Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

I started school in a two-room building: grades 1 to 4 in one room; grades 5 to 8 in the other. One teacher in each room taught all four grades. I don’t remember first grade very well – the teacher left at the end of the year. I am pretty sure it was not my fault. Now keep in mind that reading the Bible every morning was the standard for all grades at that time. But my teacher in grades two to four went a little above and beyond the normal practice. As a member of a “plain” sect, she considered it her duty to lead the little heathens to Christianity. She offered a free Bible to all students who managed to memorize 20 verses. I memorized my verses – “Jesus saves” was my favorite because it was the shortest – and got my Bible with my twenty underlined in red. That would be illegal today (not the underlining), and rightly so. Teachers may not teach religion, although contrary to what many folks seem to think, students may bring their Bibles to school, read them, and pray their

When your car needs repairs, do you ask the first person you meet on the street what to do? Certainly not – you take it to an auto mechanic. When your home heating system breaks down in the middle of the coldest night of the year, do you call your doctor? Of course not – you call a heating expert. It would appear that calling an expert for help with situations beyond our normal experience is just common sense. So why is it that the farther removed a problem is from our everyday experience, the more likely it is that we will rely on our “gut feelings” or self-proclaimed “experts” for help? But that seems to be the case. Seemingly normal people will ignore the warnings of tens of thousands of scientists who have devoted their entire adult lives to studying climate change and the associated problems, and heed the anti-science ranting of talk radio pundits. As with any large group there are a few scientists who swim against the tide, and when one of these is discovered, his op

Homesick For California In 1967 Barbara and I moved to California. We were young, and found it to be an exciting place to live. We were welcomed into a friendly church and made many friends. There were all sorts of entertaining places and things to do: amusement parks, sporting events, plays and restaurants. And ah, the weather. We lived about ten miles from the beach; as a result we didn’t experience the searing heat farther inland. Our average daytime high during the summer was 85 º; during the winter we thought it was cold when it occasionally dropped into the 50s. After 35 years we began to think about retirement. At the invitation of church friends we visited a retirement campus, and quickly discovered that a small apartment was far more than we hoped to pay in our old age, although there was one perk: the establishment was willing to iron our sheets. While visiting our local senior center Barbara observed an event which illustrates the general attitude toward o

The National Anthem I have a somewhat minor pet peeve. I say minor because in the grand scheme of things neither I nor society will do anything substantive about it, so my best bet is probably to suck it up and move on. Perhaps after writing about it I can lay it to rest. It came up recently while I was working out at our Wellness Center. A program on television was playing America The Beautiful , and I remarked to a lady I have known for 40 years that I thought that should be the National Anthem instead of The Star Spangled Banner. She replied, rather huffily, I thought, “Some people think God Bless America should be the national anthem.” At that point I decided, wisely, I think, to back off before an argument sprang up. Now I realize that The Star Spangled Banner is a very nice, patriotic song, but an anthem it is not. According to Wikipedia, “ An anthem is a  musical composition  of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the  nationa