My posting has been erratic--I know.  And I used to do it first thing every day.  But somehow with all of this sickness I’ve had, I am out of whack.  I am trying to get back on whack.  Maybe when today and tomorrow are done, I will be back to my old self.

Today is a meeting of all the librarians in Oklahoma and I am supposed to meet them in Tulsa and “get acquainted.”  Tomorrow, I will be speaking to them about my first book, why I wrote it, what it is about etc. etc.  It is “up” for some kind of an award.

I don’t like things “out there” on my calendar.  I feel like I have a ball and chain around my neck.  People tell me that this is just a symptom of old age.  Maybe...but I know this...I like peace and quiet. A visitor every now and then is nice, but I tire out really quick.

After I speak to all of the Oklahoma librarians tomorrow, I’m going to do nothing for a while.  Maybe I’ll get back to writing.  My granddad, my father’s dad, was murdered.  Someone shot him and they never found out who...or why.  That might make an interesting book????

I have made myself a wreck of nerves over next Thursday...I am supposed to go to Tulsa and speak to all of Oklahoma’s librarians.  They chose my book as the “big deal” of the year and want to hear what I have to say about it.  My publisher asked, “Why did you write it?”  Like I would know.  I don’t have a clue.  I just started writing.

The only answer I could come up with was that Americans were spitting on our servicemen as they came home from Vietnam--calling them every bad word imaginable, and cursing them as if they had something to do with America’s policies.  Poor guys got drafted.  They went to war.  Or left the country to get away from it.

I was thinking about the children that they left at home.... and since Ken had nineteen years in the Marines, he got sent.  I was thinking about our children.  How awful it must have felt that their country was blaming him for the war when he had nothing to do with it.  In WWII and Korea, we had parades for our servicemen.  In Vietnam, they got spit on.  All three wars at the mercy of the draft.  We don’t have the draft anymore.      

 I found something out last night as I was preparing my lesson for next Sunday...Over half of the words in the New Testament were written by Luke.  I would have guessed it was Paul.  But counting just words, it was Luke.  The book of Luke, and Acts.

He is my favorite writer.  Paul is my favorite also...just a little behind Luke.  I like the way Luke is concise.  Orderly.  Like when he was the only one who said “If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross DAILY and follow me.  The others didn’t get the “daily” in there. 

We know he wrote the book of Acts, which is the only history book in the New Testament.  He calls his writing a “treatise” about all that Jesus began to do and teach.  He is writing to a friend named Theophilus to catch him up to date.  Luke was an investigator.  He went to the source for what he wrote.  Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, etc. It is doubtful that he met Jesus personally, but he was a solid believer and we can be thankful that he preserved his research about the Lord.

I was able to go to church yesterday.  What an uplifting experience.  I have always been a three-times-church a week in the past.  But with all the sickness the devil has been throwing at me--coupled with the cold weather--I couldn’t get from my car and into the building.  So I taught my class by phone.  That is terribly difficult because when you can’t see a person’s face, you don’t know how are receiving it.  We tried Zoom--it didn’t work because only one person could talk at time and this class is a “jump right in” group.

February is almost over and I haven’t let go of 2023.  Time is in a speed race of some sort.  I’ve been watching less of TV.  It is so depressing.  Those of us who are in our 70’s and 80’s are wondering why we didn’t see this coming.  The 1940’s and 50’s were so wonderful.  Everybody seemed to love their neighbors and kids played outside up and down the block.  We didn’t have anything to fear.  But when the “God is dead” movement took hold in the 60’s and 70’s everything went down hill and nobody trusts anyone anymore.  And children are afraid.  You would never let a child walk a mile to get to school.  We did.  If anyone touched a child to harm them, they would end up dead.  Every ya-hoo in Oklahoma who drove a pickup had a rifle rack in the back window, but I never heard of anyone using it.  

 I will be in Tulsa on March 7.  If you want a signed book, give me a phone call and I will try to meet you somewhere.  I don’t have any of the books, so you will have to bring your own to me.

This entire “book” thing has been an education for me.  I am hundreds of dollars in the red mostly from gasoline and postage and shipping...but at least there are books in the bookstores and on Amazon.

I have finished a third book, but getting it out there is so difficult.  Even if you have a publisher who is working with you, getting it into their hands requires finding a time in their schedule to go over each page for editing.  And at my age, time is precious.

I appreciate everyone of you who are helping me.  Reading the books, and telling others about them.  Bless you.  Thank you--each one--for your positive encouragement.  It means a lot.

 I got my tax stuff mailed to the accountant.  I will never understand how anybody could endure four years of agony in econ. and accounting classes to become a tax specialist.  But--I am glad they did so that I don’t have to figure it out.  My sister did it, and is the top dog of payroll in the city of Jenks. 

I never did like arithmetic.   Memorizing and remembering all those adding and multiplying combinations.  Mathematics, however, I enjoy.  Many people don’t see the difference between arithmetic and mathematics.  Arithmetic is to math what letters are to words.

Molly does math.  Each evening, she crawls in my lap and conks out at exactly 6 o’clock.  When the sun starts going down, she has figured out that it is bed time.  I don’t know how she figures daylight savings time out in that formula, but she seems to know what time it is.  When she crawls in my lap, I tell her, “Go get in your crate,” and she runs to the bedroom and crawls in it.  It is her only redeeming quality.  We are working on the other qualities.

.

People in the news have started using a new buzz word.  “Calculus.”  They say things like, “It’s just not in the calculus at this time,” etc. etc.  Or something like: “The calculus isn’t working.”  As a person who taught calculus over my 20 year career at NEO A&M college, I have no idea what they are talking about.  And I am positive that they don’t know what they mean either...it’s just one of those words that someone used and every one in the news liked the way it sounded and started using it.  And have no idea what calculus is.

Many of my students didn’t understand the word either...but they were able to use the principle involved to go on to upper division math classes that use calculus.  And to complete Physics and engineering classes.

I wish someone on the news desk would say something like, “Calculus?  What do you mean?  What are you saying?   What is the calculus of what you are trying to say?......I”m waiting on that.