Craig Common Sense

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

The work that our company had on our highway building project had three basic parts – preparing the gravel product (this involved a rock crusher in a nearby gravel pit), a fleet of about forty trucks hauling the material from the gravel pit to the jobsite, and then there was my group, placing and compacting the material on the roadway. There was a supervisor for each function. Ours was the man we knew as Fats – legal name Marlin Marinell, The truck crew was supervised by a fellow named Joseph Rieger, known to all as “Little Joe.” Joseph Rieger acquired his nickname in much the same way as Marlin Marinell. Little Joe was short, as I recall maybe five foot two or three. Fats was ………fat, like maybe around three hundred pounds. Little Joe and Fats sometimes “disagreed” as to how the project would proceed. Well actually, they hated each other. From time to time that disrespect manifested itself in fisticuffs after hours. I was shocked one morning on the job to see both men bearing some of ill effects of the prior night’s “disagreement” presumably after many libations. Both were bruised and battered about their faces. Lesson learned, there is a better way to be involved in construction, but apparently, it’s not in the roles filled by Fats and Little Joe.

One morning in August while rolling along on my compactor, Fats rolled up beside me and signaled for me to stop. The discussion:

Fats:     “Red, they tell me that you know how to run a slide rule.”

Red:      “Yes sir, I do.”

Fats:     “Turn off the engine and get in the pick-up with me.”

And so began my role in the third crew on our project, the gravel producing crew. My job there was to run some rudimentary laboratory tests on the gravel we were producing to predict whether the product would meet DOT specifications. I had my own little “laboratory” (actually a semi-trailer) complete with laboratory scales, burners and other laboratory equipment to do the tests. I ran literally hundreds of these tests. Based on what I found, I would go outside to the people who ran the crusher and the other equipment and give them instructions for what to add to the inputs so that we could make specifications. It amazed me that these experienced operators would actually care about what some snot-nosed kid with a slide rule would tell them. But they DID!! Lesson learned, when it comes down to it, science actually IS important and wise people heed what science says.

I have noted the long hours that we worked. Early one Thursday morning on my way to the gravel pit, about 6:15 AM, I approached the rural road intersection nearest to the pit and noted at the very last moment a vehicle approaching from my left at a high rate of speed. That is all I remember until briefly waking while laying on the side of the road. I had a sense that my mouth was full of gravel that I just couldn’t get out. Others who were arriving for work encountered the scene and called emergency services. In those days that meant an ambulance from Worthington which probably took at least thirty minutes to arrive. One of my coworkers viewing the scene recognized that it was me and unfortunately knew my parents and where they lived. He drove the four or five miles to their farm and told them that I had been in an accident and that it didn’t look good.  Of course, my parents dropped what they were doing and rushed to the scene. They arrived just as the ambulance crew was loading me into the ambulance. I regained just enough consciousness to see my Mother and the stricken look on her face. I will never forget the sheer terror and fear embodied in that look. I slipped into unconsciousness and didn’t awake again until I found myself in an emergency room in the hospital. 

Mom – awash in tears and anguish – “Ohh, Craig!”

Red, I mean Craig – awake enough to be a smartass – “Don’t worry Mom. I changed underwear this morning.”

(In my semi-lucid condition, I was not aware that my clothing had been cut off!) Lesson learned – For all of the arguing and resentment that sometimes seemed to define our relationship and in spite of the fact that I had five siblings, my parents’ love for me was strong and pure. I sustained a concussion and a small cut on my face but there were no lasting ill effects other than a hell of a headache for a couple of days. Fats stopped by to see me in the hospital to make sure I was OK and to make sure that I would be able to come back to work. He hesitated and then with a shaking voice told me that the prior year his son Monty had been in a car accident on our job and had nearly died. He told me through tears that I was in the very room in which Monty had made his very long and difficult recovery.  He had tried to come to the hospital earlier but just could not bring himself to come into the building. He told me that he could not bear losing someone from his crew. I began to see Fats in a whole different light. Lesson learned – we all have many sides – don’t judge people and think that you know exactly how they are.

 I got out of the hospital the next day and Pop and I started to look for another car. My beloved 1964 Ford Galaxie was trashed. Lesson learned – one can sometimes be cavalier dealing with our own life, but our life is not totally our own, our loved ones are an integral part of our lives and what happens to us. They are often the ones who have to pick up the pieces. When you get past the emergency part of an auto accident, there are a lot of administrative things that need to be accomplished. Pop dutifully notified our insurance company hoping to recoup the value of the demolished Ford and also to offset the cost of my ambulance ride and brief hospital stay which as I recall was the outrageous sum of $175. One of the tasks that our insurance agent (good old Sumner Malmquist) needed to complete was to get an accident report from the county sheriff’s office. It turned out that the other driver was a fellow that I will call Bruno Sadistly (this was not his real name). And it also turned out that Bruno had no insurance. My Pop was dismayed at this news because he felt he would not recover any of the losses. But more than that, Bruno fairly or unfairly, was reputed to be a very mean guy with an attitude. Rumor had it that from time to time he would deal in narcotics and that he had handguns. Both of these behaviors were far off the accepted norms in our part of the world. Pop fully expected that there would be trouble. Summy, as Pop used to call Mr. Malmquist, to the rescue. Pop’s policy had an uninsured motorist clause, and he was promptly reimbursed for his losses by our insurer. Unfortunately for Bruno, as a result of the accident and perhaps prior problems, his driver’s license was revoked.

We learned about this situation when we were contacted by a local barrister who was representing our insurer in trying to recover the payments that they made to Pop. They had filed a lawsuit against Bruno in district court. Bruno had in turn filed a claim against the insurance company and ME. I am not going to lie – at eighteen being caught up in a court case was a bit intimidating. Fortunately, our insurance company provided for the cost of the lawyer representing me. The day for our trial came and I was the reluctant star witness. Bruno sat with his attorney and glared at me the entire time I was on the witness stand, again in honesty kind of spooking me out. The jury deliberated very briefly and came back with a judgement in favor of the insurance company and dismissing all claims against me. Lesson learned – Our system of fairness and justice works most of the time. We breathed a sigh of relief. That level of comfort was disrupted the next day when my brother, who was a deputy sheriff in our county, had a talk with me. He was VERY familiar with Bruno and the kinds of things he was involved in. He said that I needed to be careful, because in his estimation there was very little that Bruno would not do. Being eighteen I brushed that off, saying I could take care of myself. My brother said: “Not if Bruno wants to hurt you.”

A few days later when my head stopped hurting, I went back to work. Later in the summer while working on a section of the freeway that was partially open to traffic, I looked up and who would I see but Bruno driving down the road. We made eye-contact. I knew that he had no driver’s license. But I didn’t really think any more about it until one day a couple of weeks later. I was filling my new-to-me 1963 Chevy at my favorite gas station, Mike Krull’s Texaco, when who should drive up but Bruno, again I assumed without a driver’s license. He charged over to me and screamed “You turned me in, you dirty bastard!” I assured him that I had no idea what he was talking about, which was true. Lesson learned – Sometimes bad things can happen to you when you are totally ignorant and innocent. He said that just a few minutes after seeing me on the freeway that he had been pulled over by a state trooper and inasmuch as he had no driver’s license, he spent a few days in the county jail. He said that I was a liar and then issued this exact warning: “You watch your back you son-of-a-bitch because I am going to kill you!” Given the content of the statement and the person who had said it, I stood in stunned silence. He roared out of the gas station leaving me shaken and frightened. I remembered exactly what my brother had told me. Lessons learned – Sadly, there are some people in the world that really are evil. There may be reasons why they have become so, but nevertheless they do evil things.

Over the next few days I reasoned that this was probably bluster and that if he were going to kill me, he would have already done so. I had been in a few scrapes and fights, but I had never really felt pure unadulterated fear. For months thereafter I would sometimes awake in the middle of the night sweating and shaking with fear. I have asked myself many times over the years: Why didn’t I go to my Pop? Why didn’t I go to my brother? I don’t know. Maybe I thought it was just tough talk. Maybe I thought it would just make things worse. In any event I don’t ever recall seeing Bruno again. Lesson learned – many of our greatest fears are never realized. He moved on to expand his narcotics business and in what is perhaps karma, he reportedly died years later of an overdose after also giving some family members near fatal doses of tainted narcotics.  Lesson learned – Those who engage in violence seem to experience it turned on themselves at some point.

September came and I left my job. I began college with a new appreciation of how critical an education was for me and my long-term future. But as I studied it was different. I had a better sense of how this knowledge could affect my life – a sense of context for my education. I was more confident that I could function in this world and that I could do things that society valued. I was also more aware that there was a whole world apart from the cloistered one that I was in while in school. Some of that world was exciting and fun. Some of it was depressing and some of it was frightening.

In the spring of 1968, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King was assassinated. Racial and civil unrest simmered the entire summer. The resistance to the Vietnam war was growing every day. In June Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, throwing the Democratic Party’s process for selecting a presidential candidate into total disarray. Their convention in Chicago in August turned into a complete debacle that was marked by discord and violence with rioting by protesters and police. And almost at the same time the USSR, through its puppet Warsaw Pact, invaded Czechoslovakia because its citizens were experiencing too much freedom. We watched much of this on our own televisions, sometimes in horror. It was a chaotic time in history. But in spite of all of that these lessons are what I mostly remember from the Summer of 1968. I was never the same.

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)

Do you have memories of a period in your life when you felt that you had reached a particular turning point? One of the most seminal periods in my life was the summer of 1968. I was eighteen years old that summer and was a recent high school graduate. I have talked in other chapters about the work ethic that was omnipresent in our family. Hard work wasn’t new to me at the age of eighteen, but that summer for the first time I was able to try out my work ability somewhere other than the farm. The Minnesota Department of Transportation was building Interstate Highway 90 that summer near the southern boundary of my Pop’s farm (the DOT had actually acquired about one acre of his land for the highway right-of-way a few years earlier.) From our farm we could watch the huge earth movers, cranes, and other construction equipment. College would start for me in the fall of 1968. My family was in absolutely no position to help with college costs, with my Pop working to get my older brother started on his own farm, and three siblings behind me. So, while he certainly could have used my help on the farm that summer, Pop gave the okay for me to work somewhere else to be able to save some money for college expenses.

Once that decision was made the question was where to find a job. It turned out that I had only to look to the southern boundary of our farm. I have spoken in other places about my Uncle Kelly. Among many other talents, Uncle Kelly was skilled at running virtually any piece of construction equipment. He was using those skills to build I-90 in the summer of 1968. He told me that he might be able to find a job for me. This was very exciting because I knew that the pay was excellent, and the hours were long. Very quickly I was told to report for work at 6:30 AM on the job site. Uncle Kelly was not my supervisor. That position was filled by one Marlin (Fats) Marinell. Fats had an uncanny resemblance to Jackie Gleason. Nevertheless, Uncle Kelly was an integral part of what we would today call my “on-boarding.”  It went something like this:

Uncle Kelly:       “Fats, this is my nephew, Craig. If he doesn’t work hard, I want you to let me know right away and we will change that in a hell of a hurry. One other thing, if you misuse him, I will find you and knock you on your ass.”

Fats:     “Okay, looks like he should be able to work. I notice he has red hair – I’m calling him Red because I won’t remember his other name – too many kids working for me. Red, follow me. This tool is called a shovel. Get to know it because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with it.” (An aside – this fulfilled my Mother’s worst fear – she was afraid that someone would call me Red. If only she knew, Red was the nicest and the only non-profane moniker that I had while I was on that job. Profanity was an integral part of communication on the project. My vocabulary expanded.)

And so began my career in construction and my first lesson. When getting along in this world, it REALLY helps when you know people (like my Uncle Kelly) who can and will help you. We typically began our workday at 6:30 AM and stopped at some logical time in the late afternoon or evening. In a typical week we would start on overtime (meaning we had already worked forty hours) sometime after lunch on Wednesday. The work was exhausting and I absolutely LOVED it. I can’t explain, but even to this day, I love the smell of the diesel construction equipment and associate the sights and smells with so many good memories. I had doubts as to whether or not I could cut it in this environment, but I made up my mind that I was NOT going to disappoint my Dad or my Uncle Kelly. I worked hard through the searing heat of the summer and in the pouring rains in the middle of nowhere where there was no shelter to be found. I got my first paycheck with great pride, and I began to believe in myself – the second lesson of the Summer of 1968 – I can do things of value in the workplace.

Our work crews were constructing the shoulders of the main pavements on the freeway. We were placing the gravel that would underlie the pavement. We needed the surface of the gravel base to be very close to what the plans dictated so that the pavement that went on top of it would in turn be according to the design. This was primarily accomplished by motor grader operators. But sometimes their final work would be slightly off (out of tolerance as it was called) and would need to be touched up with hand work with shovels. This is where my rag-tag co-workers and I came in. One humid morning Fats rolled up to our little work crew and called me over. This conversation followed:

Fats:     “Red, they tell me that you know the difference between an inch and one-tenth of a foot.” (Actually, that length is kind of close, but not the same. The DOT inspectors would give Fats a list of the areas that were “out of tolerance” and how far out of tolerance they were in tenths or hundredths of a foot. This is of course not rocket-science but still mystified most of our crew members.)

Red:      “Yes sir, I do.”

Fats:     “Come over here. Take this list and three of your best guys and go to these locations and get them into tolerance.”

Red:      “Yes sir.”

Not only was I succeeding at my new job, but I had also already gotten a promotion and was supervising other people!! Well, not really, but I took it with great pride that someone who was evaluating me was willing to place some trust in me. Lesson number three – this math stuff actually has some value in the real world. And so it went, throughout the summer. Later we had this dialogue:

Fats:     “Red, can you run a compacting roller?”

Red:      “Yes sir.” (I had no idea if I could, but I had run lots of different farm tractors and figured that it couldn’t be too hard.)

Fats:     “Put your shovel in the back and come with me.”

This actually WAS a bit of a promotion, because we were a union contractor, and the union agreement classified a roller as “equipment” and thus I was an “equipment operator” and was entitled to another $0.50 per hour. Later on in the summer this discussion:

Fats:     “Red, can you operate a rotary broom?”

Red:      “Yes sir.”

Fats:      “Shut that compactor off and come with me. Sweep the pavement from Station 195+00 to Station 255+00. And Red, I’m telling you, this roller will really go when you put it in the fastest gear. Don’t do that.”

Red:      “Yes sir, I mean, No sir.”

Of course, once hearing the second part of my instructions, I absolutely HAD to try the fastest gear. And I found out that thing really would go, I mean like forty miles per hour! I also learned that it had so much power that you could “lay rubber” on the new concrete pavement when you started out leaving black marks. It was great fun. But this led to this conversation a couple of weeks later:

Fats:     “Red, what is the problem?”

Red:      “Not sure Fats, somehow the drive shaft has ruined the universal joint on the sweeper.”

Fats:     “Red, you son-of-a-bitch! I saw that you have been laying rubber with that thing all over the job. You get your ass into town, find the replacement parts and don’t you go home until you have it fixed and know that the machine is ready to go in the morning. Tell the parts store to charge it to our account. If you do that again………….”

Red:      “Yes sir.”

And so, it continued throughout the summer. Lesson learned, if you work hard and try to do your best, you can sometimes overcome some errors in judgment. Even with my elevated status running the roller and the broom, our days were long and arduous. Our normal work schedule was 6:30 AM to 6:30 PM Monday through Friday and 6:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Saturday. But many if not most days we worked well beyond 6:30. One extremely hot day while moving down the road with my roller, I noted a maroon air-conditioned car. The orange DOT inspectors’ trucks were clustered around it. I made a mental note that someone associated with construction work knew something that I didn’t. Who gets to do nothing but ride around in an air-conditioned car? After the car left, I asked Harold, our DOT inspector, what was up. He said that guy was the Project Engineer and that if I ever saw him again, the best thing to do was to be inconspicuous because he was the Big Boss. Lesson learned – there are better ways to be involved with construction than what I am doing.

A few days later at the end of a particularly long and hot day, Fats rolled up by me on my compactor and we spoke:

Fats:      “Red, go to the liquor store in Rushmore and buy a case of Waldech beer. Bring it out to the bridge site on TH 60 by Worthington. Here is $10, I’m buying beer for the boys.”

Red:      “Fats, I’m only eighteen. They won’t sell me beer!”

Fats:     “Wear your hard hat and tell them that I sent you.”

Red:      “What if I get in trouble?”

Fats:     “You won’t”

So off to the municipal liquor store in Rushmore, Minnesota I went. Trembling, I went into the little shop and mustered up my most mature voice:

Red:      “Fats said that I should pick up a case of Waldech beer.”

Squinty little liquor store clerk (hesitantly after looking me up and down):        “Cans or bottles?”

Red:      “Ummmmmm, cans.”

Off I went to meet Fats and the rest of the crew. You know I love beer. But I don’t think that beer has EVER tasted better than it did that evening, sitting around on the job with Fats and my compadres, toasting each other for a great day of work, with ice cold Waldech beers!!! This was certainly not the first beer I ever had, but in that setting, absorbing the satisfaction of a job well done, in the fellowship of my boys, it was an awesome feeling. Lesson learned, there is great satisfaction in knowing you are a part of a team and basking in the glow of a job well done.

Ahhhh, the bravado of youth!! By now I was feeling that I was really getting this working thing down. My lessons were all good (well maybe not my expanded vocabulary.) I began to think that maybe I was getting this LIFE thing down. But the second part of the Summer of 1968 taught me some other less uplifting lessons.

Will they dare a third attack?
Is a question seen in every eye; Old Put across the neck and back,
Rides slowly, their vengeance to defy—
Wildy, in that deadly hour,
The Ramparts shove their bolted shower,
While mid the waving fog of war,
Thunders the Yankee’s loud hurrah

McDonald Clarke from his poem “The Battle of Bunker Hill”

Did you watch the vice-presidential debate last night? We watched for a while, but I find in my old age that I just get uncomfortable with so much antagonism. I congratulate both of the debaters last night for not duplicating the spectacle of rudeness, misinformation and lack of respect of the first Trump-Harris debate.  But whose fault was that? Whose fault is that? There is so much misinformation being thrown about that as people who don’t devote our entire lives to this stuff, it becomes so muddled. We don’t know what to believe.  There is this term called “the fog of war.” It was first used in a poem from 1775 describing an assault on the American positions at Bunker Hill in the very beginnings of the Revolutionary War. The first known attempt to explicitly define the “fog of war” in a military text was made in 1896 in a book titled The Fog of War by Sir Lonsdale Augustus Hale, where it is described as “the state of ignorance in which commanders frequently find themselves as regards the real strength and position, not only of their foes, but also of their friends.” Wow, that is kind of how I feel during election season – it’s a foggy war. We don’t know what our political opponents might do or think and we’re not even POSITIVE about what the candidates that we do support might do or think!!

I shouldn’t be coy. Given what I have personally seen him do since 2016, I can NOT vote for a ticket with the name of Donald J. Trump on it. But I haven’t REALLY seen Kamala Harris in action. Yes, she was our vice president and has served as a US Senator from California and as attorney general for that state. I like much of what she says. I am fiscally and socially more conservative than she is. Of course, her running mate, Governor Tim Walz is from our state, and I feel like I know a lot more about what kind of a person he is. I don’t like everything he has done in our state. I am much more fiscally conservative than he is too, and more socially conservative too. But having said that I will tell you that I voted for him, twice. Are we friends? Hardly. Do I really know him? Well maybe in just a small way, I can personally blow away some of the fog of war about the character of Tim Walz. This I witnessed:

Several years ago, at the end of the month of May there was a tragedy in our family. Kris, the husband of our niece, aged 37, and father of three was stricken by a heart attack while on his morning run. He perished a very short time later. I can also personally tell you that he was a great kid with a great future. He was a great athlete playing football in high school and college. How could someone so fit and so full of life be taken? As you can imagine the shock and grief were overwhelming for his family and friends. The funeral was held at a large church in the southern suburbs and as you would expect there was a throng of people there to pay their respects and to comfort the grieving family.

We were trying to help with some of the details of the arrangements and were at the back of the church as the pre-funeral greeting time was drawing to a close. The immediate family was preparing to enter the church. Very quietly, with absolutely no fanfare, a man accompanied by another, approached our niece, embraced her, and did the same as all of the rest of us were trying to do – gave comfort and paid respect. It turns out that the guy was Kris’ history teacher and his football coach. Apparently in his line of work late May is a difficult time because the legislature had adjourned without finishing its business and heavy negotiations were underway regarding the budget and other issues. But he found time to come to the funeral of one of his former students. After the family went in for the service, Governor Walz went in and sat near the back of the church for the service and after the service quietly left. He had no entourage, no photographer. There was no press conference, no attempt to convince anybody that he was just this average, caring kind of guy who was grieving for his former student. But he convinced me.

So, amid the fog of this war that we call our national election. I can clear a little bit of that for you regarding the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate. This action taken when really nobody but a few even noticed, told me more about him than a thousand political ads. Just saying………………

“I didn’t know my tongue could do that!”

Colt Perkins – Age five – Commenting on How he Helped to Facilitate the Loss of his First Tooth

“And I’d end by saying, have no fear these are NO WHERE near the best years of your life.”

Brad Paisley in his Song “If I Could Write a Letter to Me.”

On Saturday Jan and I went to a very fun production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which our niece’s children were the stars. Well okay, Kaleb was a “town-animal”, and Annika was a “trial spectator.” Annika actually had a line and Kaleb knew where to stand (for the most part) so they were stars to us.  The idea was that the three bears filed a criminal complaint against Goldilocks for breaking and entering and for willful destruction of property for the damage to Baby Bear’s chair. It was very cute. Kaleb, age five, did not seem to be nervous in any way, in fact he seemed a bit, distracted. What could distract a five-year-old while on stage in front of hundreds of his adoring family and friends? (Okay maybe like sixty or seventy.) Kaleb had TWO loose teeth. Those loose teeth occupied a lot more of his attention than the play.

Loose teeth were a bit of an epidemic in our family this year. Colt and Natalie both lost their first teeth. Garrett also lost another tooth, but did not experience the extreme trauma that his two younger cousins did. (See above quotation expressing Colt’s amazement at the whole process.) Those two were not in any way amused when their older cousins or uncles or aunts volunteered to remove them at no charge. It was very cute and reminded me that every generation goes though the same rites of passage. But is it really the same these days? I’m not sure.

One of the very best things that can happen to a grandpa on vacation is for a grandchild to sit on your lap and actually talk with you. I had this treat this year with the aforementioned Natalie. We did not discuss her tooth issues. We were talking and listening to some songs playing from the playlist on my phone. As we sat there, I was absent-mindedly whistling along with the tune. I realized that Natalie was observing me very carefully for a minute or two. And then she told me. “I wish I could whistle. I have tried and can’t seem to get it. I Googled instructional videos on how to whistle and watched them carefully, but I haven’t been able to get it yet.” I was taken aback. Here is Nattie, aged six, with access to Google and the knowledge of how to use it to search out an instructional video!!! I was amazed at her acumen to come up with the idea of a whistling instructional video and for her initiative to find it and try it. I found it amusing and charming, but also a bit unsettling. Oh, I know that our grandchildren are very computer literate starting at a young age. This feat is probably a lot more impressive to me than it is to her parents or teachers. But does this seem right? Does this seem good? Are things all different these days?

I have been thinking about this a lot in the days following vacation. This fall will bring about a lot of changes for many of our grandchildren – going from high school to college, going from elementary school to middle school, going from kindergarten to first grade, going from preschool to kindergarten, etc. We also have a college senior who is beginning the home stretch to her degree and is now seriously contemplating entrance into the job market as well as an upcoming wedding.

A lot of these changes that our grandkids have to navigate through are not fundamentally different than what we and our children went through. Heck, I remember especially how difficult the transition from elementary school to middle school was for me. And really, we ALL had a first tooth lost incident, didn’t we? It strikes me that we should take some comfort in knowing that we all have figured out a way to navigate these challenges and no doubt our grandchildren will too. But it also seems to me that as we recall the trauma of these life events with the knowledge that you CAN get through them, there is a tendency to minimize how hard it is today, when you are the kid in the middle of the challenge without the benefit of hindsight.

Our grandchildren begin to experience the pressure to succeed in preschool and before. They are evaluated in many ways at very young ages. We try to help them capitalize on their strengths and to overcome their weaknesses. We worry about how the preschools and elementary schools that they attend are rated. Will they be properly prepared for kindergarten? Will they be properly prepared for elementary school? For middle school and high school? Will they gain admittance to the best colleges, universities and technical schools? Will they excel in music and sports? Are we doing enough to help them to be well-rounded?

Most parents do a good job of not too-directly transmitting these pressures to their children. But even at young ages our kids know that they need to succeed. And if they forget any of this, they are reminded of it constantly on the feeds that they get from television and their own social media. Am I measuring up? When I was a kid, bullying was somebody that shoved you around on the playground. You just need to fight it out, or in my case get a big brother to punch the trouble making kid. Bullying today is much more pervasive and pernicious. The pressure to succeed at every level is more overt and intense. And unfortunately, our kids can become very discouraged and convinced that they are NOT going to succeed in life at a very young age.

What could a grandparent do? There is a phenomenon that allows grandparents to communicate with grandchildren in ways that their parents cannot. What could I try to teach them at age seventy-four?

• I may be old, but I remember losing my first tooth. It won’t really hurt very much. Trust your Mom and Dad, they want what is best for you. And the tooth fairy WILL come.
• Doing the best that you can in school is really important but remember that school is just a PART of life. Some would say it’s a SMALL part of life.
• Run the race as best you can but remember there will be a lot of runners that will be slower than you – don’t become too enamored with your results.
• Run the race as best you can but remember there will be a lot of runners that will be faster than you – don’t become too discouraged with your results.
• When you get into trouble, lean on the ones that you love and the ones that love you – your family.
• Your family can take a lot of forms, hopefully it is your biological relatives, but families come in a lot of various forms.
• This too shall pass – Enjoy your successes and celebrate them. Celebrate the love of your family and the good times there. But remember, difficult times will come. I wish that wasn’t true, but I KNOW it is.
• This too shall pass – The hard times that you might be going through in elementary school, in middle school, in high school, in college – I know it is hard but just keep pounding away. Do your homework the BEST that you can. Go to school tomorrow. You will get through and there will be better times ahead. You have a lot of people who are on your side, especially Grandma and me, rooting for you and praying for the best for you.
• These are NOWHERE near the best years of your life!!

I apologize!! Apparently, YOUR BLOG CREATOR was working too quickly – and got the date of the Democratic Convention wrong. The Democratic Convention convenes in Chicago on August19. I referenced the date for the Republican Convention. Mea Culpa!! The wavering Democrats have more time than I thought for their nomination, but one date that I am NOT misinformed on is Election Day – November 5, 2024. That date is rapidly approaching.

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”

Tennessee Williams

“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, in direct proportion to its importance and in inverse proportion to the time available.”

Edward A. Murphy Jr. – American Aerospace Engineer – Murphy’s Law along with Ebeling’s Corollary

In February of this year, I wrote a blog entry entitled “Mae West Can’t Help Us Now”. (See February 17, 2024 entry.) In the article I asserted that whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party, needed to get their act together and find a presidential nominee other than Joe Biden. I was convinced of this because of the public perception that President Biden was an elderly gentleman who has lost the quick intellect and cognitive powers that are required to lead the most powerful nation in the world. The immediate impetus for that writing was the comments Department of Justice Special Prosecutor Robert K. Hurd made in his report regarding the possibility of charging President Biden for violating the Presidential records keeping laws. Hurd did NOT recommend charges but in the report detailed several encounters with President Biden that cast him in an unfavorable light, as a well-meaning but declining elderly man. There were many like me who called for a new nominee at that time. But a funny thing happens with the passage of time. The story died down and the public became preoccupied with other things, like our convicted felon former President Trump and his numerous trials.

And then came the ill-fated debate between the two elderly gentlemen who want to be the Commander-in- Chief of the world’s most potent military, the keeper of those nuclear codes and a few other sorts of unimportant tasks. Now the subject is at the forefront of the public discussion again. What has changed? Well, nearly five months have passed. A Trump-friendly Supreme Court has given him more protection from prosecution of wrong-doings as President while another court convicted him of a felony while other cases are pending. Five months have passed in the rapidly shrinking election season, in which the candidates can make their cases to the American people. What hasn’t changed? President Biden is NOT any younger, his cognitive abilities and intellectual stamina have NOT improved. In the five intervening months there weren’t any glaring in-the-public-eye events highlighting that. But I would make this case: The fact that we didn’t see them, doesn’t mean that they didn’t occur, and more importantly, it doesn’t mean that they won’t happen again, and probably happen soon as the grueling campaign takes its toll even on younger men.

In the 2020 election I pleaded with anyone who would listen, that we needed to vote for Joe Biden. As I said in February, I LIKE Joe Biden. He is a fighter for what he believes but he is also someone who has demonstrated that he sees the need to compromise at times. He was a politician in the best sense of that word – somebody who does not let their own passionate worldview block them from actually getting something done. It is the old definition – politics is the art of the possible. There are lots of things on which I DON’T agree with him BUT I believe he has served his country well. Yet even if his present critics are wrong, the voting public sees him as not being up to the job. I don’t think he can beat our former, convicted felon, philandering, lying former President Trump. And while I have concerns about what a 2025-2029 President Biden might do or not do, I much more greatly fear what a 2025-2029 President Trump will do, the things that he has SAID he will do. Can a new nominee prevail at this late hour in the process? I really don’t know, but I am becoming more confident that Joe Biden can NOT.

President Biden has asserted that HE is the person who will decide whether or not he will stay in the race. Of course, that is TRUE depending on what “staying in the race” means. But there is this thing that the Democrats do, their national convention. And one of the things that they do there is to endorse a presidential candidate. But the delegates to the convention have plenty of time to think about this, there are SIX WHOLE DAYS until it starts. The wheels of politics usually turn very slowly, and President Biden’s nomination may be all but decided. But somehow, some way, we have to head off the upcoming November decision that we may be forced to make, between two soon-to-be octogenarians, one of whom is a convicted felon among many other things.

If you hold the most powerful position on the earth, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to give that up, if you think you can keep it. None of us wants to think that we are not at the top of our games (trust me I am seventy-four). But in spite of the allure of trying for a second four years in that most exalted position, I would make the argument that in our present environment, stepping aside would be the most courageous and the most patriotic action that Joseph R. Biden could take. This is BIGGER than one man, we are talking about the future of our country and the future of the world.

Life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood.
Helen Keller

In September of 1998 we got one of those calls that every parent dreads and fears – your child is ill or injured and you need to come. We’ve had a few of these, this one concerned our oldest, Melissa. She was in extreme pain from some sort of kidney issue and was in the emergency room in Menominee, Wisconsin. Jan and I rushed over and transported her to a better equipped hospital in our insurance system in Eau Claire. They determined that she had a severe kidney infection, the first of many, and put in a stent. She was hospitalized for two days until she was stable, and we were referred to Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, MN. After several exams and a CT scan there, we learned that Melissa had a “duplicated renal system”, and one kidney was malformed and had little function. Her first surgery was in January of 1999. You don’t expect a diagnosis like that for your twenty-one-year-old, but we reasoned that one could live successfully with one kidney.

Unfortunately, this was only the start of Melissa’s long journey of kidney issues – issues affecting both kidneys. There were times that she was so full of stones that the urologist stopped counting, so many that removing them would have caused even more damage to the kidney. After lots of treatments and surgeries over the years, in 2018 she was advised that while not imminent, there would come a day when she would need a kidney transplant. She, her husband Chad, Janice and I attended a daylong seminar at the M-Health Fairview Clinic on the University of Minnesota campus. They felt that Melissa would be able to postpone the procedure for perhaps four to five years. Although from time to time she still had issues, we felt that we had been granted a reprieve. Two years ago, her kidney markers fell to the level at which she was eligible to join the kidney transplant waiting list. We were taken aback and there were tears, but we knew this was coming. You could say that this was bad news, but you need to remember that it is not automatic that a kidney transplant will help the patient and that the patient is a viable candidate. We were blessed in that Melissa was declared eligible.

In the US, the National Kidney Foundation working with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) maintains and manages the kidney transplants waiting list. There are about 25,000 kidney transplants per year with several hundred thousand patients on the transplant list. Kidney transplants come from either living organ donors or deceased organ donors. A live donor kidney transplant is considered the best option for people with kidney disease. As you would imagine UNOS carries an awesome responsibility with keeping this priority list – literally life and death responsibility. They work very hard to ensure that deceased donor organs are distributed fairly. Decisions on who should get what kidney are based on a combination of blood-type and antibody matching, time with kidney failure, and a few other factors that give people priority on the list. One of those factors is how “sensitized” the kidney recipient’s body is. Melissa was highly sensitized.

Once you are added to the national organ transplant waiting list, you may receive an organ fairly quickly or you may wait many years. In general, the average time frame for waiting can be three to five years at most centers, but it is longer in some parts of the country. Obviously wait times depend on how many donors are out there and how hard you are to match. In some cases, a patient who needs a kidney can find a donor on their own who is a match for them, and the process can go very quickly thereafter. Sometimes a recipient can find a donor, but the donor’s kidney is not a match for them. In these situations, a kidney “paired exchange” or “paired donation” may be possible. That is, the donor gives their kidney to ANOTHER recipient whose identity is unknown to them, and their paired recipient is elevated on the list, to find a matching kidney from an unknown donor somewhere else in the US.

As Melissa’s blood markers fell to alarming levels, several family members stepped forward to see if they could provide a kidney for her, her biological sisters and a cousin. Unfortunately, from that group only Melissa’s biological sister Becky was an eligible donor, and she was NOT a match for Melissa. But she was willing to enroll in a variation of the “paired exchange” program, called advanced donation/voucher. In this process the donor goes first, and the recipient receives a voucher for a transplant later. This greatly sped up the process of finding a match for Melissa. Shortly after Christmas, as Melissa’s blood markers fell further the process began to accelerate. Becky was scheduled for her donation surgery on March 13 and Melissa’s transplant surgery was scheduled for April 2.

As you can imagine there was a flurry of planning, vacation and sick leave days scheduled, finding a place for Becky’s kids to stay etc. etc. March 13 arrived, and Becky was admitted early in the morning at the M-Health Fairview Hospital also on the U of M campus. Family members gathered in the waiting room for the five-hour surgery. It was a great success, and all of the waiters breathed a sigh of relief. But there was this other emotion, for that kidney went from one operating room to another where it was received by a forty-eight-year-old woman from somewhere in Minnesota. And as I write, I really can’t tell you what that emotion was, other than to say that it was humbling, heart-warming, joyful but somehow solemn. Becky was discharged just a day after her surgery, perhaps a bit too quickly according to the nurse that I sleep with. Becky’s recovery was/is slow in coming. She struggled with pain and nausea for several days. She is on the right road but it’s a road that is longer than any of us thought it would be.

Somewhere in Colorado, early in the morning of April 2, a donor whose identity we may never know, unselfishly donated a kidney. That kidney had quite a day. After leaving its previous owner it was transported, perhaps by ambulance, perhaps by helicopter to the Denver airport for a ride to the Minneapolis St. Paul International airport. From there it was taken by helicopter to M-Health Fairview on the U of M campus. Melissa was admitted at noon and was in surgery by 2:00 PM. Members of the same family waiting group watched for updates on the automated charts and also waited breathlessly as the transplant team relayed progress to Chad on his cell phone. Reports first came when Melissa entered the operating suite, then later reports that the kidney was on-site, later on when she was ready for transplantation, when the organ was in and connected, when it actually started to produce urine and finally when she was ready to be moved to recovery. There were shouts of joy and high-fives all around.

Melissa must be breaking all of the good records for kidney transplants. So far, her surgery has been a great success. She was discharged in just three days. Her kidney markers are better than they have been in fifteen years. Her pain is manageable, she is recovering very nicely. Yes, she has a long road ahead of her. She will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life. Especially for the next year she will need to be very careful about contracting illness, especially water borne illnesses. But at this point it is hard to see how things could possibly be going any better.

Melissa and Becky have both given rave reviews for the transplant team at M-Health Fairview. These people are world class. But in a wider sense, Becky was reflecting on the amazing level of effort it has taken for this miracle, the facilities and equipment yes, but especially the people. This must be a cast of thousands. Of course, our unknown heroine in Colorado and the heroic sister that we know in Minnesota have to top the list, but Dr. Ramanathan and his staff at the University were also heroic in their own way. Also consider the people who our daughters have consulted with at the National Kidney Foundation and UNOS. And there were hundreds of other doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, certified nursing assistants, records keepers, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, kitchen and facility workers, schedulers, cab drivers, airplane and helicopter pilots and on and on. It is truly amazing what a concerted effort it was and humbling to consider how blessed we were by these people.

On April 2, after receiving the great report on the surgery, we held on for a while in the waiting room, awaiting the notice for when Chad would be able to go back to see his wife. As we were seated in the waiting area, we heard an announcement over the intercom summoning everyone who was available to participate in a “Walk of Honor’” on one of the wings of the upper floors. We were reveling in all of our great news and didn’t really pay much attention to the announcement, except for Janice. Our eyes met and she said, “Do you know what that is?” I said no and asked for an explanation. She told me when a very ill patient who has agreed to be an organ donor has reached the point at which they can no longer sustain life on their own, they are wheeled down the halls of the ward, with all of the hospital personnel and family silently standing by in tribute to them as they are transported to the operating suite for the removal of their donated organs.

Amidst all of our joy, it occurred to me that there was another family just like us, in another part of that hospital that was having the opposite emotions. They weren’t joyful and hopeful, they were broken, grieving, sad and despairing. I wished I could touch them and take some of that pain from them by telling them what a gift their loved one was making to perhaps MANY families. Would knowing that have made a difference to them at that moment? I’m not sure. I doubt that at that moment it would. It didn’t for me.

You see, my first wife Pam died unexpectedly thirty-five years ago. Our family was gathered in a waiting room, just like those at M-Health Fairview and there was no rejoicing there. Recently my sister-in-law and I were searching for some records regarding her death. We found the notice from the Minnesota Lions Eye Bank that both of her corneas were transplanted to others giving them the gift of sight. Pam’s mother faithfully copied down the words of another letter from the Hennepin County Medical Center addressed to me over thirty-five years ago. The letter noted among other things that both of Pam’s kidneys were transplanted to patients, one to a forty-two-year-old female and one to a fifty-two-year-old female both of whom were doing well.

It is amazing how long it takes me to learn some of life’s lessons. For thirty-five years ago there were families who were rejoicing as ours wept.

After all of these years, I think knowing this DOES help. It sometimes takes me a long time and the right circumstances to learn life’s lessons.

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
Mae West

We learned on Thursday that President Joe Biden will not face criminal charges for taking classified information about national security matters with him when he left the vice presidency in 2017. Special U.S. prosecutor Robert K. Hur said he would not be bringing charges.

This whole business with how high-ranking elected officials handle classified documents puzzles me. And apparently neither this nor the allegedly much more egregious violations by former President Trump are isolated cases. President Reagan in particular has been cited as someone who carted off eight years of stuff after leaving office. What is it with these people? They have boatloads of staff people who know (or should know) what the law requires. Is this just carelessness, misunderstanding, or is it pure hubris?

Hur made several differentiations between the Biden case and the Trump case. In general Biden was a cooperative violator and Trump was the opposite, probably even obstructing justice. I don’t want to get into that at this point, there will be plenty of others to scrutinize this question when Trump’s case finally reaches the courts. My concern is much more immediate.

I believe, and I think many Americans believe, that the choice we may well have to make in November is very disheartening. Among our three hundred and forty million Americans, are these two the best we can come up with?!?!? Do I have to choose between a man who flaunted every presidential norm in his first term, is charged in over ninety civil and criminal cases and routinely shakes down his apparently blinded supporters to pay his legal bills (among many other things) AND a man who is seen by many, by virtue of his age, to be a risk to our country if elected again?

The bottom line of Hur’s report is that Biden won’t be prosecuted. I have read the executive summary of the report and skimmed the balance of the other three-hundred-fifty-some pages. This is virtually the ONLY positive thing that a Biden supporter can take from it. Consider the following assertions:

• President Biden really did willfully retain and disclose classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. Yes, he is not going to be charged, and others including Trump have done much worse, BUT HE STILL DID IT.
• Hur said that Biden cooperated and would likely be difficult to convict. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Geez, just what we want for the person holding the most powerful position in the world, a well-meaning, doddering old man.
• Later in the report Hur said that Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”
• Hur goes on to allege that “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.” Can this really be true? It’s hard to say, but given some of his recent public appearances one could doubt.

President Biden is livid about these assertions and denies them vigorously. I certainly would do the same if I were in his position. Both parties routinely accuse the others while in power of weaponizing the Justice Department. Yes, Hur was a Trump appointee at one time, but he was assigned this task by Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is hard for the little people like me to really know, but based on the fact that both parties have from time to time complained about Garland, he might be the closest thing to a straight shooter that we have there.

But I am going to ski right by all of that. I am a fiscal conservative, although some would call me a radical because I still can’t understand why we couldn’t and shouldn’t have a balanced budget. There are a lot of positions on which I don’t agree with Joe Biden, but I like him. Heck, I even voted for him. And I hope that I am not being unfair. But regardless of the veracity of these reports, the Democrats have got to act now to find another candidate. The American voters DESERVE better alternatives than these two flawed men. We can’t even follow Mae West’s guidance. Both of these guys have been tried before. As a discouraged conservative I have no hope whatsoever that the Republican party can free itself from Trump’s iron grip to do anything but to endorse him. But by heavens, whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party have got to spring to action. Someone MUST convince President Biden that it is in the best interest of the nation to identify a more acceptable Democratic candidate to stand for election. I believe that there are MANY who, if they get going right now, can defeat our philandering, crooked, himself-aged, criminal former president. I just fear that Joseph R. Biden may not be one of them.

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.” –
Mae West

We learned last Thursday that President Joe Biden will not face criminal charges for taking classified information about national security matters with him when he left the vice presidency in 2017. Special U.S. prosecutor Robert K. Hur said he would not be bringing charges.

This whole business with how high-ranking elected officials handle classified documents puzzles me. And apparently neither this nor the allegedly much more egregious violations by former President Trump are isolated cases. President Reagan in particular has been cited as someone who carted off eight years of stuff after leaving office. What is it with these people? They have boatloads of staff people who know (or should know) what the law requires. Is this just carelessness, misunderstanding, or is it pure hubris?

Hur made several differentiations between the Biden case and the Trump case. In general Biden was a cooperative violator and Trump was the opposite, probably even obstructing justice. I don’t want to get into that at this point, there will be plenty of others to scrutinize this question when Trump’s case finally reaches the courts. My concern is much more immediate.

I believe, and I think many Americans believe, that the choice we may well have to make in November is very disheartening. Among our three hundred and forty million Americans, are these two the best we can come up with?!?!? Do I have to choose between a man who flaunted every presidential norm in his first term, is charged in over ninety civil and criminal cases and routinely shakes down his apparently blinded supporters to pay his legal bills (among many other things) AND a man who is seen by many, by virtue of his age, to be a risk to our country if elected again?

The bottom line of Hur’s report is that Biden won’t be prosecuted. I have read the executive summary of the report and skimmed the balance of the other three-hundred-fifty-some pages. This is virtually the ONLY positive thing that a Biden supporter can take from it. Consider the following assertions:

• President Biden really did willfully retain and disclose classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. Yes, he is not going to be charged, and others including Trump have done much worse, BUT HE STILL DID IT.
• Hur said that Biden cooperated and would likely be difficult to convict. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Geez, just what we want for the person holding the most powerful position in the world, a well-meaning, doddering old man.
• Later in the report Hur said that Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).” Is this really true? I’m not sure, but some of his public appearances could make you wonder.
• Hur goes on to allege that “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”

President Biden is livid about these assertions and denies them vigorously. I certainly would do the same if I were in his position. Both parties routinely accuse the others while in power of weaponizing the Justice Department. Yes, Hur was a Trump appointee at one time, but he was assigned this task by Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is hard for the little people like me to really know, but based on the fact that both parties have from time to time complained about Garland, he might be the closest thing to a straight shooter that we have there.

But I am going to ski right by all of that too. I am a fiscal conservative, although some would call me a radical because I still can’t understand why we couldn’t and shouldn’t have a balanced budget. There are a lot of positions on which I don’t agree with Joe Biden, but I like him. Heck, I even voted for him. And I hope that I am not being unfair. Regardless of the veracity of these reports, the Democrats have got to act now to find another candidate. The American voters DESERVE better alternatives than these two flawed men. We can’t even follow Mae West’s guidance. Both of these guys have been tried before.

As a discouraged conservative I have no hope whatsoever that the Republican party can free itself from Trump’s iron grip to do anything but to endorse him. But by heavens, whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party have got to spring to action. Someone MUST convince President Biden that it is in the best interest of the nation to identify a more acceptable Democratic candidate to stand for election. I believe that there are MANY who, if they get going right now, can defeat our philandering, crooked, himself-aged, criminal former president. I just fear that Joseph R. Biden may not be one of them.

“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1863

My friend Garrett sent a season’s greeting email to me this morning mentioning among other things that he hadn’t seen a holiday posting to the blog. My blog production has lagged this year. I could blame it on our move but there may be more in play here. I often find myself without a burning desire to comment and I have found that there is nothing so difficult as writing when you have nothing to say. (There are those who maintain that I have nothing to say even when I THINK I have something to say!) One of the writings that I normally undertake at this time of year is the update letter that we enclose with our Christmas card. I dutifully set out to create that document a couple of weeks ago, quite proud of myself for getting it done PRIOR to the 24th which is when it normally goes into the mail. I reported on the happenings in our family, with a somewhat extensive section on the move which occupied our lives from May until October.

Janice typically reviews and edits my work before printing and sending. But I was taken aback this year when she VETOED the letter! I asked which sentences or paragraphs needed amendment. She said, “All of them.” She then shocked me even more by volunteering to prepare the letter herself. This would be a serious disruption of the holiday division of labor that we have painstakingly negotiated over our decades of marriage. I do the letter and print it, SHE selects the photo and gets that printed at Walmart, etc. etc. It was clear to me that there must be something pretty egregiously wrong in the document for her to propose this unprecedented action. I asked if she could describe where I was going wrong. She said that the letter was no fun and had way too much complaining. There was no GOOD NEWS in it.

I hate it when she is right. At our Christmas Eve service last night, Pastor Brett had a six-word sermon. The six words were – “GOOD NEWS, GREAT JOY, ALL PEOPLE.” Janice was right in reminding me that our friends and loved ones don’t need to hear bad news about our move (and by the way that pain was TEMPORARY). They are actually more like me – they want to hear GOOD NEWS that makes them happy. Well, I can cut out the long and sad stories about the lost stuff, the closing difficulties, etc. etc. but I would argue that bringing good news these days is not that easy (see Israel-Gaza-Hamas, Russia-Ukraine, conflicts in Sudan, Somalia, and other countries). And how about our friends, one of whom is in home hospice care while her husband was simultaneously in the hospital having lung surgery, or our friend who is still recovering from a brain injury from this summer while her husband is in the hospital for colon surgery? There is a lot of bad news to pick from.

It really is THE question. Where IS the good news? Well, our son-in-law Jake traveled three weeks to India and China this summer and he came back safe and sound. And so did our son-in-law Nick, our daughter-in-law Stephanie, our daughter Melissa, our son Ian, and the whole Olson family. It seems that one of our kids is ALWAYS in the air somewhere. It’s GREAT news when they return home safely. But we don’t very often note that and give thanks. And there was lots more good news than that. I guess my point is that there are bad things happening but so many more GOOD things happening as well. What will we focus on?

I choose to believe that there is a Greater Power, and that despite the sadness that sometimes threatens to overcome us, because HE is still alive and running the universe, ultimately the good news will far outweigh the bad. Or as Longfellow said in the poem he wrote at a particularly low point during the Civil War corresponding with a particularly low point in his personal life, “God is not dead nor doth he sleep, The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail with peace on earth, good will towards men.”

May you find good news of great joy this Holiday Season – Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!