Musings
What Am I Meant To Know?
I am a data junky. I love to know things. How things work. How things came to be. How things are made. I want to know. This is not a bad thing in general. Knowledge can be good when it enables us to move ourselves and those around us in positive directions. Knowledge can lift…
Read MoreRuts Of The Past
Four Feet, Eight and One-Half Inches. That is the distance between the rails of a standard gauge railroad in the United States. What an odd number. There is a very specific reason for that measurement. US railroads were built by English expatriates, and that’s the way they built them in England. The English used that…
Read MoreImperfectly Happy
Champagne was “invented” in 1531 by Benedictine monks in the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire near Carcassonne, France. They bottled wine before the initial fermentation had ended, causing the byproduct of the fermentation, carbon dioxide, to be trapped in solution in the bottled wine. It would be a century before Christopher Merret detailed what is now called…
Read MoreReason For The Season
I recently had the privilege of spending some time with my friend, Heath Thomas, who is the President of Oklahoma Baptist University. During our conversation, he said that he had been looking at the original charter for the University. The idea for a Baptist University in Shawnee was born before Oklahoma was even a state. The founders…
Read MoreLet It Snow
Is it true that no two snowflakes are alike? As is often the case, the answer depends on what you mean by the question. With 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 crystals per year, if you checked a million snowflakes per second it would take you over 31 billion years to check just a single year’s worth. So, we can…
Read MoreCars & Coffee
I attended Cars & Coffee with my youngest son Chris this past Saturday. This is an informal gathering of car enthusiasts in the parking lot of a local shopping center. I would guess more than 200 cars are there on a typical first Saturday of each month. My son drives a late model Honda Civic Sport EX. He…
Read MoreHallmark Of A Good Life
After we had eaten our turkey, dressing, and potatoes smothered in gravy and had a second piece of pie, it was acceptable to start Christmas. Many of you already know my rule, no Christmas until after Thanksgiving. One unintended consequence of this mandate occurs the Friday after Thanksgiving when we attempt to put up all…
Read MoreGratefully Thankful
This week will contain the fourth Thursday in November. Since 1942, by an act of Congress, this date has been Thanksgiving. Before that, it was observed intermittently and on various dates. Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, had proclaimed the last Thursday in November a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth…
Read MoreWe Want A Shrubbery
In the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur and his band are blocked by the dreaded Knights Who Say “Ni!” in an enchanted forest. “We want a shrubbery,” demands the giant Knight, adding, “One that looks nice…and not too expensive.” King Arthur delivers a “shrubbery” after a short (hilarious) quest, but the…
Read MoreMy Prerogative
“Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.” Criss Jami My greatest concern as I watch the events of this last election cycle unfold is not who is in the…
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