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UNEXPECTED GIFTS

The sun was starting to rest over the meadows. Gil, the head farmer, and the little boy called the cows together, “Come Boss, come Boss.” Babe was a huge Guernsey who loved to eat apples out of the young boy’s hand. Snowball, a Holstein, was whiter than the first snowfall, a bit older and moved slower than Babe. Jumping onto the gate, the boy got his bib overalls caught on the hinge. “Let’s go boy, we still need to milk...

ANOTHER BASE SUSPENDS AIR ACTIVITIES

UPDATE: USMC reports drone incursions at Camp Pendleton during week of December 8th. See story here. Those who follow my blog know that I am open to the possibility of extraterrestrials passing through “our neck of the woods,” or some trans-dimensional phenomenon that humans do not yet fully comprehend.  However, I am not certain that this is occurring at this very moment.  Last Friday, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio suspended flight operations for four hours because of the presence of drones, leaving at...

Antithesis

ANTITHESIS

A week ago, people around the world were able to see a fifty-year-old man in blue sportscoat gunned down on the sidewalk of New York City by a hooded assassin standing in the shadows only several yards behind him.  The video was in high demand. All most people saw was the grim reaper point his gun.  They did not see the puff of smoke from the gun.  They did not see the intended victim fall to the sidewalk.  They did not see the assassin...

When Ireland was the end of the world

WHEN IRELAND WAS THE END OF THE WORLD

Nuair a bhí Éire deireadh an domhain. Before the famous Greek geographer Pytheas of Massilia (c.325) discovered Thule several centuries prior to the common era, and prior to the Viking explorer Naddoður casting his eyes on what we know as Iceland in the ninth century, there was Ireland.  Preceding the voyage of Erik Thorvaldsson better known as Erik the Red (circa 950 AD – circa 1003 AD) to Greenland and earlier than Columbus landing on Guanahani (San Salvador) in the Bahamas, Ireland was known to the world as...

Winds of Change

WINDS OF CHANGE

The last fourteen months since Hamas attacked Israel have fundamentally reshaped the Mideast in ways that very few observers might have guessed.  Today, the terrorist group Hamas is leaderless, as is the terrorist group Hezbollah.  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who so ruthlessly murdered men, women and children (25,857 children, and 15,761 women as of March 2022) in the Syrian Civil War has fled to Russia to save his own life.  Islamic terrorists in Yemen are reeling under the blows of American, British and Israeli attacks in defense...

Early German Christmas Traditions

EARLY GERMAN CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS

My parents were born in Germany in the first decade of the twentieth century, though they did not meet until many years later after they arrived in America. My mother was a Lutheran from Prussian and my father was Bavarian and Catholic, and since different parts of Germany had different Christmas traditions, my life as a child was a bit confused when the Holidays were upon us.  It was if a Episcopalian from Massachusetts married a holy-roller from Arkansas.  But since my...

The way things are

THE WAY THINGS ARE

This is a post on the human condition (conditio humana), something that philosophers and theologians such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche and (in our time) Hannah Arendt among others have wondered about and wrestled with themselves. By “others” I mean author John Steinbeck who likewise wondered about the way things are. And, once again, I’d like to anchor this essay to a passage in author John Steinbeck’s book “The Log From the Sea of Cortez.” This is an...

Trainwreck waiting to happen?

TRAINWRECK WAITING TO HAPPEN?

I have never understood the notion of taking ordinary citizens and placing them in highly technological jobs, or to represent the U.S. to the world, or to account for billions of dollars in taxpayers fund when they have trouble balancing their personal checkbook, or to make effective, executive decisions on issues they may never have heard of before. The only qualification is that they are absolutely, unquestionably loyal to one man and that they be willing to break the rules...

When Éirinn first rose

WHEN ÉIRINN FIRST ROSE

This is the history of Ireland. When Éirinn first rose, the waves of the Iapetus Ocean1 tossed about to and fro in anxious anticipation.  This was ~420 million years ago according to paleogeologists.  Two continent-sized masses–Laurentia and Gondwana—neither of which exist today, collided and one was pushed over the other.2 This act of creation made cousins out of the mountains of Donegal and the Appalachian Range in the eastern U.S., each of which share a common ancestor and amazing similarities. This is how Ireland...

Approaching advent

APPROACHING ADVENT

We are privileged to live on a planet such as our Earth.  Of the several thousands of planets discovered over the past thirty years, most are gaseous and those few that have discernable hard surfaces appear to be rocky and barren, inhospitable for any one of a number of reasons.  Some scientists remain optimistic that there are still planets capable of sustaining life as we know it “out there” somewhere (to paraphrase Fox Mulder) but others wonder where they are if this...

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