Thursday, December 25, 2008

50

50, that sounds ominous. It is a big number that's for sure. Half a Century and as I look back at all the changes and how far we have come since I was born on this day in 1958 it seems extraordinary. I can remember when the year 2000 sounded like it was in the far, far, distant future and would never arrive and here it is 2008, almost 2009. We have come a long way from 1958. We have fought several wars, and the world has grown, not in land mass, but in countries and people. The Soviet Union split and the Berlin Wall fell. We put men on the moon and a space station in outer space. Society has begun to fall into a moral decline that is speeding toward an explosive end and the world is heading, or should I say spiraling into what may be a great depression.
As I look back on my life I think of things that stand out. Seeing Elvis in concert, his passing, traveling to many places as a military dependent and as an adult, marriage, raising two boys, earning my bachelors and my masters degrees in education. I also look at the inventions that have come about during my life time, desktop and then laptop computers, cell phones, CD's, video cameras, microwaves, iPods, iPhones, and many others too numerous to count. We added two states to our country and made changes in our government. It will be interesting to see where we are 50 years from today.
We have gone away from and returned to many things as a society, aprons were the thing of our grandmother's generation and now they are becoming the thing of our children's generation. We have come full circle in many ways, with many things.
It is interesting what can change in 10 years time, but even more so when you look at a greater span of time, like half a century. I want to reflect more on this period of time and change in my life and our world's life as I look back over these last 50 years of my life and look forward to the next 50.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Cancer

Cancer is an awful disease that attacks people in many cases for reasons unknown. Why does it choose one person over another? I know a rhetorical question. But when it strikes your family you often wonder why. I know some of the reasons it struck my father, he is and had been for too many years a heavy smoker. But I question why some smokers never get cancer, and yet live to be 100. It seems that cancer is random, it is like play Russian roulette. Will the cancer bullet strike this one, or that one?
I know this is a tough subject, but I am wondering about it and I am questioning the treatments, the diagnosis, the death sentence if you will that is handed out by doctors. Do they really know who will live and who will die and how long someone will live? I mean first it was a year, then six months, and now a year again. It is as if we are simply puppets in the game they play and the lives of our loved ones are what is at stake.
Why is some people dance through treatment and others drag? Why do some die quickly and others linger for years?
What is death really? Is it the beginning of a new life or just the end, period.
I would really like to know the answers to my questions, but the only one who can answer them is God and though I trust in him, there are days I feel he is not listening. I know that he only gives me as much as I can handle, but why, oh, why, does he think I can handle so much?

It Is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to Pay Off Your College Loan

  There is a key point that the leftist are totally missing in their, asinine argument, saying that the government should pay off student lo...