To An Old Friend…
July 21, 2008
Ricky -
I replied to your email and it bounced back. email me again.
Posted in Blogs 
No Comments »
A True Hero
July 17, 2008
Recently, I became aware of a US Naval SEAL who, in 2006, gave his life for those of his team members. The SEAL team was on a rooftop in Ramadi, Iraq when an insurgent tossed a grenade at the roof. The grenade bounced off the chest of MA2 Michael Monsoor and landed in front of him. He could have saved himself, but he thought of his team members first and threw himself on the grenade. MA2 Monsoor died of injuries sustained from that blast.
In April 2008, President Bush posthumously awards MA2 Michael Monsoor the Congressional Medal of Honor. Watch the video here.
Posted in Blogs No Comments »
Violence in the Neighborhood
July 10, 2008
I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but in the last couple of days, there have been shootings, at both ends of my block. Click the link below to read one blogger’s view…
Posted in Blogs, Violence No Comments »
In Memory of Judy
May 27, 2008
Mickie & I went down to see my sister on Sunday. We arrived at her house in the evening and I spent a couple of minutes with her. When I leaned over her to talk, I said “Hi Judy, it’s Kenny,” she fluttered her eyes and moved. Ed, her husband, told me that she recognized me and was responding. Shortly after that, we went to bed, as Judy was tired and we were in her temporary bedroom.
About her condition:
The next morning (Monday, May 12, 2008), We had breakfast and Mickie read some of Mountains of Spices to Judy as she lay there.
The nurse from the hospice center came over around eleven and started to give Judy her pain meds. She noticed that Judy was breathing laboriously and she looked bad. A couple of phone calls later, there were two more reps from the hospice.
A word about hospice - as my brother-in-law Ed says “hospice doesn’t come to help you live, they come to help you die.”
Judy was dying. I watched as her hands started to turn blue and she breathed slower and slower. The nurses told us that if we had anything to say to Judy, it’d better be now. I called Joyce and she told me to put the phone to Judy’s ear. She said “I love you Sis.”
Emily had come home from school and asked if we could all give her time alone with her mom. We vacated the room and I went to the living room with Mickie and we sat down to wait. I was telling two of the nurses that Judy was the one that had taught me to read and I owed her so much. The other nurse came in to tell us that Judy was gone. It was 2:02pm EST on Monday, May 12, 2008.
I cried. I’m still crying today. Just the other day, I called Joyce and we cried together. It’s hard losing a member of your family.
Posted in Memorial, News No Comments »
It’s been a while
May 10, 2008
An emotional time is coming. My sister, Judy, who has cancer, is dying. She’s in her last days and my wife & I are going to Florida to say our goodbyes and help around the house. I can’t stop crying. Mickie asked me if I would be ok seeing her like this, but I really don’t know. The last time I lost someone was when my father died. I cried uncontrollably for days. Before that, when I went to see my mom before she died, I lost it.
We’re due to fly out tomorrow, so I’ll let you know how it goes.
Posted in Blogs No Comments »
Update: Another passsing
February 26, 2008
This time it was the (Grand)Father of Christian Rock - Larry Norman.
Listen to one of his most famous songs
This song was used in the movie A Thief In The Night, a last days themed movie.
Larry also had several other songs that I love, including UFO - about Jesus coming back and Him being an “Unidentified Flying Object coming back to take me home.”
Always sporting long, blond hair and singing of social issues, Larry was unwelcome on most Christian radio stations. His songs have been recorded by more that 350 other artists, translated into more than a dozen languages. He has also performed in Russia, China, India, Japan, Italy, South Africa, Israel, Poland, Prague, and more westernized countries such as Australia, Norway, Sweden France, England, and of course Northern Ireland’s capitol city Belfast.
More about Larry at his Wikipedia page and the Larry Norman website.
Posted in Memorial, News No Comments »
Passings
February 8, 2008
It’s been a while since I’ve put hand to keyboard and said anything. There are a few changes, 2008 came in and I’ve been busy at work learning a new program for Church management.
That’s not what I’m here to talk about, though. I want to mention some people who have passed on from this world. The first one is Roby Duke.
Roby Duke
Whilst looking up some old Christian Music, I came across Bob Bennett’s MySpace Blog where he mentions the passing of Christian musician and artist Roby Duke.
Back in the early 80’s, I used to go to a Christian bookstore in New Jersey, where I was stationed, and buy two albums every payday (4 per month). Sometimes I would just go in to buy music from people I had no idea who they were or what style they played. As long as it was Christian, it was all good. That’s how I learned of Roby Duke. As I recall, he was one of several musicians on a ‘various artists’ record.
At Bob’s blog (Bob Bennett is another Christian artist from back in the day), he tells of Roby going on to Glory on December 26 of 2007 of a heart attack. It seems there are more of the musicians I listened to in the 80’s are passing on. Keith Green (plane wreck), Mark Heard (heart attack), Rich Mullins (car wreck)…
…and now Roby Duke. Rest peacefully, brother - until we see each other in Heaven.
Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer was the American chess player who beat Russian Boris Spassky in 1972. More can be found at Bobby’s Wikipedia page.
Sir Edmund Hillary
At the age of 33, Hillary was the first person to ascend to the summit of Mount Everest. More at Wikipedia.org
Dan Fogelberg
Although I was not a fan of his music, per se, I listened to a lot of Christian musicians that were influenced by Dan Fogelberg. More at his Wikipedia page.
Posted in Blogs, Memorial No Comments »
Semper Fi
January 6, 2008
I saw an interesting article on an incident that happened right here in Chicago. It involved a Marine, a friend and a lawyer. Ok, so if you think you know where this is going, you don’t. Here’s the low-down:
The Marine (Sgt. McNulty) was visiting a friend before shipping off for his 2nd tour in Iraq. When he was about to leave his friend, he noticed someone leaning against his shiny, black BMW. The Marine challenged the stranger only to find out the perpetrator had keyed the BMW. Sgt McNulty endured anti-military abuse, insults about his demeanor and other epitaphs hurled by the stranger. The police were called and the man arrested for a misdemeanor offense.
This is where the lawyer comes in. No, not to represent the Jarhead (I say that respectfully as a fellow service member)… The culprit of this crime was the lawyer. Anti-military low-life Jay R. Grodner, Esq. did the keying of the car that costs over $2,400 to the car and tried to weasel out of it. Now he’s in a bit of hot water. It seems the shyster showed up late for the court case and almost had a bench warrant out for his personage.
Read more at these pages:
The Chicago Times columnist John Kass
Urban Grounds blog page
Flopping Aces
Snopes.com
Posted in Blogs, News No Comments »
Devotion from yesterday
December 16, 2007
My wife has this devotional calendar from Max Lucado that takes text from Max’s recent book Come Thirsty.
The devotion for December 15th was on our actions dealing with fear…
We fear rejection, so we follow the crowd. We fear not fitting in, so we take the drugs. For fear of standing out, we wear what everyone else wears. For fear of blending in, we wear what no one else wears. For fear of sleeping alone, we sleep with anyone. For fear of not being loved, we search for love in all the wrong places. But God flushes those fears. Those saturated in God’s love don’t sell out to win the love of others.
Interestingly enough, the devotional calendar is in our bathroom. I read this while using the bathroom and, quite honestly, I could only think of one person that this applied to - My daughter Elisabeth. Y’see, she’s been hurt so many times, from both her mother and by me. We were divorced when she was very young and she never knew me. Most girls that come from broken families wind up getting into the worst problems with relationships and she is no different. I only hope pray she can turn this around.
In time.
Posted in Bible Readings, Blogs No Comments »
Blogging tips
December 16, 2007
As I usually do, I check out tech sites to keep up on the latest trends, software and news, computer safety and general information. One site I regularly use for information is DownloadSquad.com. The particular article I wanted to share today is on blogging. If you don’t know what a blog is, you’re reading one right now. This one is a personal blog, but the article covered business blogs.
Here’s a couple of excerpts from that article.
So you want to start a business blog? Congratulations! Let’s start out by avoiding some of the “great blog mistakes” that too many potential bloggers make.
- Who are you? If you’re going to blog for business, make sure the readers know who you are and update the ‘About the Author’ page frequently.
- Bad post titles. Headlines are important since that’s probably what shows up in most blog aggregators (RSS).
- Meaningless links. If you’re going to the trouble of linking to a source or interesting article, make the link text count. Avoid “click here” as a link and use what we call content-rich keywords, similar to a great article by Susie Smith about testing laptop bags designed for women.
- Difficult domains. Get an $8 domain with meaning and resolve it to your blog. Although it’s tempting to get a free blogger.com or wordpress.com blog, your link will never be your own (and you’re subject to the slings and arrows of the ads, layout and other stuff free providers can do).
- Media Messes. Do include media; don’t include too much or meaningless media. Add photos or audio files where appropriate but don’t stick in a photo just because you’ve got room for it.
- Tagless Posts. Tags are the holy grail of blogging and are the underpinnings of Web 2.0. Use tags, create content-rich tags and tag every post.
- Not Feeding Your Posts. If you’re not using an RSS feed, chances are no one is reading your blog.
- Content over Spelling. Being profound and espousing about great topics doesn’t excuse you from spelling mistakes and kindergarten grammar.
The full article can be found at DownloadSquad.com’s website.
Although I’m not strictly “business” in my website leanings, I am trying to keep these ideas in my head when blogging. As the old adage says - “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.“
Posted in Blogs, Tech Support No Comments »
content rss
