Posts

Keith

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Baby Keith. Mom ’ s idea of putting the baby ’ s age right in the photo was a stroke of genius. My mother often told me the story of the day she and Dad brought Keith home from the hospital. They laid him on the couch, and I, two-and-a-half years old, looked at him and said, “Where’s his mommy?” At some point thereafter I comprehended the fact that my mommy and daddy were also Keith’s mommy and daddy, and that meant we were brothers. When we were still quite young, Keith and I had our own TV program. It was broadcast every evening immediately after supper. The two of us would go into the living room, stand in front of a large mirror, and put on a comedy show. Its high-brow humor consisted mostly of two little boys dancing around and acting silly, the larger one repeatedly hitting the smaller one on the head and pushing him off camera because he had made a comment that was, in the estimation of the larger one, stupid—while the smaller one gamely played along, always smiling, willingly...

“We’re in the Rockies”

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Hi all, Back in Sept/Oct when Cindy and I were on our trip to southern Colorado , we met bloggers / Youtubers Matt and Cheryl of We ’ re in the Rockies — very nice folks! When I mentioned we were spending a night at the Grand Imperial Hotel in Silverton , Cheryl asked me to write up a summary of our experience and said she would post it on their blog. She has done so, and I ’ m excited to see it! If you ’ re interested in lots of interesting details about the Durango-Silverton Railroad AND in my blog post (“A Night at the (Haunted?) Grand Imperial Hotel, Silverton, Colorado”), click here . Scroll to the bottom for my contribution. I hope you enjoy it. I had fun writing it! Steve Cheryl and Cindy on our way to Silverton, CO, via the historic Durango-Silverton Railroad.

“He Remembers That We Are Dust”: Encouragement for a New Year

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PLEASE NOTE: All verses are quoted from the New International Version unless otherwise noted. Any quotations given without a verse reference are my own interpretation. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Old Testament prophet Elijah. His life is filled with astonishing, unique events, one of which I can relate to all too well. Elijah’s origins are a mystery. He shows up for the first time in 1 Kings 17:1 : “Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.’” Where was Tishbe? No one knows for sure. What else do we know about Tishbe and Tishbites? Nothing. Elijah is the only person identified as such in the Bible. Elijah shows amazing confidence in the face of a wicked ruler who could easily have put him to death. I used to think that God had spoken to Elijah suddenly, in a dream perhaps, and told him out of the blue to go to Ahab wi...

The Not-So-Dry Tortugas

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The Yankee Freedom , docked at Dry Tortugas National Park. I am a planner. Back when I was a teacher, I planned out every day of the following school year before leaving for the summer. Every single day. That’s the truth. And anyone in my family will tell you that when it comes to vacations, my planning can become obsessive. I sometimes joke that if we leave for vacation five minutes late, the schedule for the entire week will be thrown off! I like to plan because I like having things organized; I like feeling secure; I like being ready for contingencies. I don’t like “winging it”; I don’t like being spontaneous; I don’t like going somewhere without knowing where we are going, how long we will stay, how much it will cost, or when we will get back. So I had done a lot of planning about a year ago when Cindy and I took a ten-day trip to Florida for our fortieth wedding anniversary. We did Florida from bottom to top, starting at the Keys, moving up to the Everglades, hitting Miami, ...