On the South Side

I had the great pleasure of watching one of my all time favorite movies with Marty last night. She was alot of fun to watch it with because she also has a great appreciation for movies in general and this one in particular. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence is absolutely one of the best movies I've seen. I know others will scoff at this; that's OK. There are so many poignant moments in this movie, I wouldn't know where to begin. My main point to make is that the film-maker is saying that both men shot Liberty. One was brave enough to face him in the street, the other brave enough to give the woman he loved what she wanted by saving the life of the man she loved. The murder of Liberty is beside the point. As John Wayne put it, "Murder, pure and simple; but I can live with it. Hallie wanted you alive. You taught her to read; now go back in there and give her something to read about." The movie sums up the mythic Wild West where the combination of the law book and...

I'm slowly getting back to normal. It's been a whirlwind month so far. Pretty much non-stop since the 1st. But, now I'm back to work and back to church and back to whatever else I was doing or supposed to be doing. What am I doing? Well us St. Louisans are ready for a World Series. We have possibly one of the best Cardinal teams in history. The 1985 Cardinals were in this category too. They lost the Series to the Royals that year. This year it'll be the Yankees of course. The Cardinals are the only team that Joe Torre used to manage that he hasn't beaten in a World Series. He'll be disappointed this year. I was just looking at Stats from 1985. Vince Coleman was earning $50,000 a year! In 1994, his last good year, he earned $ 3,312,500! He didn't play in the '85 series because he was run over by a tarp. Here's an exerpt from the Baseball Library : With light rain falling on the field, the Busch Stadium grounds crew prepared to roll up the...

Since this is the home of the Blue Angles we got to see them practice for free down at the base. It was pretty hard to get a good shot of them, I was surprised that I got this one. You know, it's hard writing about vacation. What would you rather do? Be on vacation or write about vacation?

View from our balcony.

We're here! We had a wonderful trip down. Tropical Storm Bonnie blew through the panhandle with hardly anything to speak of. Hurricane Charlie, of course is another story, but it didn't affect this area at all. We started off this morning (Sunday) with a great church s ervice at Gulf Breeze United Methodist. We went to the contemporary service at 9:30. It was great, lots of people, lots of great songs. It was very moving. The weather is simply unbelievable. So far it's been no hotter than 85 degrees. The water is just perfect; green and shallow out about 50 feet. Sharks, jellyfish, you know, just perfect. Emily and Maria have been out several times already and they're talking about going para-sailing some time this week. I'll be posting some pictures tonight sometime. We've taken quite a few already. Hope everybody is doing well. Marty, we're praying for your health; don't think that we've forgotten about you just because we're having th...

Here's the girls and me. Left to right: Becky's the oldest though she looks like the youngest, Jennifer, the youngest though she's decided to let the gray show a little, and Lisa, the second oldest who wouldn't be caught dead with gray. Emily says I should do something about my gray beard.

Tomorrow we leave for Pensacola, FL. We'll drive first to Mephis where we'll stay the night with Annette's sister Jane and husband Gary. From there we'll all head out Saturday morning for Pensacola. We should arrive there late afternoon Sat. By then, Charlie is expected to be in North Carolina. That is if he travels as predicted. I'm sure he'll behave himself, right? I am so looking forward to this vacation. I love Pensacola. 'can't wait to sit in the hot tub and watch the Gulf of Mexico roll in. I'll write some from down there...if I feel like it!

This was waiting for me on my keyboard when I got to work this morning. After a few seconds of childlike euphoria, I knew there was only one person who could've pulled this off. I turned around and asked, "Loretta, did you do this?" She smiled. I don't know what to say. She found it at an estate sale. It's in much better shape than mine was when I last saw it . I promptly put it in my right front pocket and went about my day. But every now and then I would reach into the pocket at feel it and think, "Oh yeah."

I'm please to have all three of my sisters in St. Louis for a while. Becky's the oldest and she lives here. Lisa is next and she lives outside Sacramento. Jennifer, the blogging sister , is in from Woodland Park CO. It's always very comforting to be in the same room with all of them together. Like laying your head in your mother's lap. At the same time, we have Vacation Bible School all week through Thursday, so it's very busy; with us catching up with them after 9:00 pm each night. Luckily, they're still here after VBS is over. VBS is tiring, but fun. We had at least 50 kids tonight. The little ones are the most fun, they really get into singing and dancing. Don't know how much I'll be writing over the next two weeks, but I'm going to try.

I have a warm spot in my heart for the Political Conventions; for either party. They both hold special meaning for me because of my father. Politics is something he’s always been interested in and he’s shared that interest with me since I was a boy. I remember watching the conventions as he would explain the whole thing to me. It all seemed so mysterious then. Of course, it actually was a bit mysterious back then as opposed to now where there is no drama to speak of. I also remember playing a board game with him called “ Landslide .” It was a regular game where the object was to collect enough electoral votes to become President. This further educated me in the ways of America’s Politics. During this political season, he and I often will sit for hours discussing and debating the candidates; what they should do or say, what they should emphasize or minimize about themselves. “If it were me, I’d blah, blah, blah.” Followed by, “Oh, no, are you crazy? He should blah, blah, blah.” ...

My #1 fan, Marty, is still recovering in the hospital. She would have jumped in to the Catwoman game with both feet. We're all thinking and praying for you Marty. Get well soon and get back online where you belong.

OK, if you haven't read some of the reviews for Catwoman I'll just tell you they're all bad. But, is the movie worse than the title of these reviews? I think we can do better. I'm going to list some of the ones I've seen and your job is to come up with a better one. Brush with Catwoman may cause a bad reaction Catwoman far from purr-fect Catwoman: From housecat to Hallecat Catwoman: Purr-fectly dreadful Catwoman makes viewers want to claw their eyes out Catwoman is declawed by director's style, goofy story Catwoman is a catastrophe This cat lacks bite Film should be fixed Fails to purr Catwoman coughs up a hairball Catwoman: No amount of kitty litter could save this stinker Kitty litter Fur doesn't fly Ewwww, who spilled the litter box? Catwoman stinks Like claws on a chalkboard Catwoman uses up all of its nine lives in about 35 minutes Catwoman claws its way to bottom of litterbox All of these are actual titles of actual reviews from the past day or two...

I don't know...my thoughts are all over the place tonight. We're not walking tonight because the humidity and temperature are just unbearable.  My thoughts are with Marty tonight as she heads into surgery tomorrow morning. We'll keep praying for you, Marty. When I last wrote, I talked about my Spider-man Coin and a friend sent me a link to one for sale on Ebay. I did bid on it, but it eventually sold for over $50.00, and I'm not quite ready to spend that much. Maybe later. If you're wondering what I've been up to, well... just re-read the last couple of month's blog entries and you pretty much got it. The coffee houses are over for the season. We'll do something in December for Christmas, but other than that, we won't do another until January. In August we go to Pensacola, in September it's Bellerive Day, October the Church Bazaar and November it's Thanksgiving. This will be our fourth year in a row that we've vacationed in Pe...

For your reading pleasure tonight: Read this: (This was written by a Democrat and it was written before the Iraqi War.) The Pentagon's New Map And then read a review on the book here: Michael Barone Let me know what you think.

When I was twelve or so years of age, my best friend Chris Stift and I sent away for two solid bronze Spider-man coins. They were a bit bigger that a Kennedy dollar and each coin had a serial number etched in the side. The front of the coin showed Spider-man hanging from a wall and the back had just his face, but split in two; one side Spider-man, the other side Peter Parker. Above that was the inscription, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I carried that coin with me in my pocket wherever I went. I managed to keep it with me for over twenty years before I lost it. People would always say, “You should put that away before you lose it.” But I loved having it. I’d had it in my pocket since I was a boy. Do I now wish that I’d put it away? No, I just wish I had it back in my pocket. One day I was showing it to a grade school teacher of mine, and upon reading the back, he snorted, “Someone should have told that to Nixon.” I responded, “Whatever.” He shouldn’t debase ...

"Mountains" by Emily Hudson 

Is that so much to ask? Yes, as it turns out, it is a lot to ask for. Why? Because all people were, are and will forever be sinful. Before I came to see the world through the Christian lens, I did not like this concept. It's not that I "like it" now of course, it's just that I see it as a hypothesis that explains the whole of human history better than any other. People are bad. Some people are real bad and some people are hardly bad at all. But, all of us have the potential to be real bad. Given the right or extreme circumstances, we all are capable of terrible things. Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein were human beings just like you and me. People that rape young girls and boys differ from us in no fundamental way. Are the "sick?" Sure they are. But we're all sick. But I digress. I'm taking the occasion of the holiday to write briefly on freedom. I've made comments here and there on the subject, but I want to take the time tonig...

(The following is an excerpt from an Iraqi Blogger.) The hall was busy and everyone was chatting and laughing loud. They had Al-Jazeera on (something I never managed to convince them to stop doing). Then suddenly Mr. Bremer appeared on TV reading his last speech before he left Iraq. I approached the TV to listen carefully to the speech, as I expected it to be difficult in the midst of all that noise. To my surprise everyone stopped what they were doing and started watching as attentively as I was. The speech was impressive and you could hear the sound of a needle if one had dropped it at that time. The most sensational moment was the end of the speech when Mr. Bremer used a famous Arab emotional poem. The poem was for a famous Arab poet who said it while leaving Baghdad. Al-Jazeera had put an interpreter who tried to translate even the Arabic poem which Mr. Bremer was telling in a fair Arabic! “Let this damned interpreter shut up. We want to hear what the man is saying” One of my co...

History will judge us as liberators.  

These big sycamore trees here in Carondelet and Holly Hills are getting old and one by one they're all dying. It's a turning of the page for the South Side. The trees were planted along with the neighborhood in the 1920's and '30's. I started thinking about this when the big wind storms blew through here last month and took a whole lot of Sycamore limbs with them. In some case, whole trees came out of the ground and some just snapped off above the ground. And, now I think about it every night as we walk the neighborhood and I glance around from tree to tree. Some of them are still in good shape, some of them are gigantic. Will this neighborhood survive for 50, 60, or even 100 years? What do I mean by "survive?" I don't know. It's so nice right now. We sat on the porch tonight, 11:00 pm or so, and it was so quiet. We feel safe walking late at night. Do I want my daughter to settle here to raise a family? I don't know.