Closer To The Heart

I have a friend who shares my love of music. We play a game where we use song lyrics and titles to carry on a conversation. The game often begins with one of us texting an obscure lyric and then waiting for a response. Most of the time, this leads to both of us listening…

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Let Freedom Ring

Popular use of the phrase “let freedom ring” comes from its use in the song “America” (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee), written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831. Dr. Martin Luther King referenced both the song and the phrase in his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August…

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Salty

I have a good friend who puts extra salt on everything. With some effort, I have been able to convince them to at least try the food before adding salt, but after a taste, the salt always goes on. We have five basic tastes: salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami (the taste of glutamic acid).…

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Fickle Food

As I watched the responses this week to a certain coach leaving a certain football program, I was reminded of this quote: “Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.” Emily Dickenson It is not unusual for a leader to be a hero one minute and a scourge the next. Did the character of…

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The Turning Away

On the turning awayFrom the pale and downtroddenAnd the words they sayWhich we won’t understand Anthony Moore & David Gilmour A week ago in my recovery group, we were discussing the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is an interesting tale regarding a man who is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the roadside.…

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Despair-ity

I was in California this weekend to look at cars with my youngest son, his friends, and their dads. Fast cars, historic cars, unique cars, expensive cars. Driving between locations we also saw some spectacular cars on the street. What we also saw on the street were human beings living in tents, broken down vehicles,…

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Nothing In The End

He that is hard to please may get nothing in the end. Aesop I like dogs. We have two, Roscoe, a mutt we found on the street, and Dixie, a pit bull mix we adopted from a shelter. Both have their oddities but also have a trait common to most dogs; they are easy to…

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Grateful Vigilance

A great friend of mine recently left a lucrative job because the person they were working for was “ungrateful, unreasonable, and unfair.” That first word, “ungrateful”, caught my attention. What is so important about gratitude, and why do we find the lack of it so distasteful? We just observed the Fourth of July, Independence Day…

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The Shape Of Things

In a convenience store in Deer Trail, CO, I was behind a man at the checkout who had the F-word tattooed on the back of one arm and “OFF” on the back of the other. I assumed many of the same things you just did. Then I noticed he was with a child, who I…

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Antisocial Media

I recently made the mistake of commenting on a post on social media. Two words in that sentence are critical. A “mistake” is an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong. Something is “social” when it relates to society or its organization. I have decided that engaging someone online that you disagree with is…

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