Advent, the prelude to Christmas, is upon us. It is the season of peace on earth and goodwill toward all. And yet we still have war, conflicts, and unprovoked attacks on innocent people. Peace and goodwill are nice sentiments, but we have a ways to go to achieve them. I thought you might be encouraged to read what a few insights have said about peace and goodwill. From Dr. Martin Luther King First up, thoughts […]
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Giving Thanks Again
We soon come to the annual tradition of giving thanks again in the form of Thanksgiving Day. Sadly, the original intent of the holiday has been buried in the Black Friday promo ads and non-stop athletic competitions, with some gorging themselves into poor health while others struggle to find enough to eat at all. The 2022 Midterms are now behind us. Some of my candidates won by very thin margins. Some lost by equally thin […]
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Searching for Home
I’m currently in Ohio, staying with my brother while searching for my next home. I’ve had a great time exploring the area and contemplating various options. As I told the realtor who is suggesting possibilities, I either want to rent or buy something, either old or new, in or not in a planned senior retirement community. I know. Searching for a home takes a lot of imagination and investigating. As I do this, I’m also […]
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Thanksgiving History
As we approach Thanksgiving 2022, it is time to again set the Thanksgiving History record straight. The Pilgrims were not the first Americans to have a period of thanks for an abundant harvest, nor did they invite the Natives to join them. Many Indigenous North American communities had their own traditions of giving thanks for a fall harvest centuries before the Mayflower sailed into Cape Cod Bay. The Natives who gathered with the English settlers in […]
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Leiden
Leiden in The Netherlands is a delightful city of about 125,000. If you overlook the bicycles, cars, and modern buses, the center city is much as it might have been in the 1600s when the future Pilgrims settled there in 1609. After a year in Amsterdam, Separatists religious refugees from northern England relocated to Leiden to get away from church conflicts among other English religious refugee groups. At that time, Leiden was a significant industrial […]
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