John’s thoughts, rants, and crazy ideas
Last evening, three women shared their health experiences in a community forum. The focus was on how they felt God had intervened in their care and helped them medically, physically, and mentally through these trying times. Suzanne was one of the presenters. Nervous that attendees would not be able to understand her, Her presentation gave her the chance to explain what she went through in her words. So today, it’s her turn. She wrote out her talk in case no…
I don’t know about where you live but here on our farm, it’s past being dry and moving quickly into a desert category. Watering the garden and flowers has become a full-time job. As a farmer, we usually talk about the inches of rain, even the tenths of an inch, but this year we brag about the hundredths of an inch we got. Showers seem to pop up all around us, in fact, someone three miles down the road got…
It’s been a lot of years since my first Communion, sixty-plus is a pretty good guess. Growing up in the Catholic Church, your First Communion is a pretty big deal. For me, it was our whole second-grade class that marched in a procession from the school to the church, sat in the front of the church for High Mass, and then left with all your family that attended. Back at the house, there was a reception and a meal with…
We hear about this every Christmas, porch pirates. They follow UPS or FedEx trucks around and steal delivered items off the porches of unsuspecting people. Most of us can’t even imagine what drives these people to be so brazen with no conscience to steal like that in broad daylight. But what happens when your package isn’t there and there are no porch pirates? That’s the dilemma I have been dealing with this past week. A package we were expecting was…
Did you feel it the other day? There was a Paradigm Shift in the universe, well at least in my universe. Let me share when it happened. It was 12:04 pm on Friday, April 14th, 2023 and I was sitting in our kitchen. It was a nice spring day and I had been out working in the garden where I was finishing up building a raised strawberry bed. I came in, washed my hands, grabbed a glass of lemonade, and…
Growing up, the week leading to Easter was such a fun time. Mom would boil a dozen or more eggs and let me color them. We would line up five or six bowls with Paas egg dye, bend that little wire holder so as to not get any of the dye on my fingers, and see if I could two-tone an egg without overlapping the middle. On Easter morning, I would find my Easter basket (I still have it) on…
Since we are in the middle of March Madness, I thought I’d talk a little bit about Sports Fanatics. You know the person, the one that watches their team or any team play every game, listens to it on the radio or smartphone. The one that has to wear the correct sports gear and reads all the sports commentary they can find online. They also watch sports commentary shows and follow as many individual team players as they can find…
I’m always surprised when I hear Suzanne say “I’m on borrowed time”. We could be chatting in the car, watching the tube, or just out on the front porch swing when she makes that statement. Each time she says it, I hear a sense of mortality in her voice as well as gratitude about the fact that she is still here with me. So what does it mean when we say ‘Borrowed Time”? An online definition said it was to…
I don’t know about you, but there is something about doing puzzles that seem to give my mind a break from all the hustle & bustle around me. A cup of tea and a half-hour break from the action seems to do the soul some good. For me, a puzzle is a combination of Where’s Waldo, shape perception, and math. I like to pick up a piece and look at the picture to find the exact location of that piece….
By now, you all know that numbers are my thing. I love working with numbers, accounting, statistics, measurements, and more. In my former life in the Park and Recreation industry, putting together the budget for the department was just plain fun. So a new important number popped up today for me, thirty-four. In January of 1989, George Bush was sworn in as President, Phil Collins’s song “Another Day in Paradise” was popular, Tiramisu was a trendy food item, Mcdonald’s actually…