Monthly Archives: October 2009

I have many bad habits. I am married to a person who either refuses to relate them to me or is blinded by love and the many books in which he buries his face. That said, I am well aware that I do things incorrectly and that I have bad habits. For example, I frequently leave a wet towel on the bed. I know this isn’t acceptable. (For what it’s worth, if it doesn’t bother him it bothers me and I am trying to correct myself.) I squeeze the toothpaste from the top. Nope. Doesn’t bother him. I play my music very loud on a regular basis. No. He has concentration habits from the gods, and as he reads not a thing interrupts him

But speaking and writing habits… I’m usually pretty tight with that. I mean I’m a writer and a public speaker… I only “do it” for effect. But this was not so today.

I took off for the pool to swim my mile… the entire time I’m swimming I’m thinking about grammar as I’m counting my strokes per lap. Everybody has a hot button with

Sunday is a day of rest. It is a day to forget everything that was work and worry throughout the week and find peace and recovery.

Some find it by sleeping later than usual. Others find it in front of the TV watching a favorite football team play ball. Many find peace by praising God in a local church while others do the same thing from a place in the quiet of their home. While going to church has always been a part of my routine I, for one, will always associate Sunday with better comics to read in the newspaper.

As a child, the Sunday paper would come and after that morning of worship, I would hit the newspapers and dive through it for the section with the funnies. I felt fortunate that I did not grow up in my great-grandfather’s house. My great-grandfather was a minister who didn’t allow any of his family to read anything but the Bible on Sunday. While this is to me the most important book ever written and compiled, the ruling (for my grandfather) to read only the Bible on Sunday seemed harsh. He knew

Our lives, the time in our lives, are based on three calendars depending on whom your are and where you are. Man has used the Gregorian, the Jewish, and the Muhammadan. The Gregorian and the Jewish calendars are based on the equinoxes (which occur March 21 and September 23) and the solstices (which occur June 22 and December 22). The Muhammadan calendar is the only one of the three that is based on the Lunar activity; the first day of this calendar was Friday, July 16, A.D. 622.

As we entered into the 2000 millennium, I found myself frequently fascinated with the movement of time. Had my grandmother lived to see the turn of the millennium she would have been 100 years of age. While she did not live to see 100 years of life, many more persons are living passed the triple digit mark.

When we are children, we mark our years with great happiness. We celebrate with parties and gifts and much eating of cake and ice cream. We sing! I had many of those celebrations myself. (The best one was my 8th birthday when my dad, a movie theater manager

My grandmother use to say, “You’re as old as you feel.”
My father use to say, “Gettin’ old ain’t for sissies!”

I guess by the time we start considering sayings like these, we must think that age is creeping up on us. I wasn’t thinking about it too much until a local younger woman came up to me the other day and said, “How do you do it? You stay so young looking when you’re so much older than me.”

“Hmmm….,” I’m thinking. “Did she really mean for it to come out that way?”

She continued, “I mean you must be at least my mother’s age and she looks terrible!”

“Yep, she meant it that way.”

This younger woman went on and on, until at last I thought I’d had enough of it. So I said, “Ya know what? I’m sort of amazed that you have all this energy to critique your mother and me. I’d think instead you’d be taking notes on what we’re doing; ’cause one day in the not too distant future you will be me, or your mother. Nice to see.” I smiled and excused myself.

So now I’m thinking about age. Blast.

The four bros and I like to create. We create pictures, designs, programs of all kinds; we create classes, Christmas and birthday gifts.
Sometimes we just sketch because it feels good to do it. My mother, who had a degree in Grapho-Analysis, learned that every single person is creative, but only a few are sensitive. I suppose if you put the two together and you were both highly sensitive and creative, this would make you Michelangelo or Leonardo.

I started sketching in grade school when my brother taught me things like drawing a straight line, a circle, and different triangles. Then I would take those images and make something else out of them. Music became more interesting for a time, I veered away from what my brother did so well.

1986 – 1994: Enter a series of major surgeries on my legs and many months of a wheel chair, crutches and then learning to walk again. To stay motivated and to rest, I read every book I could find; and when that got boring, number three bro told me I wanted to learn to sketch.

He handed me a sketchpad, and a number two

Every year in the fall, high schools all over the nation gear up for the fight to win a football game on Thursday or Friday night. Bands play. People cheer. Parents watch their children grow and visit with friends in the stands. Someone wins and someone loses. No matter, everyone walks away with memories that last for a lifetime. But let’s talk specifics. I recall only one field:

Tiger Field… La Junta, Colorado. This is a place where decades of energy since 1938 have been expounded, emotion has been rampant, and loyalty has been witnessed as well as felt. This weekend, the Tiger Field that I remember will host its last homecoming. My heart is full of memories and emotions. I cannot be there for this historic event in time, so I’m writing this piece as a tribute to those who served on the field as players, those who coached, those who cheered, and those who played in the LJHS Tiger Marching Band. Here it is. These are thoughts from me and many other grads about the field that meant so much and gave us pictures in our minds to