close to 200 young American men perishing there each week.  There was soon to be a huge rock and roll party on a farm in… Read full post »

In the spring of 1870, seventeen year old Hermann Joseph Berghoff left Dortmund, in Prussian Westfalia, to begin a new life in America.  He tried his luck at various odd jobs, including stints as a farmhand on a sugar plantation, a pastry chef on a small coastal freighter (despite the fact… Read full post »