Let’s take time now to be thankful for everything we have in life. Given the recent election, this time next year may be a different story  :)   Continue reading Happy Thanksgiving…

  One of the advantages of living in a rural forest area are all the feathered friends that come to visit our feeders. We go through tons of feed and suet each winter but seeing the birds makes the winter a little less dreary for me. Continue reading My Feathered Friends..

   One of the most unique places I have ever visited in this country is the “Grounds For Sculpture” in northern New Jersey.  It is a fascinating place where you sometimes don’t know if the person beside you is real … Continue reading Grounds For Sculpture…

In Part 2 of my “How Did We Get Here” series on Thursday it was mentioned that there are 7 million men who have quit looking for work. I couldn’t understand that given that our unemployment rate is at historic lows so I decided to look into this further and found  the quote below: More than 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54—prime working age—have dropped out of the labor force. That means they’re not only unemployed but have also given up looking for a job Why aren’t they working? There is no one single reason. Men … Continue reading America’s missing male workers

  For this 5Star Wednesday I have chosen diners.  They are not  very prevalent here in Indiana but when we lived in New Jersey they seemed to be on almost every corner.  Now I will admit that the food at diners is maybe not 5Star quality but there is just something about the general atmosphere that thoroughly entices me.  No matter which diner I went it seemed almost like visiting my family. Inevitably the waitress who came to take our order always said “What can I get for you hon?” ;) Diners just hold a special place in my heart. Click … Continue reading Diners…

   Time is running out for all of us. Everyday our life is getting closer to the end. For some of us our time left on this earth is very short and for others it is comparably longer. It is not the amount of time we have left that is important but what we do with it. We can lay back and worry about dying  and fear others who might take our life away from us or we can accept that our time is running out as inevitable and just live life the best we can. The choice is ours. Too … Continue reading Time Is Running Out…

I gotta take one last stab at this insane political season before it is over.  David Horsey’s cartoon says it all to me.  If he is elected I expect he would put his family in as his cabinet so they and tell everyone what he really meant.  And then there is Rudy, he is kind of like the loyal dog of the family. SIX MORE DAYS…… Continue reading One Last Stab…

  On this 5Star Wednesday I want to celebrate Bent’s old Fort in southern Colorado. It is one of those mystical places where I almost feel the people that were there a hundred  and fifty years ago.  One of the things that make it special is that it was not a military fort but a commercial trading post. They say it was the source of the TV mini-series “Centennial”that I much admired years ago. 5Star Wednesdays is about one picture or one thought so I will leave you here with my favorite picture of the place. Continue reading Bent’s Old Fort…

The quotes below are a nice addition to the recent post about voter suppression. The solution given is to add an amendment to our U.S. Constitution to say that everyone over 18 has an inalienable right to vote. This sounds like an ideal solution to me. A Fourth Circuit panel ruled a few months ago that North Carolina’s voter ID law violated the Constitution because it targeted “African-Americans with almost surgical precision…the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the state’s true motivation.” More recently, Berman discovered an email from a Wisconsin Republican official refusing to put up an early voting station at … Continue reading How to end voter suppression once and for all

I see where the federal courts have struck down some State’s voting laws as unconstitutional in that they were really about suppressing the vote. To me that is a good thing. But in my mind our entire election process needs to be changed to allow everyone to vote when it is convenient for them.  Why are we stuck to one work day to cast our choices of who will do the people’s business? One of the basic problems with America’s democracy is that we vote at a much lower level than almost any democracy in the world.  Too many of us, … Continue reading Suppressing The Vote…

  On my most recent uRV trip I visited the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green KY.  I am not necessarily a Corvette or even a car fan but I recognize that Corvettes are a significant part of America. They are our answer to all those expensive foreign cars like Porsche and such. One of the things that drew me to this particular place was the story on the Velocity channel about how the main display area collapsed into a giant sink hole a couple of years ago. Of course this event is a major part of story now for them. I worked … Continue reading Corvette Museum – Bowling Green

“Say something often enough and people will believe it.” I’m not sure who originally said the quote above but it is certainly true during the current presidential campaign. But if you step back and look at the facts it often tells you a different story. The below words are from Red Letter Christians by Kathy Vestal. She has managed to address almost all the things in a small number of words that most people criticize Hillary for. (I hate blah, blah, blah..) : Take, for example, Benghazi. Exactly what did Hillary do? What should she have done? It’s hard for most of … Continue reading “Anybody But Hillary”…

  There is just something soothing about seeing people do good words in Jesus’ name.  Given our totally insane political season we all need something soothing. Catholics seem to be especially suited and tuned to doing good works. With that in mind one of the places I visited this year during my uRV trips was St.Meinrad Archabbey in Ferdinand Indiana. It is one of only two archabbeies in the nation. I visited here many years ago but the experience  affected me even more this time. The serenity of the place almost melted away my pent up anxiety caused by our current … Continue reading Something Soothing…