A boy named Jim shot me in the leg with a BB gun when I was ten. I dared him to do it – not to shoot me – but to try and shoot my bike tires as I rode by him really fast. We had nothing better to do on a fine, long summer […]
Ah, the Emerald Coast of Florida. How I love thee! I’m sorry. I tend to wax poetic when I’m at the beach. I can’t help it. It affects me mightily from beginning to end of each trip and then some. With the first whiff of heavy salt air, my blood pressure and heart rate reduce […]
It was a regular Sunday morning and the church did what it usually did…gather for corporate worship at 11 o’clock. Traditionally at the high and holy hour, the organist would chime eleven times while the choir entered the loft just before they were to sing the “call to worship”. For years the timing had worked […]
It was loud. It was close. It was frightening. And last summer while the grandchildren (and their parents) were here, we all heard it at the same time. It was obviously organic – from some kind of living being but it sounded like nothing we had ever heard before. The sound was a cross between […]
April 18, 1972 – 41 years ago today I faced life’s first curve ball. It was a Tuesday evening and I was in my freshman college dorm room getting ready to go to a Bible study. My roommate and hometown friend, Patti, got a phone call. She said very little, hung up the phone, and […]
It’s actually an acronym. R Adio Detection And Ranging RADAR systems use radio waves to determine the presence and location of certain objects. They are used today mostly to track aircraft, ships, and even weather. However, RADAR doesn’t have a long history. The technology was just coming into practical use by the military late into […]
Wednesday was tough. After almost a year of having the grandkids and their parents living with us, the book closed on that chapter of our lives when we put them all on a plane where they will spend the next three months traveling and working in Europe. After that, they plan to move back to […]
At the end of almost every school year my sons would bring home a sack full of miscellaneous art masterpieces, essays and worksheets that they had created throughout the year. I don’t know why the teachers sent these treasures home on the last day instead of during the year, but most of the time they […]
The first TV Dennis and I ever bought in early marriage was really state-of-the-art at the time. It was color, had an on-and-off button instead of a knob, and it weighed a ton. No remote control, of course. We changed the channels by getting up, walking to the set and turning the dial to the […]
They’re loud and demanding and messy. I AM NOT talking about my grandchildren. I’m talking about seagulls. Last week we were on the Gulf Coast of Florida taking a few days of R & R before we were to lead a choir retreat nearby. We spent a couple of days just sitting on the beach […]