If you aren't able to reinvent yourself through the years of your life, you will become obsolete.  The world changes so fast anymore that it is very difficult to keep up.  And as you age, you really don't want to keep up.  You are tired of all the changes.

When I was growing up, people fixed things.  They repaired things when they broke.  That rarely happens anymore.  It's cheaper to buy a new thing most of the time.  Especially when you look at the cost of repair.  None of us know how to fix things anymore.

When I was growing up, every man in the family knew how to fix broken things.  But the things we had, the things we owned, weren't that complicated.  Now things are so intricate, you can't cope.  

Everyone I knew when I was growing up fixed cars when they broke down.  "Pop the hood," was a common phrase when you broke down on the road.  And everyone broke down on the road.  But cars were simple back then.  No bells, no whistles.  No air-conditioning.  You rolled the windows down if you were hot.

My toaster broke recently.  I bought a new one for twelve dollars.  My dryer went kaput.  I got a new one.  I had to pay a repairman seventy-five dollars to tell me it would cost over three hundred dollars to repair it.  I was out the seventy-five dollars with nothing to show for it.

And everything is digital.  I like to never learned what that meant.  Digital??  I'm not sure I know what it means even now.  Except that it means I don't have to wind up an alarm clock anymore--I threw the wind up clock in the trash.  Obsolete.  Almost everything that breaks anymore is obsolete anyway.

I think I'm obsolete.

I got this feedback from a friend of Scott, about what I wrote last week.  It's interesting.

Technically, the U.S. mint has never made pennies.  They are one cent coins and say so on the reverse.  Pennies are use in Great Britain, Australia, etc and they say Penny on the reverse.  Also, the 1943 pennies were made of steel, not tin.  The reason to use steel was that bronze (copper alloy) was in high demand for the war time effort.  The steel pennies were magnetic and would not work in the many types of one-cent vending machines at the time, including gum machines in almost every subway station in New York. During its short tenure, citizen complaints forced the one-year issue to be replaced in 1944.

And as far the one cent coin disappearing, it would not be the first as half cents were made up to about the Civil War.  (Canada quit making one cent coins in 2012).

Mills were never made by the U.S. mint even though they were authorized to do so in the Coinage Act of 1792.  Mills were issued by state governments and came in all shapes, sizes and materials.  Mills were created as a means for consumers to avoid being "overcharged" by having to pay a full penny tax on purchases of 5 or 10 cents.  As far as I know, no tax mills have been produced by any state since 1960.Technically, the U.S. mint has never made pennies.  They are one cent coins and say so on the reverse.  Pennies are use in Great Britain, Australia, etc and they say Penny on the reverse.  Also, the 1943 pennies were made of steel, not tin.  The reason to use steel was that bronze (copper alloy) was in high demand for the war time effort.  The steel pennies were magnetic and would not work in the many types of one-cent vending machines at the time, including gum machines in almost every subway station in New York. During its short tenure, citizen complaints forced the one-year issue to be replaced in 1944.

And as far the one cent coin disappearing, it would not be the first as half cents were made up to about the Civil War.  (Canada quit making one cent coins in 2012).

My daughter Rebecca says that I never write about myself--just about others.  So this week, I'm writing about me.  I don't find it particularly interesting.

The reason I kept going to college for twenty five years without a break was because the government had a rule that if you were enrolled in six hours of credit every semester without taking a break, repayment on student loans didn't kick in and neither did the interest on those loans.  So every semester, including the summer, I enrolled in a minimum of two classes--six credits.  So I didn't have to pay back the loans--which we couldn't afford to do yet.

I had a full scholarship from the colleges I attended, but with Ken and me both in school, we needed cash for cars and gasoline and such.  He had retired from the Marines.  His retirement paid the rent and utilities, but it wasn't nearly enough for two of us to go to college--and raise four kids.  We bit the bullet and borrowed money. We borrowed from the bank, the government and student loans for both of us to finish degrees and get a job.

Every time I would get close to finishing a major and graduate, I would change my major.  That way I could keep enrolling.  Keep from paying off the student loans.  I eventually had a zillion college credits.  My advisor finally told me, "Janie, you are one class away from a degree in a number of areas.  Choose one, or two, or three.  I graduated.  Zoology, Pre-med, Chemistry, education degrees and eventually later a math degree.  But kept taking classes to keep from paying off the loans.  We just didn't have the money to pay them off.

Somewhere in there another child (Jon) came along after the others were well on their way through school.  I had open heart surgery--which slowed me down, but I kept enrolling in classes.  But finally, when I was in my fifties, we paid off the loans.  I would not advise you do what I did.  It was stressful.  I learned just enough about a lot of things in college to be semi-educated.  Which is dangerous.

I wasn't a pianist again for fifty years.  Until our church lost their pianist and asked me to help out.  I did, fearfully--because I was at that point unqualified.  My fingers were very rusty.  

But my kids were gone, I was retired, and had enough time on my hands to practice again.  It was fun, but only because I didn't have to play for a choir and learn musical scores again.  Just hymns.  I played for a number of years, and actually enjoyed doing it.  I did okay.  Not great, but adequate.  Kinda like they say how you never forget how to ride a bicycle.  Only problem was that at the age of seventy-something, I couldn't look up at the hymnal to read the notes and back down at my hands as easily. Back at eighteen, I didn't wear bifocals.

After I was a pianist, I was a military spouse.  I learned tactics, air support, and a bunch of other stuff that helped me understand things like why the Russians want Crimea.  Russia needs a path to the Black Sea.  They don't have a southern port.  I learned about keeping the troops supplied with food, shoes, ammo, and other supplies.  And how Napoleon got ahead of his supplies.  I learned the lessons of "A Bridge too Far."  None of which I used, but when you have a bunch of Marines sitting around shooting the bull, you learn things.

And then I was a mother.  Four children by the time I was twenty-five.  None of them remotely like the others.  Nothing I learned from raising any of them was worth anything raising the others.  I just tried to hold on.

And when I was twenty-eight, I started college.  Which I kept at until after I was fifty because if I stopped going, I had to pay back my student loans.  I started my first professional job at thirty-nine.  I taught math at an OSU satellite in Miami, Okla for twenty years.  

And now, I am a writer.  Who knows what I'm going to be when I grow up.

  

Once, I was a pianist.  Classical music.  I had excellent teachers who expected perfection.  I practiced one hour each day every day from the third grade to the twelfth.  That's a lot of hours.  I had musical talent, but it was mostly hard work forcing my fingers to do what was required.  Now when I turn on the classical radio station, I hear and remember the music I once played.

And then I got married, left home and left hundreds and hundreds of sheets of classical music behind me.  There was no piano where I moved with Ken.  Except at the church.  So I became a hymn pianist--playing for the Pensacola choir and church,  and through the years, my fingers lost the ability to do the classical things they had been trained to do.  

That is the perfect description of a "Use it or lose it" event.  It could not be helped.  I could not maintain something I couldn't continue to practice daily.  And as time passed, I did not miss the grueling hours of practice.  And as time passed, I was content to listen to others play the pieces I had once perfected.

Did I want to be a concert pianist?  Absolutely not.  Every girl I knew in the forties and fifties learned to play the piano.  I just stuck with it.  Every home had piano in the living room.  We played because we were supposed to play.  Different eras have different expectations.  

My parents weren't financially heeled.  I have no idea where the money came from to give me piano lessons.  I have no idea where the money came from to buy a piano. 

Everything we learn to do becomes a part of who we are.  I very seldom sit down and play my piano anymore.  But I can still do it.  I can still read the music score and play the correct notes.  And by the grace of God, I don't have arthritis in my fingers.  They still do what they were trained to do.

   

When Ken was no longer able to have dialysis--it was no longer effective, and they told him he would have around three days left--all of us gathered to be with him.  He had never been afraid of anything in his life, and he wasn't afraid of dying.  He was a Christian with total confidence in the promises of God.

I told you once what he said: "I know where I'm going, I just don't know how I'm going to get there."  He was plotting vectors to fly from point A to point B just as he had done when he was flying to a target--all those years in the Marine Corps.  When ground troops depended him to arrive on target at the specific point they wanted him, at the specific moment they wanted him there.

It was pretty quiet--until the silence was broken by an airplane flying over the area.  Low.  Illegally low.  We all commented that someone was going to get in trouble for flying so low.

And then the plane returned--fifty feet over our house--the noise was deafening.  And again.  And that's when we realized who it was.  Joe Mike.  He was saying goodby in the way pilots in the military do.  With a flyover.  With a goodby.

Ken and Joe both flew in Vietnam.  Ken always said that Joe was the little brother that he had never had.

Once when I was at youth camp at Falls Creek (I was teaching all the twelfth graders in the Senior Pavilion) I had left my Bible and notes at home.  I had to have it, so Joe and Ken got in a putt-putt and flew it to me, landed in a grassy field and handed it out the window.  

They were both excellent pilots.  Joe still is.  Ken is probably directing heavenly traffic.  Plotting vectors to help the saints to arrive at their heavenly target at the precise correct moment. 

Every Friday, my cousin Ann and I go to breakfast together.  It is a lot of fun remembering things from our childhood.  We were raised by six parents who lived in housing within hollering distance.  Her mom and dad.  My mom and dad.  And our grandparents, Pops and Gran.

Neither Ann or I knew for sure who was the final in charge person, because all six of them told us what to do, how to act, gave us instructions, etc., etc...  Ann or I can always come up with a story that the other one hasn't heard before.

This morning, I told her about finding a letter in a box of stuff at my mom's house.  My mother saved everything, and when she was gone, I was the one who had to decide what was kept and what was trashed. (I saved the attic for my brother Bill to clean out when he took vacation from where he lived in China--37 years.  Medical missionary.)

Anyway, mom had saved a letter I had written to Pops before he and Gran moved to Pryor.  "Dear Pops," it said.  "Send me sawdust.  I am stuffing a sock and making a doll."  I was around five or six at the time.

Pops was a carpenter.  And when we visited the farm where he and Gran lived, he had a setup in the barn where he used the saw.  Sawdust was thick on the barn floor, and Gran and I would darn old socks, fill them with sawdust, and make dolls.  No body could afford to buy a doll during WWII. We had rag dolls.

I think that must have been my first sewing project.  I sewed for the rest of my life.  And graduated from sawdust to foam stuffing.  Ann and I had the best childhood anyone could imagine. This morning she said, "To whom much is given, much is required."  We were blessed with six Christian parents who expected us to grow up, live moral lives, serve others, and be responsible and productive.  It's a work in progress.  Sometimes I wonder if they are watching.     

We have been studying Deuteronomy (in the Bible) for the last three months.  Moses wrote it, and is at the end of his life, addressing the people of the second generation of those who fled Egypt.  The first generation died because they didn't do what they were supposed to do--what God told them.

They are getting ready to cross over into the promised land and Moses is warning them of the temptations ahead.  Moses isn't going to get to go in with them to the place he has spent years and years leading them toward.  Moses messed up and his punishment is harsh.

But he struck a rock to get water instead of speaking to it in the name of God--which God had told him to do.  Moses was going to be the hero instead of giving God the glory for the water.  In his defense, Moses was angry.  How many times we err because we are angry. 

Joshua is going to lead them in.  Moses lays hands on him and blesses him to do the job Moses wanted and planned to do.

Deuteronomy is Moses last hurrah.  He wrote the first five books of the Bible and this is the fifth book.  

He spent his first forty years as a prince.  Another forty years in a wasteland with people who complained constantly and wanted to go back to Egypt.  And he died without accomplishing his goal.  But one of the last verses in Deuteronomy is from chapter 34--written after he died and probably added by Joshua.  Verse 10.  "And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."

He never gave up on doing what God called him to do.  

There will always be very rich people who donate money to colleges so that their children can get in.  There will always be administrations who take the money, or allow cheating on the admission requirements--corruption, because people are corrupt.  Personal donations to colleges have always around.  That's one way colleges were funded until the government got involved.

This creates an unfair advantage for the very rich at colleges like Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc...so even if we support the college--instead of the student--cheating will occur, unless we are vigilant to examine the test scores of the students that are admitted. Students who are actually ready to do college level work.

So how do you assure "who the student is" that actually takes the test when money goes under the table.  Examining driver's licenses at the door can do that.  Someone to match driver's licenses to the student who is taking the entry exam.  Surely there are some honest people left in the world to do that. 

But what about the Junior College--which doesn't have an entry test score requirement--anybody is welcome--and there are free grants for low income students and open doors at Jr. Colleges.  However, a problem was created when the government funded the student.  JC's became remediation centers.  Which is horribly expensive because of the student's room and board costs.  If you give the student the money, the college has to enroll you to get the money. 

There are dozens upon dozens who enroll in Jr. Colleges who can't do math, read or write and are given free room and board and are unprepared. What we are doing now isn't cost effective. Colleges shouldn't be remediation centers. Over half of my teaching load at a JC was remediation because the student wasn't ready to go to college.  Remediation can be  accomplished in community schools with students living at home, not in horribly expensive colleges.  Give adults a free chance to catch up if they want--in their home communities--the school buildings are already there, also teachers.  It doesn't take a college professor to remediate.  Eliminating room and board costs to the government.   

One of the so called "Free college" side effects that people who are not in the system probably have never thought about, or known about, or considered, is the unintended consequences of funding the student--which is what is being done in America at the present time.  Funding the college is a much better approach--as long as it is not dependent on the number of students who enroll.

I spent twenty years as a college math prof. and here's what happens.  A student enrolls, and the college gets federal or state money to support that student.  So the college is heavily into the recruitment business for numbers of live bodies.  Every person who enrolls adds to the college's bottom line.

And in most cases, the instructor gets a pass rate for the semester.  If you pass the student, the college gets money for that student to enroll the next semester.  There is implied pressure to pass students.  "Give them a D."  Whether they attend class, do the work, learn anything--or not.  Just pass them.

And many students take the government money, enroll, and get free room and board for a semester with no accountability.  They don't go to class, and they don't intend to go to class.  But they stay on the government dole for another semester, enroll, and the college gets their state and federal dollars again.

Primary and secondary schools have parents in a student's life.  College students don't.  Nobody is there to check up on them to see what's going on--and you are forbidden by law to report grades to parents.

If we want students to get a college education, fund the college--not the student.  That way, the student who doesn't attend classes, or is flunking, can be sent home to mom and dad for further training.  And after twenty years of wondering who the students were who were supposed to be in a class I was teaching, I can unequivocally assure you that a large number of them need further training.  They enroll on government money--and never show up. 

In the early to late 1940's, comic books were our TV. If you saved your pennies, you might could buy a comic book every month.  And pennies were precious.

Back then, during some of those war years, America was so broke that the pennies were made of something besides copper--I think it was tin? We also used "mills," which were tough round cardboard something or other that were  currency--ten to the penny.  (That's what your city "Mill" taxes are--a tenth of a penny tax.) Where did the mills go? Pennies will be the next currency to vanish.

As well as pennies, we used our comic books as currency.  We traded them all the time.  Certain comics were worth more than others; everyone had a stack of comic books.  They were worth less if they had a detached cover, so we took really good care of out stash. (Some of those comics are now worth thousands.)

That's how we learned to read--and how to read from left to right.  Pictures and words.  I've always contended that comics are a wonderful way to get your kids to read.  They will almost always graduate to better literature.  We did.

So, I was pleased to read this week that the Newbery Medal shattered a glass ceiling for cartoonists who have been long been denigrated to a lower level of literature.  It was won this year by a cartoonist for his book about a seventh grader's difficulty as he tried to fit into a new school.  Lots of pictures.  Not so many words.

My mom had a rule--if you were reading, you didn't have to do housework.  It was an awesome rule.  I made sure that my nose was in a book all of the time.  And when I tired of comics, I moved on to The Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and a gradual transition to better and better literature. Then on to the classics.  But my love of the written word began with comics.  I had a huge stack to trade.  And did. Every Saturday was "trade" day on our block.

  Today, I have my grandson Stephen here with me, he came from Dallas.  That's why I didn't post yesterday, time got away from me--and on top of that--I forgot to go to choir.  I can't do two things at once!  (His wife is coming this evening for Valentine's day as well.)

And this evening, my other grandson, Sam, is coming with his daughter--who is three years old--and bringing a friend.   So that is five people for dinner??  You always know when it's going to be a spaghetti night.  All I have to do now is go get french bread.

At teacher's meeting Wednesday night, I asked why one of the eight covenants that God made (with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, etc...) was called The Palestine Covenant--since that word is never used in the Bible in that way.  I figured there was a real Biblical reason they didn't name it the Israeli covenant.   

A couple of Seminary graduates stared at me like I was in left field.  Finally, one of them said, "I've never heard anyone ask that question before."

I got the impression that since nobody had ever asked that question before, that I was the one in left field.  Probably was.  Just curious.  I actually thought there was a reason??

My education director--whom I adore, he is such a great person--came over where I was at during a dinner the church was having the next day--and gave me a print out of why it was named that name.  He said he was curious about it too so he did some research on it.

There isn't a reason.  Somebody just named it that.  It was probably a stupid question.  Sometimes I guess I ask stupid questions.  It's probably best not to ask dumb questions.  My problem is that I never know my question is stupid until after I've asked it.

Every now and then I forget to post.  Today was one of those.  I'll catch you tomorrow.

The last few weeks Facebook is cram full of people attacking elected political leaders and political candidates.   Belittling the way they look, the way they talk, everything mean and cruel they can find to say about a person.

Makes me think I am back in the seventh grade on the playground and the bullies have found the weakest person to torment.  I don't understand why people do this.  It seems to be an especially male thing to do.  Gang up on the weakest guy.

I'm sure girls do it too, but in a more underhanded behind your back kind of way.  But most of what is on Facebook is from the masculine "Tear a person apart with words" point of view instead of discussing issues.  I find it very disturbing.  It is the mentality of "whoever-is-the-cruelest-person" wins.

Either way, it is hurtful.  And it is mean.  And it is beneath human dignity.

If you don't like Republican policy, or if you don't like Democrat's policy, attack their issues, not the person.

The thing is, there are Christians on both sides.  My mom always said to defend the person who is under attack.  You don't have to agree with them.  And when you express your views, do it in a respectful way.  

Right now, in America, respect is out the window.  Rude, caustic, mean, cruel language is in--including cursing and every low-life cuss word you ever heard.

I for one, am tired of it.  It just further divides people.  And I have a tendency to try and protect the underdog.  On either side.  Right now I am disgusted with everyone in politics, and all the supporters who are denigrating the other side.

I would like to live in the Kingdom of Heaven in peace.

I went to the grocery store to get my Darjeeling Twining's tea.  I drink a lot of it, and don't drink coffee at home at all.  I had a hot tap installed by my sink to deliver boiling water so I don't have to wait for the water to boil on the stove--I told you yesterday that I don't like to wait.  I want my tea now.

Well, the last time I bought it, it wasn't Darjeeling.  The packets held plain Black Tea.  The box said Darjeeling!  I can definitely taste the difference.  I took them back and the store returned my money, and sent them back to Twining.

So this time, I took the eight boxes of tea I was going to buy to the customer service counter and had them open them there.  Sure enough--every box was black tea.  Which they are once again are sending back to Twining.

But now I have no tea.  So I had my friend Jeanette order me some from Amazon.  Who knows whether it will be Darjeeling.  Just because it says it is on the package doesn't mean that's what's in the box.  Major frustration.

If you buy a car and only expect to get 100,000 miles out of it--and you pay $25,000 for it, then it costs you $1.00 every time you go four miles just to drive it.  Not counting replacement tires, oil, and gasoline and insurance--per mile.  Probably nobody but a mathematician would think like that. 

So the way I figure it, driving fifteen miles for tea is not an economic endeavor.  That's probably why Amazon is so successful?

When I was teaching a class at the college to first semester engineers, I gave them their first assignment: Your first year's salary will be $100,00. Taxes are 30%.  You have to have a car to get to work.  Also insurance, a room to live in, etc., etc.  Write your budget for me.  One kid came back and said he was going to live in his car and would never be able to marry.  Not a single student had ever thought about the cost of living.  That's why I gave them the assignment.

I don't like to wait.  It's a personality flaw.  Ken didn't have that trait.  He was the most patient person I've ever known.  I don't have any of that quality.  He must have spent a zillion hours waiting on me.  And never complained.

Perhaps it was his Marine Corps twenty one years of waiting.  Waiting in the slot to land.  Waiting on the tarmac for an ETD.  Waiting on orders, etc., etc.

I want what I want right now.  It makes the Christian life difficult because God doesn't seem to work on my time table.

I have been writing my prayers down on a paper I keep by the bed.  And dating the request.  And dating the answer.  Out of 24 written requests, two have been answered since Jan. 1.  I've been waiting for the other 22 to be answered for forty days.  Like I said, waiting isn't one of my good traits. 

Someone once told me that I am not in charge of God's timetable.  And that prayer isn't just about asking for things.  I use the acronym ACTS to pray, or I would always be asking, asking, asking.

A--Adore Him.

C--Confess where you have failed Him.

T--Thank Him for all of his blessings

S--Supplicate--ask (last).

Asking is last, last, last.

I get hung up when I get to Thanksgiving as I use this method because there is just so much to be thankful for.  Being born American.  To Christian parents.  My hands, my eyes, my hearing, my friends, my children and family, my garden...and can't find a place to stop thanking Him.  That keeps me on track to delay the asking part of prayer.  It also helps keep my prayers in perspective. 

Today, I make chicken salad.  I cooked the chicken breasts yesterday.  My class is coming for lunch tomorrow.  Bringing the rest of the food. 

And as luck would have it, (Hurrah!) the ladies who clean my house are coming today.  They come every two weeks.  I had that big breakfast party and over night guests last weekend, so there will be a lot of cleanup of sheets and floors.

I can't change my fitted sheets anymore.  I can't get the bottom sheet on.  There are so many small things you have to give up doing as you get older.  I don't like it.  But, that's the way it is.  You have to age gracefully??? Or give up using fitted sheets.  We didn't have those growing up anyway.

I was trying to deflate an air mattress last night--that my grandson let me borrow for last weekend.  I sat down on it to push more air out, fell, hit my head on a metal projection on a chest handle and cut my elbow open.  I called my friend Jeanette and said, "I'm being responsible and telling someone that I banged myself up.  You are it.  If I tell one of my kids, they'll nag me to go to the emergency room and I don't need to do that."  She called this morning to check on me.  I put my elbow skin back in place and taped it.  No problem.

Everyone worries about you when you are my age.  I haven't lost my mind--just my agility.  There's always a Bandaid on your body somewhere.  The important thing is not to break a bone.  I am really careful, but life requires movement--of which I don't do a lot.  Every doctor who sees me says I am in remarkable shape for my age--82 next month.  They say I'm "spry."  You don't use that word to describe young people.  Oh, well, I guess I'll accept that definition.

Yesterday I went to the bank, went inside and visited with one of the tellers who is always pleasant when I drive through, picked up two dogs at the groomer, and went to choir practice.  I guess that's spry.

Getting Squig to go out in the snow has been a challenge.  He doesn't exactly walk in it, he picks each individual foot up and places it in a downward manner until he reaches grass and then moves another foot.  One foot at a time.

I picked Becky's dog Annie up when I went to get Squig at the groomer.  They went out in the backyard and had different approaches to the snow.  Squig walked in small circles not braving getting too far from the back door. 

Annie, on the other hand headed straight out into the yard and was soon lost in  snow up to her ears.  She is almost blind and deaf and wouldn't come when I called her.  She ended up plowing into a drift staring at a brick wall.  I had to go out in the snow and get her because she couldn't hear me calling her.

They both came in covered with snow that had stuck to them in wet clumps, shook it all off on the carpet, and proceeded to lick up what they shook off.  Which was nice since I didn't have to clean it up.

I hear we got over four inches.  Which was much deeper in my back yard in the drifts.  I like it.  It waters everything slowly which is good for the plants.

One more month and I can get going on the garden.  I pulled up all the dead okra stalks the other day.  Now I have to get them to the street on the day the truck comes that takes odds and ends of stuff.

Just thinking about it gets me revved up.

I'll do my part and God can do His.

Snow!  Snow!!  And more snow!!!  I had to brave it to go out and get the paper this morning and dig around in the snow to find it.  It was covered.

And I can't make it without my daily fix of crossword, sudoko, cryptogram and all the rest of the newspaper nonsense.  I don't read the paper.  And yes, I could buy a book of all of those, but then I wouldn't know where to stop and would waste the rest of the day.  Which I do anyway.

But today, I'm going to render unto Caesar that which is Caesars and pay my taxes.  Or rather get them together to send to the tax man.  You would think that with a math degree and having taught business calc for years I could do it myself.  But no!  It involves adding.  And organization.  And figuring things out.

I did cut an article out of the paper--it was on the front page--about an explosion in a coal mine in Wilburton back in 1930 that killed a lot of miners.  I remember my dad telling me that he was called to come give blood.  He would have been 20 at the time (born in 1910) and had type O blood.  Universal donor.

He said they laid him on a table and put the guy that needed blood on the floor and ran a tube from him to the other guy.  Gravity ran it.  No fancy procedures in those days.  He said he also helped clear the mine of the dead. 

Immigrants from Italy were the largest group that worked the mines.  Later they moved to Krebs and opened restaurants.  Everyone in Oklahoma knows about Krebs Italian food.  I've eaten there a number of times through the years.

I remember once we ordered "mountain oysters" for everyone at the table, and Mom said it was the best chicken she had ever had.  We didn't tell her what it really was until later.  I thought she was going to croak.  Personally, I've always thought it was the best "Chicken" as well.  Anyone would--if you didn't tell them what they were eating.   

I've been reading the Psalms every evening when I crawl in bed for the night.  The theme of many Psalms is Praise.

But there is also David's desire for God to destroy David's enemies.  Even though he was a mighty warrior, he knew he couldn't stop the people who wanted to destroy him.  That God would have to do it.

And he was insistent in his pleas to God, that God get rid of the people who didn't want to follow God.  He wanted them wiped out.  And had a hard time understanding why God let them continue to persecute Israel.  He never doubted God's ability to do anything God wanted to do.  He never doubted the power of God.  He just wanted to be sure God was on his side.

One thing is sure.  David wanted God's hand in his life.  He wanted God to hear him, listen to him and grant his pleas.  David knew that ultimately, God was in control of the universe.  That ultimately, nothing depended on himself.  That everything depended on God.

When I read the Psalms that David wrote and collected, it is easy to see why he was a, "...man after God's own heart."  He wasn't perfect, but he was always repentant.  And always ready to give God glory.  And always ready to do better.

You have to admire the guy.

I'll get around to finishing my book on Genesis  soon.  When I do, I'll share the remaining chapters with you.  

I am a sporadic writer.  I write, stop, then go back and read and edit what I wrote and write another chapter, then go to something else for awhile.  Let it simmer.

I've finished two other books.  Down to submitting for editing.  The first book I wrote--the one I wish I had never told anyone that a publisher bought--goes to the senior editor in a week.  My end of it is done.  The cover is done.  It was supposed to be on the shelves last September.  Didn't happen.  It's coming.

I never should have told anyone it was going to be published and that way I wouldn't have been embarrassed when the publisher didn't do what they said they were going to do.  Get it in writing!!

I had fifteen people for breakfast on Saturday.  It's been years since I did something that big.  It was fun.  And everything came out of the oven like it was supposed to!  The food was really good.  People brought things to eat in addition to a sausage, egg, potato breakfast casserole I made.

Got to see relatives that I hadn't seen in years.  It's always fun to trade stories and find things out you never knew.  And to hear different versions of things you knew a little about.  Anytime family gets together, it is a lot of fun.