Just when you think you have everything.....

You know, sometimes not being able to have something makes you want it even more. After 40 years away from the United States, there's a list of things my siblings and I might have missed all that time. The list includes:

1. Pumpernickel bread
2. Ivory soap,
3. Contemporary Christian Music,
4. French's mustard,
5. Freedom

Now, of course, there's a list of things we would all rather we didn't have:

1. Sexual Offenders Lists
2. Tax returns,
3. Snow (unless you ski!)
4. Taxes
5. Dog doo
6. Ill health.

I could go on, but you get the idea. What made me think of all this? I got a nice email today from James Waltz, long time family friend over in New Jersey....

I quote from "When your hut's on fire." 

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited 

island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him. Every day he scanned the
horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to
build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements, and
to store his few possessions. One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived
home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He
felt the worst had happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with
disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, 'God! How could you do this to me?'
Early the next day, he w as awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the
island! It had come to rescue him! 'How did you know I was here?' asked the weary
man of his rescuers. 'We saw your smoke signal,' they replied.

The Moral of This Story:


It's easy to get discouraged when things are going bad, but we shouldn't
lose heart, because God is at work in our lives, even in the midst of our pain
and suffering. Remember that the next time your little hut seems to be burning
to the ground, it just may be a smoke signal that summons the Grace of God.

Who’s life have you touched today?

You know, something somebody said to me last Friday hit home. Full of praise for some safety issue I was dealing with at work he encouraged me never to give up. Is it false humility that made me feel as though nobody was listening? Was it frustration at what seemed like chronic apathy that made me so frustrated that others could not see the point I was trying to make? Well, I never knew until he told me that folks were talking about the issue, were thinking about safety, and indeed were, in many cases, grateful that I had taken on the fight for this particular issue.

The issue, or topic, was the use of satellite tracking in flight. I feel so passionate about survival, knowing that one of the greatest tragedies could be to survive some crash landing only to succumb to the cold or to injuries sustained in that crash only because people could not find you.

The four principles of survival… etched in my thoughts about all this are:

1. Protection
   
2. Location
   
3. Water
   
4. Food
   

So many get confused about survival priorities, worrying unnecessarily about food when you can survive many days without, but will die within minutes if you are not protected against, say, the cold. Item two, LOCATION, is simply the fact that the best way to survive is to get out of the survival situation quickly. In the EMS world we’re “blessed” with the concept of the so called Golden Hour. Yet talking to my EMS aviation colleagues they seem to forget that golden hour applies to them, too, if faced with a survival situation.

So what’s that all got to do with the title, “Who’s life have you touched today?” Until mentioned in a gracious way on Friday, I had felt that nobody listens, nobody cares. Well, friends, lest you forget, people sometimes listen, but rarely say “thank you.”

Well, a big thank you right back at the gentleman who stated he was probably one of the few people who read my blog. Keep reading, my friend… I will never forget our conversation last Friday.

Ah, I don't live in the past, but I used to!

TC and the neighbor's daughter whose name I can't remember, circa 1976 or '77

Singapore Skyline circa 1972

A preposition being a bad word to end a sentence with, here's the latest photograph from a huge batch scanned at Walmart from my collection of transparencies.