Keywords by David Yonke

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Madrid, 1933

I am in awe of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photographer who had such an eye for the moment. I watched a documentary recently that was filmed in 2003, the year before he died at age 96.
Cartier-Bresson took "simple" black and white photos, no special effects, no big studio productions, no special lenses. It was just a quick click and ... the magic happened. As he said in the documentary, "You either get it or you don't."
He had an eye for framing the photos, for being in the right place at the right time, anticipating the imminence of the photo, and was ready when the time came.
I once read a wonderful quote from Henri: "Photography is nothing. It's life that interests me."
Cartier-Bresson was the first photographer who really inspired me back in the 1970s when I started fiddling with an old Nikkormat camera. Even after all these years I still find his work to be astoundingly beautiful and moving.
I would love to have one of his original prints, but they sell for $10,000 and up.... well maybe someday. But in the meantime, I enjoy poring over books of his work and appreciating his incredible legacy.
Here is a link to his official website.

Toledo, Ohio
March 31, 2008

A few months ago I wrote a story about Aaron Shapiro, a young man from Perrysburg, Ohio, who had spent the better part of 2007 in Sudan, reporting on churches destroyed during the African country's 20-year civil war.
Yesterday I interviewed Dr. Glenn Geelhoed, a surgeon from Washington D.C., for an article I'm writing about the Medical Missions Hall of Fame. Dr. Geelhoed is a past inductee and was in town for the upcoming ceremony and to give a talk.
At the end of the interview, he was talking about his recent work in Sudan, in the Nuba Mountain area. I mentioned that I had written an article about a local guy who was working there for Samaritan's Purse. Dr. Geelhoed said: "I treated him."
I knew Aaron had a bout with malaria, and as it turns out the doctor from Washington whom I interviewed yesterday was the one who treated Aaron when he was sick.
Just an interesting little encounter that proves that the world is indeed a small place at times.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
April 2, 2008

I've been enjoying this season of American Idol thanks to Tivo. I've watched most of the shows with my family and we skip the commercials, cutting the viewing time in half, or so it seems.
It's a strong cast this time around and there are several people who have enough talent to be worthy winners. Last year, I picked Jordin Sparks to win from the first time I heard her sing during the early auditions.
This time around, my top choice is 17-year-old David Archuleta. The guy has an incredible natural talent as a singer and entertainer (once we get past the "golly gee, aw shucks" shy smile and head bobbing mode). His version of John Lennon's "Imagine" literally gave me goose bumps. I also liked the way he skipped the first verse that says, "Imagine there's no heaven..." I have problems with that verse myself and when Randy asked him why he skipped it David just said he liked the other verses better. Very smart of him. I think he had theological problems with it but didn't get into it with the judges, which was wise. If he doesn't win, it doesn't matter. He is a future star. You can bank on it.
Second, in my opinion, is Michael Johns, another gifted singer with charisma. The only question is whether he really should be considered an amateur since he was in a band that was signed for big bucks to a major label, then later was dropped. Other than that caveat, Johns has a soulful voice and plenty of star power.
Third is David Cook, a real musician who has come up with some innovative arrangements, in particular his total remake of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." Bold and creative with a great ear, a decent voice, and genuine musical talent.
Fourth, in my rankings, is Brooke White. She has a limited vocal range but a lot of style and charm, and would make a good folk-pop singer along the lines of a Sarah McLachlan or Sheryl Crow or of course Carly Simon and Carole King.
One other thing of note is that I really think Simon Cowell is right 90% of the time, although he does not always deliver his comments with compassion. He can be brutally honest but I give him credit for telling it like it is.
I think one of society's problems is that everybody is raised to think they're all stars, above criticism, and at least Simon sets them straight.
Paula Abdul rambles and speaks so incoherently at times that I wonder if she is on some kind of medication. Randy is a pretty good judge of talent but sometimes gets sloppy and says the same thing over and over, "kind of pitchy" or "that was all right," making his comments so generic they are meaninguless.
That's my spin on this incredibly popular show. What a modern day phenomenon.
* * *
My other TV vice is "Survivor" (well "The Amazing Race" is my favorite but it's in between seasons right now). I don't really like the current cast of Survivor very much but Ozzy and James are definitely two of the most physically gifted and honest competitors ever to appear on the show. They just don't have a lot of personality. I honestly don't care who wins this season. I always liked Ami and was sad to see her go last week. She seemed like a genuinely nice woman and managed to look pretty even in the midst of those nonflattering camping-in-the-jungle conditions.
* * *
I love The Amazing Race the most. I've applied three times to be on the show and don't know what's wrong with their selection process but I've never even gotten a call back from them...
You can only apply one time with a specific partner and I am sure that each of my three co-applicants would have made a formidable team.
It really is the show's loss that they didn't pick me and my pastor -- the Holy Toledo team -- over the dingbats they wound up with last season. The only reason I can think of is that maybe we were just so good the producers are afraid we'd blow away the competition.

Toledo, Ohio
April 5, 2008

Couple of intersting articles from the Associated Press:

SIDNEY, Ohio — At its inaugural service, a new church in western Ohio offered a sermon and prayer — along with a mechanical bull-riding contest and beer on tap.
The Country Rock Church drew about 100 people to Sunday night’s first meeting at the Pub Lounge in Sidney, 35 miles north of Dayton.
The barroom church is an offshoot of Sidney United First Methodist Church, whose head pastor says he’s been looking for creative ways to reach people in unconventional places. Rev. Chris Heckaman says people really seemed to enjoy themselves during Sunday’s hourlong service, so he expects the Country Rock Church will meet weekly.
Heckaman’s first sermon was a sort of bull-riding lesson. He compared staying on the mechanical bull to learning how to get along in life.
Read more about it here.
* * *
LONDON — It’s no longer enough to live a greener life — now people are being encouraged to be environmentally friendly when they leave the Earth too.
Cardboard coffins, clothes sewn from natural fibers, a burial plot in a natural setting. Green funerals attempt to be eco-friendly at every stage.
"People are trying to think about what’s the best way to live and with that, what’s the best way to die," said Roslyn Cassidy, a funeral director for Green Endings, which provides eco-friendly funerals.
Britain has been a world leader in eco-friendly funerals for years and a source of green burial products and ideas for countries like the United States, where the trend is just starting to catch on. Over the weekend in London, those in the business showcased their products and services at the Natural Death Center’s Green Funeral Exhibition.
Some may expect green funerals to be as cheap as a do-it-yourself project, while others might brace for price hikes similar to those fair trade food.
But, funeral directors say green funerals — like any — run the gamut.
"It’s about choice, not price," said Fran Hall, marketing director for Epping Forest Burial Park.
For a concept aimed at saving the Earth by going back to basics, an eco-funeral can be more complicated than it sounds. The Natural Death Center provides a handbook that suggests environmental targets for cemeteries.
"You can take any funeral and make it greener," said Michael Jarvis, the center’s director.
In a green funeral, bodies are not embalmed and are dressed in pure fiber clothes. Green campaigners say refrigeration or dry ice is a good alternative to formaldehyde, which can seep into the water system.
Biodegradable coffins also differ from the traditional mahogany. Coffins on display included one made from wicker and decorated with flowers.
One visitor, Linda McDowall, admired another coffin bundled in a beige, leaf-adorned felt shroud, saying it looked comfortable.
"Cozy and warm are not words you associate with death," said McDowall, a 48-year-old German and French translator.
Cardboard coffins — which are as thick as their wooden counterparts — can be decorated by family and biodegrade within three months.
"The trouble is, they are a bit ungainly to use," said Oakfield Wood burial ground director Oliver Peacock. "They’re not terribly easy to handle and if it’s wet, they don’t look their best either."
Particular care is taken in how coffins are buried at eco-friendly graveyards like Oakfield Wood, Peacock said.
The cemetery was a pasture when it opened in 1995. It is now speckled with more than 1,600 trees that mark plots along with a wooden plaque.
Marble tombstones are frowned upon. Jeremy Smite, a funeral director at Green Endings, notes that shipping and mining produce carbon and that marble is not a renewable resource.
For cremations — which account for 70 percent of British funerals — a person’s ashes and the remains of the eco-friendly coffin are placed in bamboo, glass or ceramic urns.
New legislation in Britain requires reductions in the mercury content of plastics and treatments used in coffins starting in 2010. All biodegradable coffins meet the new standards.
Cassidy said small details are important for green funerals, such as using smaller cars instead of limousines in funeral processions.
"What people are wanting is to know that they’re doing the best they can both for their loved ones and for the environment," Cassidy said.

Toledo, Ohio
April 21, 2008

A small, largely overlooked article by the Associated Press was published this week that really should have gotten more attention. The headline said flatly:

ExxonMobil nets $10.9B

The world's largest publicly traded oil company announced that first-quarter profits for 2008 climbed 17 percent to $10.9 billion, "the second-biggest U.S. quarterly corporate profit ever".

According to my calculater, that is more than $121 million in profits EVERY DAY, or $5 million EVERY HOUR, or $84,000 in profits EVERY MINUTE.

The latest polls show that the No. 1 issue on Americans' minds is rising oil and gas prices, even ahead of the presidential race, war in Iraq, or global warming. Gas prices are affecting everyone, and those on fixed incomes or living in poverty are being hurt the most.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil is basking in near-record profits. They must be laughing all the way to their Swiss bank accounts.

It's time to clamp down on the oil giants. How can people be forced to pay $3.60 or so per gallon -- up more than $1 a gallon in only a year -- while ExxonMobil is netting $10,900,000,000 in profits in just three months?

Average citizens are being forced to choose between buying gas or food; food prices are soaring, jobs are being cut, businesses are going bankrupt -- all of the economic strife that has been impacting our natino is now being exacerbated by soaring gas prices.
Our government ought to be ashamed of itself for letting ExxonMobil and other oil corporations rake in such obscene profits while the rest of the country is suffering and sacrificing. It's unconscionable and yet the situation continues. ExxonMobil's record quarter was the previous one, netting $11,700,000,000 at the end of 2007.
The higher the price at the pump, the higher the profits.
OK, I know economics are complicated and higher prices and profts are not a direct, simple, cause-and-effect relationship. But you can't deny the connection. It's time to stop making excuses and start taking action. If Bush won't do it, and I doubt Mr. Oilman will, hopefully the next president will do something. He or she will, but only if it's politically expedient.
* * *

Marc Dann is sworn in as Ohio Attorney General

More sad news, this time involving Ohio politics:
Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann is making a mockery of his office. He campaigned on a strong ethics and moral platform, blasting the corrupt Ohio Republican era and the Tom Noe scandal to help himself get elected.

Now the 46-year-old married man admits to having had an affair with a 28-year-old employee. In addition, his "roommate" and longtime pal, director of General Service Anthony Gutierrez, was found by investigators to have used his office to intimidate and a harass women employees and was fired by Dann.
It's pretty clear that Dann is doomed, despite asserting he won't resign. Elliot Spitzer also said at first that he wouldn't resign. Dann won't have a choice in the long run. His political career is kaput. It was notable that when he faced the press on Friday, his wife wasn't at his side as they are for most fallen politicians. He's really out there on his own now.
I think the Dann controversy proves that people in high positions, whether in government or religious office, are held to a higher standard. Even in this crazy mixed up world, most people expect reasonably high moral values from their leaders.
No one is perfect but those whose jobs are a public trust should know that they will be held accountable, and that with the internet and camera phones and video cell phones and text messages and email records, there are few secrets anymore.
Toledo, Ohio
May 4, 2008

I wrote a couple of stories about the Holocaust last week. It's almost beyond belief that such a thing could have happened in a so-called modern world. Here is a link to an article about the museum in suburban Detroit.
Most Americans are at least aware of what happened in the Holocaust. But many people may not be aware of the fact that the Nazis' campaign to exterminate the Jews was reported in the United States as it developed. Many newspapers and radio stations informed the U.S. public about the genocide as it was starting, but the horrors were essentially ignored in America for years. Maybe it was too bizarre to believe. I don't know exactly what changed the perception in the states but somewhere along the line the American people finally woke up and took action.
One lasting lesson from the Holocaust is to keep Edmund Burke's famous quote in mind: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
* * *
Feliz Cinco de Mayo, amigos y amigas!

Toledo, Ohio
May 5, 2008

Hope y'all had a happy Mother's Day. (What movie was it where the villain killed someone who had made a comment about his mom, and said with a sneer, "Even bad guys love their mothers"? I remember that terrific line but just can't place it.)
Here are a few random updates since we last talked:
1. We went to see Amy Grant and her band in concert in Tiffin, Ohio, last Wednesday. Loved the show. Janet thought it was too "old school" but for me, Amy is such an honest songwriter and talented singer that I don't think her music ever gets old.
I particularly enjoyed when she braved it and played some shouted-out requests even though the band had not rehearsed the songs.
One of the most memorable and entertaining moments of the night was when her six-person band "crashed and burned," as Amy put it, stumbling through "The Things You Do for Love." They didn't have to even try it, but they did. And when they faltered, they kept their chins up and kept slogging away and it all worked fine. Nobody minded that they missed some chords and Amy forgot some words.
The musicians in her group were truly awesome, by the way, and her bass player is from the Toledo suburb of Perrysburg, and had lots of family at the show that night.
It was only Grant's third concert since November, she said.
I had the pleasure of talking with Amy again backstage after the show. She is such a sweetheart and as honest and down to earth in person as any "star" I've ever met.
The Ritz Theatre in Tiffin is quite a nice old hall, ornate and well kept. Built in the 1920s as a movie theater, it seats about 1,200 and there were more than 1,100 people at Amy's concert.
It was a really nice evening.
2. We went to see "Iron Man" for Mother's Day. I think "Mom" picked that film to make me happy. It didn't seem like a movie she would have chosen. However, there wasn' t anything Janet really wanted to see at the theaters and as it turned out, she loved it and so did everyone. Janet even said it was one of the best movies she'd seen in a long time. Robert Downey Jr. was great as the zillionaire playboy whose world literally crashes down on him when he is blown up by the very rockets his company manufactures and which made him so wealthy.
3. I gave a talk to a group of local Muslims on Saturday night and it was a very interesting dialogue. They sincerely want to improve their relations with the community in general, other faith groups, and with the media.
4. I finally found my new Saab. I've been looking ever since the transmission blew out on my old "classic" Saab 900. I ended up buying a newer Saab 900, one that was built after General Motors bought into Saab. I'm hoping that parts will not be so ridiculously expensive anymore.
5. One of Toledo's real gems, trumpeter Jimmy Cook, passed away on Friday. He was not only a great musician but a wonderful man. His terrific trumpet playing reflected his personality. A very fun and giving man, he was a one-of-a-kind and I will miss him.

Toledo, Ohio
May 12, 2008

First Myanmar was pummeled by Typhoon Nargis, and the horrific damage left millions homeless and at least 43,000 dead.
Then China was struck by a major quake, with a death toll that could reach 50,000.
There have been more tornadoes in the United States this year than almost any other year since the storms were recorded.
Nature's fury is bound to cause havoc at unpredictable times and places. It's been that way since the dawn of time.
We don't know what the hurricane season will bring in 2008.
There's not much you can do about these things except donate to relief work and pray for the afflicted. Governments can install warning systems and get their emergency services teams prepared for any event.
And if you're looking for a place to live, try to find somewhere that's above sea level, away from tectonic fault lines, and not in the middle of Tornado Alley.
* * *
What did I tell you about Marc Dann? As I said last week, It was obvious he would have to resign as Ohio Attorney General after his affair with a younger employee became public knowledge. I don't know why he fought it so long but his resignation was inevitable.
* * *
The next Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, opened today and from people who have seen it and know C.S. Lewis' series, the film takes a lot of liberties with the novel and turns the religious allegories into an action movie and cgi slugfest crammed with battle scenes.
It's more Hollywood than Narnia. Which is not surprising considering that the first movie earned $740 million at the box office, which I am guessing meant that studio moguls got pretty excited about the potential for the sequel and could not leave well enough alone and let the director do his job.
Dr. Bruce Edwards, a C.S. Lewis scholar and BGSU professor, will be speaking about the movie from a spritual perspective in a free lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 20, at Calvary Assembly of God, 5025 Glendale Ave.
Anyone who's interested in Lewis & Narnia should check out this free event. Dr. Edwards is a phenomenal speaker.
Here's his review of Prince Caspian.
* * *
I wrote a memorial story today about my friend and inspiration, Toledo jazz giant Jimmy Cook. He was one of the most joyful people to be around and I will miss him dearly.
Here's a link to the article.

Toledo, Ohio
May 16, 2008

I have been smiling like the Cheshire Cat since finding my new (to me) Saab last week. I didn't realize how miserable I felt, at least when it comes to personal transportation, ever since my beloved classic 900 blew its transmission and had to go the great Trollhatten in the Sky.
My wife spotted a very nice 1996 Saab 900S in the Akron area, and we went out and took a look and ended up driving 'er home last weekend.
This little black beauty has got a sunroof, a five-speed manual transmission, and a few nice bells and whistles. Best of all, it is a joy to drive. It has low miles and is overall in great shape, although like every Saab it's got a few "issues." Fortunately they are cosmetic and nothing too serious. I'll be tinkering with it forever.
It's a pleasure to drive this car and I hope I can keep it for many, many years. There's nothing like a Saab. This is my fourth model (I've had a 96, a 99, a classic 900, and now a New Generation 900), and each model has its pluses and minuses. This new one is a bit smoother to drive, with a more cushy, less racy suspension. It seems bigger and more Americanized, but that was expected since GM bought a big share of Saab in 1994. But it still has enough Swedish blood in it to separate it from the pack, in my opinion.
It sounds kind of weird but I guess I'm not genuinely happy driving anything else, at least not as my own car. I'll drive anything but when it comes to owning a car, Saabs seem to fit my personality perfectly. Maybe I have some Swedish blood in me that I'm unaware of. I've never driven a Ferrari, so I can't rule the Prancing Horse as another possible perfect fit for my driving personality. I don't expect to take that test anytime soon, however. Ha!
* * *
The photo above of a beautiful 1994 Saab 900S is similar in appearance to mine, but it belongs to a guy named Robert in Colorado who has a website devoted to Saabs.
Robert is incredibly skilled at working on cars and he details, in words and photos, all the restoration and mechanical work he has done on his car and on his wife's V-6 Saab.
His blue 900S is about as perfect as can be, inside and out. I've already emailed him for some advice and he is extremely knowledgable about every aspect of Saabs and glad to give advice.
If you're interested, you can read Robert's Saab stories here.

Toledo, Ohio
May 16, 2008

One of the little humor columns in the latest Reader's Digest reported this clever sign spotted in a church parking lot in Missouri at the pastor's spot:
"You Park, You Preach."

Steven Curtis Chapman is a Christian music star but one of the most genuine, down to earth people you'll ever meet. Every time I've talked to him, and when I've read interviews with him, it is always so clear that God and family are his two top priorities.
It was with shock and sadness that I read about the death of his 5-year-old daughter, Maria Sue Chapman, on May 21. And the circumstances made it an even greater family tragedy: Maria Sue was struck by an SUV being driven by one of his teenage sons in the family's driveway.
It was not reported which son was driving.
Steven has posted a notice on his website. You can read about Maria and post a comment online here.
Maria was one of three girls Steven and his wife MaryBeth adopted from a Chinese orphanage.
I often have Big Questions for God when things like this happen, but I really don't have any answers. All I can do is offer my condolences and prayers to the Chapmans in this difficult time.
Toledo, Ohio
June 2, 2008

I was talking to a friend yesterday who is in the construction industry and he said he's working on a new house in a suburb of Toledo that will have a roof costing $470,000. Yes, that's four hundred and seventy thousand dollars for the roof -- alone, not the entire house.

Definitely NOT the house I'm talking about

I've been pondering that number ever since. Here I was stressing out a few years ago when I had to fork over a few thousand to have new shingles put on my roof. This ultra-wealthy homeowner probably spends that much money on a mailbox. The guy's roof, by the way, will be made of hand-cut slate shingles.
Toledo housing prices are extremely low compared to, say, California or New York, and you literally can buy a whole mansion here for $470,000.
Or, you can buy a roof.
This kind of money-is-no-object spending rattles my brain.
While it's true that you could feed a lot of hungry people, or house a few homeless families for that kind of money and still have enough left over to put a regular shingle roof on your very impressive home, I'm not judging the guy.
Who knows, maybe he gives 90 percent of his money to charity. Or maybe he volunteers at the homeless shelter and donates to all kinds of charities. He could be the most giving person on earth, but has a pressing need to have slate over his head. I really don't know.
Still, the number keeps bouncing around in my head. Something just doesn't add up, so to speak.
Meanwhile, I hope my friend makes a hefty profit on the construction job.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
June 2, 2006

Yesterday was the day we all celebrate Father's Day. It's a bit odd to me that we have to set aside a day for that when it should be part of our everyday lives. Like many things, with our busy schedules and myriad distractions, it is easy to let things slide and forget to take a moment to honor the people we appreciate and love.
I had a wonderful time with the family. Two of my three daughters were home, my other daughter in Illinois called me at 1:05 a.m. Sunday. I think she forgot that she's an hour behind us... it was 12:05 there. She wanted to be the first one to wish me a happy father's day. Fortunately I was still up.
Family means everything to me, and I have done all I can to be the best father I can be.
You do what you can every day, one day at a time, and it's never to get any special honors or Hallmark cards for your efforts. You just love your children so much you want to do everything you can for them. It reminds me of the love God has for his children: I believe a father's love -- and a mother's love -- is modeled after God's divine and pure love, since the Bible says we were created in God's image.
You know my daughters must really love me because they watched the end of the U.S. Open with me. They're not golfers but they humored me. And what a great match it was -- with Tiger Woods tying Rocco Mediate on the last hole. They're having an 18-hole playoff today to decide the championship. Got to root for Rocco -- he hasn't won a PGA tournament in 6 years and would be the oldest U.S. Open champ ever. Meanwhile, what hasn't Tiger Woods won?
* * *
I've been getting calls about the Father Murd trial. Most callers feel it was a travesty that the priest was not convicted of sexual imposition. But even so, he confessed to fondling a strange man in a hot tub. It's on the record, it will not be swept under the rug.
I think it was commendable that shortly after the verdict, the Toledo diocese issued a press release re-stating the fact that the priest had resigned as pastor and is undergoing treatment, and it encouraged other victims of clerical sexual abuse to contact law-enforcement and diocesan officials.
Here's part of the diocesan statement: "Father Murd resigned as Pastor of Saint Joseph Parish, Maumee on April 8, 2008 and continues to be reassigned to a residential facility for appropriate spiritual remedies and for professional evaluation and counseling. He will return to that facility today.
To report any suspected or actual sexual abuse by Diocesan personnel, immediate contact should be made with local civil authorities, and with the Toledo Diocesan Case Manager, Mr. Frank DiLallo. He can be reached at 419-243-2150 (private line) or 419-244-6711, ext 632 in the Toledo calling area, or 1-800-926-8277, ext 632 (Outside Toledo, Within Ohio)."

Toledo, Ohio
June 16, 2008

I've got so many things in the air, my juggling skills are really getting good. They'd better be or I'll drop something on my foot and break a toe.
Here are a few quick notes in no particular order -- hope you don't mind this scattershot approach:
* As everyone knows, Tiger Woods beat Rocco Mediate in the U.S. Open playoff... but Woods played against doctor's orders. Now I just heard he's out for the rest of the season. Ideally, he should have withdrawn for health reasons and let Mediate win the Open. But you know that would be impossible for Woods, one of the most competitive athletes of all time.
* Have you heard of "The Shack"? This spiritual novel is causing quite a stir. I'm working on a story about it. Within the course of a year, it went from being a self-published book sold out of a guy's garage to being No. 1 on the N.Y. Times bestseller list. Truly an amazing story. Check it out online here.
* I'm going to meet a woman today who "channels" dead Catholic saint Padre Pio. Should be interesting. She said she can do some channeling for me.
* Tom Ferguson has withdrawn his lawsuit against former Toledo diocesan deacon Glenn Shrimplin, due to statutes of limitations concerns.
* The national "Pray at the Pumps" group is coming to Toledo on Friday to pray for lower gas prices.
* I've been wanting to fence in my back yard so my dog(s) (I have one dog and my daughter who is at home for a while also has one) can have room to run, but the yard is big and the price is so high. A friend of a friend knew I wanted to do that and called to say he knows someone who is giving away 1,600 feet of fence and all the accessories. I'm hoping this really works out -- it would be a wonderful blessing. People can be so kind and generous. And who else but God would hook me up with someone wanting to get rid of fencing?
(I tried using an invisible fence last year and it was a disaster... Scotty ran right through it, chasing a jogger down the road. The kindhearted jogger ended up picking Scotty up and carrying him back to our house.)
* My Saab is running so well, I just love that car. I am hoping to get some bodywork and paint done to it this summer. Funny though, I guess those flaws are not as obvious to others as they are to me. A friend who saw it Tuesday asked me if it was a new car -- and it's 14 years old!

(not my car but the same model)

Toledo, Ohio
June 18, 2007

Here are a few photos from the week I took off recently to hang out with my brother, Rick, and our longtime friend, Peter, who were visiting from Florida. I showed them some of the "best of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan" in this too-brief visit but we sure had lots of fun in a short time...

David, Rick & Peter: The three horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Ben Franklin and his protege, Rick Yonke.

David at the wheel of his sweet Swedish Saab.

A couple of real dummies...

Lookalikes: David and and his pet schnoodle Scotty.

Dwarfed by a steam locomotive -- made in Lima, Ohio -- at the Henry Ford Museum.

The view from the Perry Monument at Put-in-Bay, South Bass Island in Lake Erie.

Posing in front of a glass sculpture by the incomparable Dominick Labino.

* * *
Toledo, Ohio
June 22, 2008

Gas prices are holding steady at $3.80 or so at my bellwether intersection (see yesterday's blog, "Prayer Power"). Then again, the prime July 4 weekend driving time is still more than a week away.
I'm hoping Rocky Twyman's prayers will still hold sway for a long time to come.
Despite my hopes, I would advise filling up the tank before next Wednesday, July 2. (I know, O ye of little faith and all that.)
A year ago we were paying $2.84 a gallon.
Sigh. Wish we had better alternatives in the United States. I would ride a Vespa scooter or even a bicycle to work when the weather is OK if there were separate lanes. But it's far too dangerous out there on the main roads with all the crazy car, SUV, and pickup drivers distracted by cell phones, screaming babies and spilled coffee.
* * *
Christmas is six months from today. Just thought you'd want to know that.
* * *
In my "idle" time, here are some of my activities:
Listening to: "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay; "Don't Do Anything," by Sam Phillips; "Chase the Light" by Jimmy Eat World, and "Zappa Plays Zappa" by Dweezil Zappa. Have pre-ordered the new Beck CD, "Modern Guilt," due out July 8.
Reading: "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller; "The Shack" by William P. Young; "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" by Mark Batterson; the Pew Forum's new "Religious Landscape Survey" (you can click here), and the National Geographic article on Stonehenge.
Watching: Michael Clayton; Across the Universe; Springsteen in Dublin, and Alvin and the Chipmunks. (Really liked George Clooney in Michael Clayton, a good suspense thriller). Also catching up on old episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David (not thrilled with some of the lax HBO standards but the show is hilarious nonetheless.)
Listening/Reading: Stocked up on audio books on disc for an upcoming trip by car, including "The Face" by Dean Koontz; "Beach House" by James Patterson, and "Cross Bones" by Kathy Reichs.
Online reading: Blogs by three compadres, Rebekah Scott, Paddy O'Gara, and John Rockwood, as well as a missionary in Scotland, David Schmidgall, whom I met last year and who writes a great blog.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
June 25, 2008

from the New Yorker ... the cartoonist is amazing in the ability to capture the tailor's enthusiasm for a sale mixed with a slyly snide attitude.

World Youth Day starts today in Sydney, Australia. I hope the Toledo-area youth who attend have a life-changing experience. I went to World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002 and although it was an assignment, not a pilgrimage, it was quite an honor to get to see Pope John Paul II in person. He was one of my heroes in life.
I was in Sydney in 2005 and it is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. The harbor there is phenomenal, kind of bow-tie shaped with the bridge and the opera house right at the narrowest point.
* * *
So far most of the comments and emails I've gotten have been positive about coverage of the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals' ruling upholding the guilty verdict in Father Robinson's case.
Several of his supporters said my coverage was fair, although they still think he's innocent. One guy whined like a toddler who didn't get his way... of course it's not just me but the jury and the judge in the original trial and now the appeals court judges who are all wrong... God knows the truth, though. We'll all find out someday.
Here's a photograph to put the case in perspective... lest we forget.

* * *
Of my two major Saturday stories, one on the Gerald Robinson verdict and the other on Dottie Zimmerman "channeling" Padre Pio, I was surprised to see that the channeling story received more hits on the internet. It was the No. 1 story on the newspaper's web site both Saturday and Sunday. Few articles stay at No.1 for more than one day.
* * *
My poor Cleveland Indians are out of the running at the all-star break. At least they ended the first half by sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays, who were in first place. Did you notice that once Tampa Bay dropped the "Devil" from their name, they became contenders?

Sylvania, Ohio
July 14, 2008

What do you think?
This is the cover of the new issue of the New Yorker showing Barack Obama in Muslim garb “fist-bumping” wife Michelle, with an assault rifle and ammo belt, in the Oval Office, a picture of Bin Laden on the wall and an American flag burning in the fireplace.
The New Yorker said in a statement: “The burning flag, the nationalist-radical and Islamic outfits, the fist-bump, the portrait on the wall? All of them echo one attack or another. Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to bring things out into the open, to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that’s the spirit of this cover.”
Satire done right can be an effective tool and a powerful statement. I imagine the average New Yorker reader -- well educated, liberal, affluent, Democrat -- got a chuckle out of the cover. The magazine knows its audience.
But for many members of the general public, the image is inflammatory and insulting.
Knowing the way the world has shrunk and that anything one says or does in one niche or corner is going to be posted on the internet for the whole world to see, I’m shocked the esteemed editors of the New Yorker went ahead with this cover.
Seems to me that after lengthy discussions someone in authority and with some wisdom and sensitivity would have pulled the plug on this idea and opted for discretion and prudence; i.e., a totally different cover.
If they were going to push the envelope, they should have been equal-opportunity offenders and featured exaggerated caricatures of BOTH candidates -- Obama as a Muslim and, say, McCain in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, AARP card, and a finger on the nuclear-war button.
However, this cover definitely has gotten the magazine a lot of attention, and maybe that was the real goal all along?

Toledo, Ohio
July 16, 2008

I just finished reading Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," and it is an amazingly insightful look at our culture today -- and a bold warning.

Neil Postman

This prescient book was written in 1985, and Postman died in October, 2003, at age 72. But his son, Andrew, wrote a foreword that accurately points out how everything his father wrote about is still accurate, only more intense now as we've added a plethora of electronic toys and gadgets in our lives, from cell phones to playstations to the big one, the Internet.
The basic premise of Postman's book is that much of our American (and European) culture has changed tremendously over the last century, and that these changes have affected the way we think and process information.
On Aug. 21, 1854, when Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held the first of their seven debates, Douglas opened with a three-hour talk and when it was Lincoln's turn, he suggested everyone go home and eat and freshen up because it was going to take him at least as long as that to respond.
The people went home and returned to hear Lincoln talk for four hours.
That was seven hours of political lectures in one day! And neither man was running for office at the time.
Can you imagine two current politicians engaging in a seven-hour debate? With no PowerPoint? How many people would attend? How many would stay to the end? Ha. You know there wouldn't be anyone there except fanatics and the lunatic fringe.
When our country was founded, the prevailing way of thinking involved the "typographical mind" in which people's frame of reference and thought processes were based on the printed word. Even the farm boy held a book while working the plow.
Today it is what Postman calls "The Peek-a-Boo World," where unrelated, disembodied information pops into our lives with no rhyme or reason. News anchors report genocide in Darfur and transition with a "Now this..." to show a clip of a waterskiiing squirrel in Orlando.
Postman traces this shift to the invention of the telegraph, which for the first time allowed the transmission of bits of information worldwide, instantaneously, and not tied to any physical messenger or linked to geographic context.
As technology evolved, it changed the way information was sent and consumed, and eventually it changed the way we think. Today, instead of a four-hour rebuttal from a politician in a debate, we get 60 seconds on TV -- if we're lucky.
Where Lincoln and Douglas spoke in eloquent, complex sentences, our political leaders today either purposefully keep sentences short and simple, or are unable to construct lengthy thoughts or expressions.
(Anyone who watches David Letterman's Late Show , which I enjoy, has seen the regular feature, "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches," which captures President Bush's most unintelligible public pronouncements. It's painfully funny. I feel sorry for George W but realize that, for one thing, the camera's on him constantly so he's bound to slip up, and second, he obviously is not the brightest president we've ever had.)
What does this mean for today's newspapers, journalists, and readers?
We are on the cusp of a new era in the use and misuse of media.
We are getting a firehose of information in multiple bits and pieces, instantaneously, not just on TV and radio but on our "smart phones" and PDAs and laptops. When we surf through our 500 satellite TV channels, we find some of them have three "crawls" of data moving across the the screen simultaneously.
We are media junkies and we're strung out on information. But we crave information on what celebrity is pregnant or in drug rehab as much as we do what Congress is debating or our local politicians are saying or how humanity is polluting the environment.
All the news is thrown into a hat, shaken up, and tossed willynilly onto the screen in no particular order or context.
As Postman points out repeatedly, our world today is much more like Aldous Huxley's vacuous Brave New World than it is George Orwell's ominous 1984.
We are not being oppressed by Big Brother; we are laughing and amusing ourselves so much that we've stopped thinking.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
July 18, 2008

"Television does not ban books, it simply displaces them."
-- Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

World Youth Day ended in Sydney, Australia, yesterday with a papal Mass attended by "only" 350,000 people -- far less than any of the other WYD papal Masses.
But Australia is such a long -- and expensive -- journey for most of the world's inhabitants it can't be a surprise that the numbers were down.
WYD had 225,000 registered participants and organizers said they expected an equal amount of Australian Catholics to attend the final Mass. But from my experience with Australia, only about 2 percent of the public goes to church. Like Europe, Australia is virtually a post-Christian continent.
* * *
I thought it was pretty hip of Pope Benedict XVI to send daily text messages to registered pilgrims. He signed them all "BXVI."
* * *
The Lambeth Conference is taking place in England. This is a once-every-10-years conference for the Anglican Communion, which now is going through more visible turmoil than any other Protestant denomination.
It will be interesting to see what develops at the conference. Ohio Bishop Mark Hollingsworth is there and blogging.
* * *
The Cleveland Indians are playing so well lately, I wonder if there's any chance they could still make a run for it. It seems that they woke out of their slumber after the management gave up for the season and traded ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia.
The Tribe is sitll a long way out but stranger things have happened in baseball. I'm hoping the Indians work their way into a pennant race.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
July 21, 2008

"For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known." -- Luke 12:2

A colleague called today and we had a nice long chat. He is the best investigative reporter I know and he cited the above Scripture, saying it is his mission statement. It was nice to be reminded of how we can apply the Good Book to daily life, even in the secular environment.
* * *
I listened to Buddy Guy's new disc, "Skin Deep," tonight and it's spot-on for electric blues. I was so taken by the music that I cranked up my Fender Strat and played along with the disc. I think Buddy and I make a good two-guitar team... but of course I was playing for an invisible audience -- sort of like singing in the shower -- so it's hard to be objective about my performance. But it sure was fun.
One thing about Guy's new disc: I think all 12 songs are in the key of E, which made it easy to jam along with. You'd think he would mix it up a little. But then again, he shreds that E key.
* * *
My funny story about Buddy Guy: I was backstage at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Ark., around 1997 or so, with fellow Toledoans Johnny Porkchop and Lonesome Bob when Buddy Guy's tour bus pulled up. Sitting next to me were 80-something-year-old blues legends Pinetop Perkins and Robert Lockwood Jr. (Robert Jr. passed away a few years ago, he was a great man and a blues original, but gruff at first and very tough to earn his respect. Once you did, though, you were golden. We got along great.)
Guy's manager said everyone had to move because we were between the bus and the stage. That meant Pinetop and Robert, too. We protested, saying these blues greats should be allowed to stay. No go, Guy's guy said, they must go too.
So these two old men, grumbling, got up and moved. Once the area was cleared, the great Buddy Guy strode out of the bus and onto the stage, where a snifter of brandy was waiting for him, covered by a handkerchief as per his contract rider.
He started playing like Jimi Hendrix and I was mesmerized, but the true blues aficionados I was with were disgusted with his rock and roll, sell out the blues stuff. So we left... as I grumbled to no avail.
* * *

Also listened to Donald Fagen's pop-jazz masterpiece, "The Nightfly," tonight. Fagen is the voice and keyboard genius behind Steely Dan. This solo disc is fantastic, everything flowing so smoothly and with great sound and style.
The back cover photo, a black and white shot of tract homes at night, stirs up fuzzy feelings of my childhood on Long Island, New York. Amazing how I can get that feeling from a small, indistinct slice-of-life photo.

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
July 22, 2008

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
* * *
"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
--Elbert Hubbard

Cancer's Unexpected Blessings

When you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change.

NOTE: This testimony has been circulating on the internet. I received it in my email this week and found the original version on the Christianity Today website. Tony Snow died July 12 at age 53. -- David

Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen—leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.

Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.

But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.

To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered.

Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don't. By his love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.

'You Have Been Called'

Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."

There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived—an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing though the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.

There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue—for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.

Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.

We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.

Learning How to Live

Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love.

I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."

His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?

When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it.

It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up—to speak of us!

This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.

What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.

=========

NOTE: The following is a from a transcript from the White House website of a press briefing on May 6, 2006, given by Tony Snow in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. I've decided to just include his comments to the media about his cancer. Toward -- David

Q Second question, why did you choose to wear the yellow bracelet today? What's the importance to you?

MR. SNOW: I had cancer last year. And having cancer, it's one of these things -- thank Terry Hunt for having provided -- I lost my old one when I was in the hospital having my last cancer surgery. It's going to sound stupid, and I'll be personal here, but -- just having gone through this last year -- and I said this to Chris Wallace -- was the best thing that ever happened to me. It's my Ed Muskie moment. (Laughter.) I lost a mother to cancer when I was 17, same type -- same type, colon cancer. And what has happened in the field of cancer since then is a miracle.

I actually had a chance to talk today with Lance Anderson [sic -- he meant Armstrong] about this. You know, it's one of these things where America -- whatever we may say about a health care system, the technologies that were available to me that have me standing behind the podium today, where a doctor who said, you don't have to worry about getting cancer, just heartburn, talking to these people -- (laughter) -- that's a wonderful thing. And I feel every day is a blessing.

==============

Yesterday was my birthday and after breakfast with Cara and Dustin (the rest of my children were out of state) Janet and I went to Cedar Point and rode some of the world's greatest roller coasters.
Funny how some of our entertainment is designed to scare the heck out of you. That "Top Thrill Dragster" coaster at Cedar Point is one monstrous ride: It goes zero to 120 mph in about 6 seconds, shoots you virtually straight up a 420-foot climb, then drops you almost straight down, with one scary twist midway down, and then coasts to a stop. The whole ride lasts 17 seconds, and even though it's an hour and a half wait nobody leaves complaining that the ride was too short. They're just too pumped with adrenaline.

I also spent part of the day reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's shocking Holocaust memoir. In this slim volume, Wiesel describes with a few quick strokes of the pen some of the most horrific atrocities ever conducted by humanity.
I cannot imagine what leads to such genocide except that it is proof that there is evil in this world. Some evil is on a small scale and some, like the Holocaust, on so large a scale it's almost unimaginable.

Birthdays seem less of a "personal celebration" to me as I get older. It's more of a day to reflect on your blessings and to appreciate everything positive in your life.
I have much to be thankful for and I am grateful all the time. I think it's a good thing for us to be aware of. Despite all the problems, there is so much good in this world.
When I read "Night" it makes me even more aware of the blessings and God's grace in my own life, although it baffles me how and why God did not intervene to stop the Nazis.
At church this morning, Pastor Chad Gilligan preached from Isaiah, Chapter 38, in which ailing King Hezekiah was told by the Prophet Isaiah to get his house in order, he is going to die. Hezekiah prays to God and reminds the Lord of his faithfulness and upright living. God then tells Isaiah to go back and tell Hezekiah that he's changed his mind, he is going to extend his life by 15 years.
Pastor Chad spoke of how great God is and how we should be grateful for what we've got. He then passed out cards titled "Think on it" with lines for everyone to write down 10 things we are thankful for.
I filled out my card in just a few seconds, then added a few more on the back.
What about you?
Here's a little interactive internet exercise for you: Think about 10 things you can be thankful for and mentally fill the in blanks below.
1. __________________________________________
2. __________________________________________
3. __________________________________________
4. __________________________________________
5.___________________________________________
6. __________________________________________
7. __________________________________________
8. ___________________________________________
9. ___________________________________________
10. __________________________________________

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
August 3, 2008

I had never heard of the Uighurs (WEE'-gurs) until yesterday, when two members of this ethnic Muslim group in western China attacked Chinese border guards, killing 16 and wounding 16 more.
These attacks are escalating as the Olympic Games approach their 8-08-08 start.
The Olympics are an awesome sporting event, and I always feel a thrill to see the world's best athletes giving it their all. I've got my satellite network's high-def channel all programmed and ready to go, although I won't watch even a fraction of the 1,000+ hours of coverage that will be broadcast.
Having the games in China has shined a harsh light on that nation's human rights record.
Tibetans and Tibet sympathizers protested vociferously when the torch was carried around the globe, even though the Dalai Lama spoke out against such protests and urged his followers to allow the games to go on peacefully.
Now the Uighurs are using the world's spotlight on China to make a statement about their situation, and they did it by spilling blood. That puts them on equal footing with other atrocity-minded terrorists and won't get much sympathy or support from the world's citizens.
Other Muslim terrorists also have warned of pending attacks on the Olympic games, and said spectators should steer clear -- especially Muslims.
I'm hoping and praying that the games go off without incident. It would be a tragedy to turn a wholesome sports competition into an excuse for political violence, as happened at Munich.
Let the athletes hold their competition on the field, and keep the politics and hate-filled agendas out of it -- for the sake of the whole world.
As the IOC said today, the goal of the Olympics is to promote peace and harmony and to bring countries together in a positive setting. It's a noble goal and one that should be allowed to blossom and bear fruit.

Sylvania, Ohio
Aug. 5, 2005

Here is little snippet of what my "to do" list looked like recently. I've checked these all off by now:

What I've been listening to:
1. This Beautiful Republic's not-yet-released CD "Perception." Great sophomore disc from these internationally known Christian rockers from Toledo.
2. Kutless: To Know That You're Alive. Nothing noteworthy here.
3. Chris Tomlin's "Hello Love," not due out until mid-September. Great worship music from the man who has basically reinvented the genre.
4. Jimmy Needham's "Not Without Love." Nice light Christian pop-rock.
5. Third Day's "Revelation," you can always count on these guys for great music with a great message.
6. Above the Golden State, self titled, new band on Sparrow, very solid pop.
7. Seabird's "'Til We See the Shore," on Credential, excellent new Christian band from Cincinnati, the singer's voice and the group's keyboard gives them a Coldplay kind of sound. Very impressive at time, although there are some weak spots on the disc.
8. Nine Inch Nails' "The Slip." I'm reviewing this for the paper. Stay tuned, we'll have the full review on Sunday.
9. Adam's Road, a self-titled double-disc by a group of six musicians who all happen to be ex-Mormons.

What I've been reading:
"Dangerous Surrender" by Kay Warren, inspiring story about how awareness of the AIDS crisis changed the life and focus of Kay Warren, wife of mega-pastor Rick "Purpose Driven Life" Warren.
Newsweek article from a few weeks about on Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born on the same exact day (Feb. 12, 1809). Which one's contributions were more important? Newsweek says Lincoln. I'm not sure you can measure such a thing.
"Early Dylan," photographs by Barry Feinstein, Daniel Kramer and Jim Marshall, birthday gift from my daughter Lisa who shares a love of Dylan's music. Great B&W photos from the 60s.
"Night" by Elie Wiesel, just finished it last weekend. Horrific but important book on the Holocaust.
"The Punch" by John Feinstein, who was my editor in college at the Duke Chronicle. Taught John everything he knows ;-)

What I've been watching:
1. The Kite Runner, terrific movie about Afghanistan and its proud people under decades of oppression, from the Soviets in 1979 to the Taliban in the 1990s.
2. Across the Universve: Fabulous fantasy flick by Julie Taymoor, creator of the Lion King on Broadway, brilliantly using Beatles tunes and lyrics to tell a sketchy but amusing tale. The cinematography and music are spectacular.
3. Curb Your Enthusiasm: One of my favorite sitcoms of all time, although it gets a little raw at times since it's on the uncensored HBO cable channel.
4. "Love at First Sight," a 20-minute short film by Ryan Smith, son of Michael W. Smith, for a new project he's working on. Will be writing about this soon.
5. Balls of Fury, a pathetic and disappointing comedy despite the presence of Christopher Walken. Don't waste your time or money, you'll get more laughs hitting your big toe with a hammer. (I watched it because a friend, whom I will not name, highly recommended it and actually went to the theaters four times to see it. I've lost a lot of respect for this person!)

==============
If you haven't read my stories on The Shack, here's a link. I hope you get a chance to check them out.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
August 5, 2008

My week was jam-packed and I think it was extremely productive and fulfilling. Here is a little rundown of what I did:
Monday:
* I interviewed Kay Warren, wife of Rick Warren who wrote The Purpose-Driven Life and pastors the 25,000-member Saddleback Church in suburban L.A., about AIDS and the church. (You can read the article tomorrow.)

* I celebrated my birthday belatedly with my daughter Dana and son-in-law Matt at their house because they were out of town on my actual birthday.
* I Interviewed Ryan Smith, son of Christian music superstar Michael W. Smith, about his new project to promote critical thinking of movies and DVDs. (Article to run 8/16)
Tuesday:
* Drove to Cleveland to view a wonderful exhibit called Vatican Splendors, at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Not only took notes for the story but had to take my own photos because the newspaper couldn't spare a photographer. We had handout pics but they were all just single items, no scene setters and no people. I think my photos came out well. (To be published tomorrow)
Wednesday:
* Interviewed Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor; also interviewed Matt "Ro" Wrozek, Christian rapper in Toledo trio Glass City Boyz.
* Interviewed Joshua Dubois, director of faith-based relations for Barack Obama.
* Worked at home til 11 p.m. in order to clear the slate for Thursday and Friday... you'll see why in a moment
Thursday:
* Attended the 2008 Leadership Summit broadcast live by satellite from Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., viewing it at CedarCreek Church in Perrysburg. The Rev. Bill Hybels, founder and pastor of Willow Creek and founder of the annual summit, is one of my favorite speakers in the world and I always try to hear him preach when I have a chance. I covered his talk for tomorrow's religion page. You can count on extraordinary speakers at these summits, even if you've never heard their names before.
I was immensely impressed with Gary Haugen, of International Justice Mission, who rescues children and families from forced labor, prostitution rings, and other horrors around the world.
Also Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, which recruits new college grads to commit two years to teaching in underprivileged schools. She is truly making a difference in this world.
* Worked an overtime shift at night on the copy desk, editing stories and writing headlines and cutlines.
Friday:
* Watched an early morning Olympic soccer match between Argentina and Republic of the Ivory Coast, a thrilling game that Argentina pulled out, 2-1, with a fantastic last-minute goal. Argentina's Messi is spectacular!
* Back to the Leadership Summit to start the day, with lectures by Craig Groeschel, the dynamic and visionary leader of lifechurch.tv, and Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and ex-Watergate figure. It'll be 35 years on Tuesday, Aug. 12, since Colson became a Christian. I think he's proved his sincerity and authenticity by now...
* Came in to the office to finalize the religion pages for tomorrow.
* Back to the Leadership Summit to hear Bill Hybels' closing lecture.
* Off to the Lucas County Fairgrounds to meet up with a friend, and possibly Ted Nugent. Check out this note on Ted's website about my article.
* Coming home tonight to a house full of dogs: we are watching Dana & Matt's two pups, so along with my dog and Cara's dog, we are being overrun by canines. But only temporarily.
That's about all for the moment... But it's enough, don't you think?
p.s. What are you doing at 8:08 pm today, 08/08/08?
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
08/08/08

Here's the statement from John Edwards, the former Democratic presidential candidate, admitting he had an affair (he doesn't mention it was while his wife was battling cancer).
No matter what party or candidate you support, it's a good thing for the country that Edwards is not the Dems' leading candidate for president now.
What a mess this embarassment would have caused if Edwards were now the front-runner.
As for his explanation, isn't it amazing that he says he was "99 percent honest" about his affair, as if that makes everything OK? And that he was "increasingly egocentric and narcisistic." Haven't those become requirements for public office today? And that it's useless to criticize himself because he's already beaten himself up about it? As if it's beneath us to comment. He is a master manipulator, I can see that.
Nobody's perfect, of course, but when you RUN FOR PRESIDENT you can't expect the skeletons to stay in the closet! I wonder why this scandal has surfaced, there's got to be someone pressing the issue -- sounds to me like his ex-lover wants some money.
With all the indiscretions of Kwame, (W.J.) Clinton, Newt, Spitzer, et al., the Edwards news just adds to the continuing slide in public confidence of politicians. - David

By JOHN EDWARDS

In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness.

Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it.

But being 99% honest is no longer enough. I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never become public. With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then.

I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established. I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby.

I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby.

It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.

If you want to beat me up - feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help. I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.

Poor Reginald Peterson. He just can't get good service anymore.
The hungry 42-year-old man went into a Subway in Jacksonville, FL, and when the restaurant's sandwich artists didn't put everything on his order the way he wanted it, he dialed 9-1-1.
Then when police didn't "respond fast enough," he dialed 9-1-1 again.
Peterson ended up in jail, charged with making a false report.
Subway's staff acted quickly and locked the raving lunatic out of the restaurant, then called the cops themselves.
The manager said "it's unbelievable what people get upset about nowadays."
In an interview with a Florida paper, Peterson defended calling his actions.
"You could basically say I was going on emotions because I was a little ticked off. But I held my composure the whole time and felt that it was not right for them to do that," he told the First Coast News.
He said he didn't realize his call could land him behind bars.
Maybe he should have told police it was a theft? He could have argued that the clerk "stole" his banana peppers, or whatever it was he wanted and didn't get.
You can hear Peterson's 9-1-1 call online at Huffington Post.
Maybe he should've gone to Burger King -- where their old slogan was, 'Have it your way.'
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
August 9, 2008

No matter what your political preferences, it is just a very cool thing that Barack Obama is going to send out a text message announcing his choice for vice president. You can know as soon as the news media, even sooner than some.
This is the kind of use of technology that I love. But the downside is that once you sign up for the veep text, you'll be on their list. Who knows how many texts you'll be getting after that.
Here's a link to sign up and be "the first to know."
* * *
Been playing some golf lately. It's a wonderful thing to get out on the green, green golf courses and enjoy the nature, trying not to torture yourself over the score. Saw some deer, fox, rabbits and more the last few times. I really love to walk and carry my clubs when possible.
Golf is a great game and in addition to being outside and soaking up nature, on the athletic side of it, it doesn't matter how good or bad you are, it is always a personal challenge. As one comedian once pointed out (I think it was Robin Williams), golf spelled backward is flog.
If you're on a roll, you know you could be humbled on the very next shot, so you never get overconfident. And when you're having a bad round, you keep thinking the next shot will turn things around.
I've learned a lot of life lessons on the golf course.

Toledo, Ohio
Aug. 13, 2008

Had a busy weekend with little or no time for blogging. Thanks for bearing with me.
Friday was one of my all-time favorite assignments, I got to spend the day at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
It is a truly awesome museum and I go there whenever I get the chance, especially when I have visitors from out of the area. I always have to show off this American gem. It has millions -- seriously, millions! -- of artifacts on display in just about every category you could imagine. The only thing missing, for me, is the space program. They should have an Apollo capsule or space suit.
Among the artifacts are all sorts of cars, trucks, motorcycles, sleighs, fire engines, locomotives, stage coaches, and bicycles. It also has the chair in which Lincoln was sitting when he was shot, the car Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated, and Thomas Edison's last breath sealed in a test tube.
You can read my article here.
How did I get to go there for a workday?
The newspaper has been running a weekly feature called "Short Stops" this summer, about places of interest that are a short drive away. I had mentoined the Henry Ford Museum to the editors early in the summer and then this week they really needed something and asked me if I could do it. I of course said yes, although I had to rearrange my week's schedule and get everything done in four days instead of the usual five.
After visiting the museum I hooked up with Rev. John Peck, an old friend who moved from Toledo to Dearborn to pastor a church. He brought along a friend who is a minister in the inner city. It was great to see John and he and the other minister are doing some great things in Detroit.
One of their programs is called the B.O.M.B. Squad, which stands for Bring Our Men Back. It's designed to teach men to be responsible Christians and they meet at 6 a.m. on Saturdays! When the men graduate from the program they receive a sword and are knighted in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
* * *
A few notable deaths occurred recently including the great R&B singer Isaac Hayes and comedian/actor Bernie Mac. Then last Friday the man who coined the phrase "rhythm and blues" passed away: Jerry Wexler was 91.
Wexler was one of the most influential executives in rock and roll history, signing Led Zeppelin to a contract and producing many landmark albums.

Among the important recordings he produced were Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" in 1954 and "What I'd Say" in 1959; Booker T. & the MG's "Green Onions" in 1962; Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour" in 1965; Aretha Franklin's "Respect" (1967); Dr. John's "Iko Iko" (1972); Will Nelson's "Bloody Mary Morning" (1974); Dire Straits' "Lady Writer" (1979) and Bob Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody" (1979).
That is an impressive lifetime achievement and a lasting legacy for someone in the rock and roll business.
* * *
I read Joe Eszterhas' new book, "Crossbearer," over the weekend. He is the tough-talking, dark-side-of-life explorer who wrote "Jagged Edge," "Basic Instince" and "Showgirls." Now he is "saved," as he put it himself.
Joe had throat cancer, was addicted to tobacco and alcohol, and just couldn't handle it anymore when he asked God for help. God miraculously cleaned him up and turned his life around.
Eszterhas now lives in the Cleveland area where he grew up and is going to a Catholic church every week and the most important things in his life are family and God.
I'll be interviewing him by phone on Wednesday.
* * *
Time to watch a little more of the Olympics. Like a lot of people I know, I am hooked on this display of athletic perfection.
What about Michael Phelps' 8 Gold Medals? He definitely deserved it, what a fierce competitor and amazing swimmer. But he's not much of an interviewee. It's been painful watching him answer questions on the Today Show live from Beijing and in post-swim interviews. He doesn't have to be a good interviewee, though. He's certainly the greatest swimmer in history to this point and that speaks for itself.
Gymnastics was great, especially the two American women winning the Gold and Silver, and the beach volleyball duo of May-Treaner and Walsh were incredible, especially when they overcame 5 match points to beat the Belgian team.
The soccer coverage has been terrific, too, with one channel showing the Olympic matches continuously without commercials. I love soccer and when I turn on the channel I have a hard time turning away.
Go USA!
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
August 18, 2008

Bad news from Canada:
Tattooed evangelist Todd Bentley, who has been holding revivals in Lakeland, Fla., has resigned from public ministry after acknowledging an "unhealthy relationship on an emotional level" with a female staff member, according to the Associated Press.

Such things happened to people in the Bible and I'm sure it's happened throughout history, but it's always a shame when ministers, preachers, priests, clerics, and other spiritual leaders get caught up in scandals.
God holds such people to a higher standard and actions and behaviors that would be shrugged off in Hollywood or the corporate world can be devastating blows to ministries, ministers and their faithful followers.
* * *
Now the good news:
It's only a game, but you know the thrills and chills that sports can deliver, and yesterday I watched the United States women's football (soccer) team defeat Brazil for the Gold Medal.
It was such a great matchup, both sides played a great game, and it came down to one great breakway goal for the United States by Carli Lloyd and a few sensational saves in goal by Hope Solo.

Final score, U.S. 1, Brazil 0.
Funny how the U.S. media have no clue about soccer. They called it a stunning upset and the like, but the USA women's team has dominated Brazil in recent years. I think the announcers said last night that the US team's record against Brazil is 22-3-2, or something close to that. Hardly an upset.
The Olympics have been such a great experience, even though it's overwhelming how much is packed into 2 1/2 weeks.
Best of all, the games have gone off without incident despite terrorist threats. It's not over yet but things are winding down and you have to give the Olympic and Chinese security forces credit doing such a great job thus far.
* * *
I interviewed Joe Eszterhas this week. He's the author of such Hollywood hits as "Basic Instinct," "Jagged Edge," and "Showgirls." But now Joe, age 63, has left Hollywood behind in more ways than one. He moved to a suburb of Cleveland, where he grew up, and after a cancer scare had a spiritual transformation.
His new book, "Crossbearer," is all about his new life in Christ.
Joe and his family go to Holy Angels Catholic Parish and he rants and complains about boring homilies and the scandal of clerical sexual abuse and coverups by bishops, but in the end he says he is a "captive Catholic" who will never find fulfillment in any other church.
I read an advance copy of the book, which comes out Sept. 2, and wrote about it for an article to be published tomorrow.
* * *
I'm looking at maybe taking a trip to Albania next spring, on a mission trip organized by my church. This is a country that was never on my "must-see" list but I think it would be a fascinating trip. Albania used to be one of the most secretive, hard-to-reach countries in the world until the fall of Communism. The people are terrific there, according to a friend who has made 3 trips to Albania, and some coastal areas are becoming popular resorts.
We'll see if the trip works out. I'm also planning a visit to the Philippines in the spring of 2010. But for now that's a long way off, literally and figuratively.

Toledo, Ohio
Aug. 22, 2008

My daughter sent me a text message a few weeks ago, which normally would not be worth mentioning, but she happened to be driving -- alone -- to Chicago. I sent a note back saying I love you but please don't text while driving. She sent me back a smiley face.
It's pretty obvious why not, but here's an Associated Press article that shows what can happen. I'm wondering if this driver finished her conversation with another text, WPS I CRSHD!
-- David
===================
MASON, OHIO (AP) -- Authorities in southwest Ohio say a driver admitted that she was using a cell phone to text-message a friend when her car went off the road, hit a mailbox and overturned.

Eighteen-year-old Sarah Stearns of Monroe was thrown from the vehicle about 2 a.m. Wednesday. A spokesman for the State Highway Patrol says Stearns has been cited for operating a vehicle without reasonable control.

Stearns was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Officials say they don't know how many accidents occur while drivers are texting. The Ohio Department of Public Safety says similar practices, such as talking on a cell phone or putting on makeup, fall into a catch-all category of "driver inattention."

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Aug. 23, 2008

People scoffed at Rocky Twyman when he came to Toledo in June with his Pray at the Pumps campaign, and asked God for divine intervention with gas prices.
The price of gas on the day he prayed was $4.09.
On Thursday, I saw gas for $3.44 a gallon at several local stations. Uunfortunately for me, I didn't win the gas lottery this week because I had a full tank and the price jumped back up on Friday to $3.75 a gallon.
Even at the latest price, gas is still 34 cents a gallon lower than it was the day Mr. Twyman came to Toledo with his prayer group, at the request of Rev. Mike Fortune of Toledo's First Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
I like to think Rocky Twyman, Reverend Fortune, and the others made a difference, although it's impossible to measure or prove something like this.
But thanks, Rocky, for coming to Toledo and leading a prayer for lower gas prices. It sure didn't hurt.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
August 23, 2008

After a jam-packed week, I have the day off today. But we've got a special event at our church called "Friends & Family Day" featuring comedian Kenn Kington. This guy is hilarious. When I went to his website, I saw that his 3-year-old daughter had been diagnosed last year with leukemia. Why is it that laughter and tears are so closely related?
After the service the church is holding a picnic, then we'll be attending a small-group Bible study where we are discussing "The Truth Project" -- a video series taught by Del Tackett.
* * *
I got an email from a regular reader who said the religion page was a "home run" yesterday. That's what I always strive for but some weeks you just want to hit the ball and get on base. I did think I had a good package yesterday with stories about Joe Eszterhas' spiritual awakening, an inside look at China and religion, a nonprofit group that tries to keep teens off drugs, and an interview with Michael W. Smith's son Ryan who is trying to raise the bar for Christian filmmaking.
Now it's on to the next week's page. Never time to rest...
* * *
Last day of the Olympics -- caught some of it last night including the men's 10m platform diving, which was a shocker when the Australian beat the Chinese favorites to win Gold. Tonight is the closing ceremonies -- I've got to Tivo them because I have a meeting. If they're anything like the opening ceremonies, you won't want to miss them!

Sylvania, Ohio
Aug. 24, 2008

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were a tremendous success, both on the field and off. The athletic competition and achievements were remarkable and there were no major security problems (except for one tragic and bizarre attack on an athlete's parents, the kind of thing that unfortunately could happen anywhere, anytime).

The USA shined brightly, especially with Michael Phelps' 8 Gold Medals, but our athletes scored the top spot on the podium in men's basketball, women's soccer, men's volleyball, men's and women's beach volleyball, and several key gymnastics and track events, among others.
Last night's closing ceremonies were interesting but not nearly as mesmerizing as the opening ceremony. After 17 days of endless competition, I am glad it's over. I had a hard time prying my eyes away from the games whenever I was home and had some free time. It was a wonderful experience but overwhelming in many ways. I'm glad for life to get back to normal.
* * *
Almost as soon as Barack Obama named Joe Biden as his running mate, I got two emails from different Catholic groups. They were completely contrary to each other.
Here are the announcements...

First: "Senator Biden will make an excellent Vice-President," said Dr. Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats. "He has lived out the tenets of his Catholic faith throughout his career -- speaking out tirelessly on behalf of the poor and the exploited, encouraging peace and reconstruction in the most despairing corners of the world, and promoting personal responsibility here in the US. He is a public servant who truly believes in the common good."

Second: "The Roman Catholic group, Fidelis, says Barack Obama's selection of pro-abortion Catholic Joe Biden to be his V.P. running mate 'is a slap in the face to Catholic voters" and poses a major challenge for American Catholics.' In a press release sent out overnight, Fidelis president, Brian Burch, declared that Barack Obama has "re-opened a wound among American Catholics" by picking a pro-abortion Catholic politician like Joe Biden.
According to Burch, the American Catholic bishops have made it clear that Catholic political leaders must defend the dignity of every human person, including the unborn. "Sadly, Joe Biden's tenure in the United States Senate has been marked by steadfast support for legal abortion" he added.
= = = =
So, Sen. Biden is either a brilliant pick or a "slap in the face," depending on whom you ask. This reflects the wide range of opinions among Catholics on some key issues, including abortion.
It does not, however, reflect the fact that the Catholic Church has been crystal clear and consistent in its pro-life, anti-abortion stance. Everyone has a right to speak out but it doesn't mean their statements carry equal weight.
* * *
I wrote a blog the other day on an AP story about a girl who crashed her car as she was writing a text message. The girl was injured but survived. One reader sent me a note about a student of hers who died while sending a text message. She was traveling 65 mph, went off the road and hit a tree and was instantly killed.
This is a serious issue as people, especially young people, send more and more text messages.
As the writer pointed out in her email to me, a driver going 65 mph travels 88 feet in a second, in a car that probably weighs a ton. That's a lot of mass and velocity, and it poses a potential danger to other drivers, passengers and innocent bystanders.
Getting behind the wheel of a car is a serious responsibility and requires a driver's full attention.
So be smart and be safe -- don't do something stupid like sending text messages while you're driving. Your message can wait. Or you can call -- just keep it brief and get back to focusing on driving asap.

Sylvania, Ohio
August 25, 2008

My article on Joe Eszterhas that was published Saturday was mentioned yesterday in the Drudge Report, one of the most popular online websites.
I got dozens of emails from around the country, and a few phone calls, from people who wanted to comment on the article and Eszterhas.
I did think it was a really good story but who knew that Drudge would pick it up. In 2005, an article I wrote about Marcy Kaptur was picked up by Drudge and got so many hits on the newspaper's website that it overloaded and crashed. That was when I quoted Marcy comparing Osama bin Laden to the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont. Rush Limbaugh read the article on the air and it got widespread nationwide play. A month afterward, I ran into Marcy and she had no gripes, said my article was accurate but everyone else blew it out of proportion. She's a class act, that's for sure.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Aug. 27, 2008

"We do not get the luxury of choosing the time or the place we were born; nor do we always have control over the circumstances into which we are sometimes thrown...All too often we allow ourselves to believe that people who accomplish great things somehow stumble on opportunity or gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us. Yet we find that most often quite the opposite is true...Your circumstances do not equal your opportunity, because your opportunity is shaped not simply by your external factors but by the internal factors of who you choose to be and become."

(Thanks to the Rev. Dave Claassen, author of "Kathryn's Fountain" and pastor of Mayfair-Plymouth Congregational Church in Toledo, for bringing this quote to my attention)

Watching Hurricane Gustav's path through the Gulf of Mexico is getting scary. It reminds me of three years ago, when Katrina was drawing close to New Orleans.
My wife and I were in a hotel room in Sydney, Australia, watching Fox News, the only American station we could get over there -- not even CNN! -- as Katrina approached. I have lived in Florida and visited New Orleans and I knew how vulnerable that city was to a hurricane.
Just as we were leaving for the airport in Australia, the news reported that Katrina had been downgraded and that it was veering slightly to the east. That seemed like an answer to prayer.
When I arrived in L.A. about 18 hours later, I called the newsroom and spoke with Jim Wilhelm, the city editor, and asked how New Orleans had fared.
"It's gone," he said. "The whole city is gone."
I couldn't believe it at first. I had been optimistic over the latest news before leaving Sydney. Like the rest of the country, I turned on the news and watched in horror as New Orleans lived through the nightmare that followed Hurricane Katrina.
A few months later I went to Mississippi on a mission trip with my church to repair damaged homes. We were in the Biloxi-Pascagoula area, which was 80 miles east of Katrina. There was little news coverage of this area and yet the damage was almost beyond belief. Homes several miles from the shore took in 4 feet of water. Roofs were torn apart and people's ceilings were damaged by the rain. Houses on the shoreline were totally washed away, only brick steps and foundations remained.
We fixed some roofs, walls, and ceilings for single moms and the elderly, but knew we could only make a small contribution in the midst of such overwhelming disaster. Yet for the people we helped, it meant a lot.
One thing I noticed is that when we went to Lowe's and Home Depot to buy sheetrock and shingles, the parking lot was filled with church vans from all over the country. I talked to several of the church crews and they had come from Colorado, Montana, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, and elsewhere to help out. The Presbyterian Church had a whole village of tents for their volunteers, set up on church property.
Several people told me that right after the storm, hundreds of Mormons had showed up and helped tear out the damaged drywall and toss out damaged furniture, TVs, etc.
When it came to government help, FEMA provided funds and trailers for people whose homes were uninhabitable. But one person told me the government put a trailer on her property soon after the hurricane but she did not get a key for another month, so she couldn't get inside it.
A FEMA rep at the Lowe's said his agency provides funds but most residents could not hire anyone anyway, because construction crews were too scarce. The church volunteers were the ones who were making a real difference, he told me.

I've read so much about New Orleans and its dikes. I don't think it could endure another Category 4 hurricane without experiencing more disaster. I'm hoping -- and praying -- that Hurricane Gustav takes a sharp turn or does a miraculous fade.

* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Aug. 30, 2008

Both Barack Obama and John McCain showed good political instincts in picking their running mates, in my opinion.

Joe Biden is a veteran who balances out Obama's lack of experience, particularly in world affairs. He's got a great smile and a powerful personal story of tragedy and triumph.
One negative is that Biden is a pro-choice Catholic, which is causing a bit of an uproar.

McCain's pick of Sarah Palin seems brilliant to me, she is young, a fresh face (and an attractive one), a self-described "hockey mom" whose favorite dish is "moose stew," she's strongly pro-life and has some genuine personality.
A V.P. candidates' debate will be interesting.
To counter the Dems constant claims that McCain is "the same as Bush," the picking of an outsider like Alaska Gov. Palin brings in someone about as far from the Beltway as you could get and still be American.
The biggest negative thus far, besides her relative inexperience, is that Palin is under investigation for a possible abuse of power. (The allegation is that she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan because she was angry at Monegan for not firing an Alaska State Trooper who went through a messy divorce with Palin's sister.)
I'm sure McCain checked that out thoroughly before picking her, and if there was much of a potential problem there he would have chosen someone else.
Both parties' selections for running mates will prevent either side from criticizing the other over a purported lack of experience.
In a tight election like this, the V.P. picks could prove to be the difference in who wins the White House.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
August 30, 2008

I don't want to minimize the damage caused by Hurricane Gustav, because it did cause havoc, but thankfully it certainly was not a catastrophe on the scale of Katrina.
For one thing, the hurricane did not hit New Orleans directly, but veered west a bit. Second, it lost some of its strength just before landfall.
Aside from those factors that are determined entirely by Mother Nature, it seems that people have learned a few lessons. Ninety percent of the population had evacuated this time, showing they've learned from the past. And the levees held up well. The Army Corps of Engineers have done a good job and pledge to have the levees at full strength by 2011.
* * *
Meanwhile, on the GOP front, Gov. Sarah Palin has dropped a bomb on the Republican convention by announcing that her 17-year-old unwed daughter is five months pregnant. That's not a fatal political mistake but it sure is embarrassing for poor John McCain (who was in Toledo yesterday when the news broke. ABC News said she had told McCain about it before he picked her; I certainly hope so.)
Life happens, as they say, and kids will disappoint parents. Everyone knows someone who has gone through such a scenario. But this hockey mom and conservative pro-life politician from Alaska is not just anyone, she's the Republican candidate for vice president. It should be interesting to hear what she says at the convention tomorrow night. I'm thinking she's likely to address the issue, at least cursorily.
One political plus from all this is that it shows Sarah Palin is a real person living in the real world. That could help McCain, who blundered when he told a reporter he didn't know how many houses he and his billionaire wife own.
* * *
Here's a copy of the statement the Palins released yesterday:

ARLINGTON, Virginia, September 1 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today, Sarah and Todd Palin issued the following statement regarding today's Reuters story:

"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates."

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Sept. 2, 2008

Some of my recent photos...

1960s Cadillac at Henry Ford Museum.

James Pickens, Jr., aka "The Chief" on Grey's Anatomy, at BGSU graduation (he's an alumnus).

The cot and mess kit of Gen. George Washington, at the Henry Ford.

A 1968 Ford Lotus

The legendary Oscar Mayer Weinermobile.

Olympic hero Michael Phelps, taken from TV image.

The chair in which Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was assassinated (rocker is on display at the Henry Ford).

Your friends and mine from Sesame Street, on display in a store window.

(all photos copyright David Yonke)

"The average American eats meals with friends and family half as often as fifty years ago."
* * *
I saw the above item written by Bill McKibben when reviewing David Kynaston's new book "Austerity Britain" in the magazine Books & Culture: A Christian Perspective.
No surprise to culture watchers, but a sad state of affairs nonetheless. Sharing meals is such a basic and integral event for family and community. It can build relationships and break down stereotypes when people break bread together.
I remember a friend of mine, Sam Roe, who traveled to Italy and looked up a relative of a friend from the States. The Italian relatives did not speak English, but when Sam knocked on the door and said his friend's name, they invited him in for dinner. It was a memorable and warming experience to eat dinner with strangers even though they could not communicate with words.
I had a similar experience when I was in Medellin, Colombia. I had just arrived for a five-week trip as a Paul W. Harris Rotary Club fellow. I speak Spanish but I was rusty when I got there. For the first few days, I was hosted by a beautiful Colombian family in which no one but a college age son -- who wasn't around very much -- could speak English.
We shared several meals before my language skills rose above bare minimum. But we became instant friends in a way that transcended language. I think sharing meals was a key component to our being able to build cultural bridges. (I still have the Colombian flag the family gave me and told me to display proudly, which I do in my den).
It's a shame we spend so many meals alone or with the TV as our sole companion. I'm as guilty as the next guy, but I'm going to try to get out of the rut and make plans to go to breakfast, lunch or dinner with people I care about.
* * *
UPDATE: I just read an item in the Catholic Chronicle, the local diocese's monthly newspaper, that said it is designating Sept. 22 as "Family Day: A Day to Eat Dinner With Your Children."
Maybe an organized effort like this will make a difference. It certainly can't hurt.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Sept. 7, 2008

Toledo is the site of an Extreme Makeover televison show with a family of 13 getting a new house.
The father is a firefighter and the mother is a minister who has been very ill with a soft-tissue disease the last few years. The couple have 3 biological children and 8 adopted children, most of them from Haiti.
The Frisches live in a modest three-bedroom home in West Toledo and seem to be the perfect candidates for this kind of blessing.
Sanctus Real played a benefit concert for the family Sunday night and drew 5,000 people!
It's great to have a network show filming here and helping out a Toledo family. The project has gotten great publicity and is drawing huge crowds to the construction site.
The only sad thing is that four other families that were finalists were passed over. I know one of those four families, and they also are extremely deserving and in need of some help. But obviously not everyone can be chosen for this TV show and at least the "winners" are so well regarded by all who know them.
Thanks to Ty, the ABC crew, and local volunteers who are doing the work.
* * *
Saw a bit of the TV news this morning and the networks were all saying how much of a bounce Sarah Palin has given McCain. The Republicans are now in the lead in most polls, and Palin is the "X" factor or, as one pundit put it, "the XX factor" (XX as in female gene). Another Gallup pollster said every convention gives a candidate a "bounce" but Palin put an "oomph" in the GOP's "bounce."
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Sept. 9, 2008

"This is not the first time Jesus has been with thieves."
-- Father Russ Kohler, pastor of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Detroit, after robbers broke into the church and stole a metal corpus of Jesus from a cross, along with chalices, candelabra, and other sacred items including the tabernacle containing the Holy Eucharist.

You can read the full story here at the Archdiocese of Detroit's excellent website.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Sept. 11, 2008

Just a little spin around my block:
Stopped in at a party last night for Jon Hendricks, one of my favorite people in the world. Jon will be 87 on Tuesday, Sept. 16. He is a dynamo, one of the people who changes the atmosphere of a room wherever he goes.
Jon is still full of energy and laughter and has countless stories to tell and boundless enthusiasm. He is a jazz singer and the "poet laureate of jazz," a five-time Grammy Award winner, inventor of "Vocalese," and a professor at the University of Toledo.
I had the pleasure of sitting down and chatting with Jon at his house earlier this week. Here's a quote you won't get in the newspaper: "'I've always had good ears. [Harry] 'Sweets' Edison told me, 'You could hear a gnat piss on cotton.'"
They're having a birthday party for Jon on Monday night at Murphy's Place on Water Street.
* * *
It's been paintful watching network news people and national pundits try to comment on and analyze Sarah Palin's faith. They might as well be talking about the intricacies of brain surgery or translating Farsi. News people are so much more comfortable dealing with mainline Protestants or Catholics or Jews than evangelicals. It's not just out of their comfort zone, it's out of their comfort ballpark.
* * *
I started reading a book called "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs. The writer tried to literally follow every commandment in the Bible for a year.
I am just in the first few chapters and the guy writes that he's not supposed to touch women, for example, so he asks the female clerk at the pharmacy to put his change on the counter. She glares at him, and he covers up by saying he has a cold.
By trying to obey one command, he ends up lying, he laments. This should be an interesting read.
* * *
I went to an interfaith service on hunger awareness last night. On 9/11, a day that is remembered for religous extremism, here were Jews, Christians, Hindus and Muslims joining together to help feed the hungry and provide for the needy.
Yes, religion has its problems but it also is one of the greatest forces for good on the planet.
* * *
Travel & Leisure magazine has released a list of America's best and worst cities in various categories. Miami was rated as the city with the most beautiful people; Philadelphia was last on the list of 25.
It reminded me of when I was in Denmark. The women there were so beautiful... and I guess the men were handsome, too. Tall and thin, blonde hair and blue eyes, active and healthy...
I mentioned to a Dane that their country was full of beautiful people and they laughed and said, "Oh, you should go to Sweden. The Swedes are much more beautiful."
Then we went to Sweden, and yes, it seemed to be true -- the people were even more beautiful than the Danes. I mentioned this to a Swede. He said, "Oh, you should go to Norway, the people there are more beautiful."
We didn't get to Norway so I can't say. But I do know a Norwegian, who stayed at our house for a few weeks last year. He was a very handsome young man -- and also a talented singer-songwriter and breakdancer.
I'm guessing that if we had gotten to Norway the Norwegians would have said we need to go to Finland.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Sept. 12, 2008

Here are two of the more bizarre news stories you'll ever see outside of the supermarket tabloids. The articles are not only troubling about the individuals involved, but also about our society in general.

======================

Mom allegedly steals daughter's identity to be cheerleader

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - A 33-year-old woman is accused of stealing her daughter's identity to attend high school and join the cheerleading squad.

Wendy Brown is charged with felony identity theft after enrolling in a Wisconsin high school as her daughter.

The criminal complaint says Brown admitted to telling school officials she was 15 because she wanted to get her high school diploma and join the cheerleading squad.

She allegedly attended practices, received a cheerleader's locker and went to a pool party at the coach's house.

The complaint says Brown has a history of identity theft. Her daughter lives in Nevada with Brown's mother.

There was no attorney listed in Brown's online court records. Her home number could not be found.

==============

'Capitalist' student auctions off virginity

A 22-year-old woman who is planning to auction off her virginity in order to pay for her college tuition says she has no ethical hang-ups about the plan.

The woman, using the pseudonym Natalie Dylan, will auction herself through the website of the enormous Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel in the US state of Nevada.

"We live in a capitalist society ... why shouldn't I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?" Ms Dylan was quoted as saying in the New York Daily News.

"I understand some people will condemn me ... but I think this is empowering. I'm using what I have to better myself.

The pretty brunette has already finished her undergraduate degree in women's studies at Sacramento State University and plans to start a master's degree.

Speaking on shock jock Howard Stern's New York radio show, Ms Dylan said she got the idea from a Peruvian woman who auctioned her virginity and received a $1.5 million bid.

The Peruvian woman did not go through with the plan.

Ms Dylan told Stern she would submit to a gynecological examination and lie detector test to prove she was really a virgin.

But she said she was not willing to let just any guy win the auction — price and personality would both come into the equation.

Stern denied initial reports that he was behind the auction, saying he only wanted to interview the girl about why she would do such a thing.

==============
I googled the above story after I heard about it and almost couldn't believe it, or maybe I didn't want to believe it. Then I found that a British student had done the same thing in 2004 (and netted $15,000 pounds).
Ms. Dylan in the above story tried to do this on eBay first, but the auction house denied her listing. At least some institution demonstrated some sanity.
But eBay has had some weird listings, including someone who sold a "whale's soul" on the online auction, and another listing supposedly of a relic, or piece of bone, of St. Nicholas (aka Santa Claus).
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Sept. 13, 2008

Thanks to Gerald Robinson and a few other notable news figures, I've been so busy this week that I haven't had time to blog much...I apologize and will try to be more timely.
Maybe if I review the week in brief you'll see why I was so lax on my blog.

It all started the week before my trip to the religion newswriters' conference in D.C.
The week before I go, I am under pressure to double up and get things done for the current week as well as the week I am going to be out of the office.
Then when I get back, it usually takes a full day (or more, really) to sort through the hundreds of emails, voicemails, snail mail, and other piles of work and people waiting to talk.
On top of the usual stuff, that anti-Muslim DVD "Obsession" came out while I was gone so I had a lot of added calls and emails and discussions to deal with.
On Monday, my first day back in the office, two motions were filed regarding Robinson. One was the state's response to the priest's appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court. The other was a motion filed by an attorney representing Survivor Doe in the civil suit against Robinson.
You can read about both of the filings here.
Basically, Robinson's attorneys are saying he was denied a fair trial because of the long gap between Sister Margaret Ann Pahl's murder and his arrest. They also make a few points about the Satanism references in the trial and claim he did not have competent counsel.
Survivor Doe's case alleges that Robinson was part of a group of Catholic leaders who dressed as nuns and raped and tortured her when she was a child.
Her attorney, Mark "Bald Eagle" Davis, has asked the diocese to answer a long list of questions and turn over documents. He has not gotten the response he asked for so he is asking the court to compel the diocese to comply.
So those are interesting, but it's going to be a while before the state high court decides whether to hear the case. Odds are against it, since the court accepts only 7 to 8 percent of the cases sent its way, and then it overturns only a small fraction of those cases. It could be 3 to 6 months before the court decides.
Meanwhile, the civil suit is set for trial in May, 2009.
The national media would surely have a frenzy covering the trial of a Toledo Diocesan Catholic priest convicted of murder, on civil charges that he was part of a satanic cult that abused young girls.
* * *
I spent a few days working on a story about the Pulpit Initiative, in which ministers throughout the nation plan to endorse political candidates this Sunday to defy IRS restrictions. They're assuming the IRS will take action, and they'll respond with a lawsuit that they say they will take to the supreme court if necessary.
I worked so hard on that article and was horrified to see how it was edited. I can't get into it here but I am still shaking my head.
I put in so much time and effort, which has a domino effect on the rest of my week, but all on my own initiative because I thought this was such a good story so I was willing to make the sacrifice. Now I wonder i... I must be crazy to take on added work, difficult work, too, only to have it blow up in my face.
* * *
Regarding the religion section this week, my regular editor was on vacation, so that was another added stress factor.
* * *
On top of the religion beat, I had a tough time with a few music stories I wrote in my free time. B.B. King was supposed to do an interview weeks ago, but it wound up happening way late. I stayed up late on Tuesday on deadline, actually after deadline, to write an article about King without having done an interview.
Then B.B. was available on Wednesday. So I interviewed him and it went great but it meant I had to rewrite the whole article, basically. It was like writing two articles instead of one, both past deadline, which means very noticeable added pressure.
I also did a quick story on another octogenarian musician, 85-year-old jazz saxophonist Buddy Sullivan.
* * *
I also wrote a movie review of "Fireproof," starring Kirk Cameron. I saw the film at a press screening in Washington and felt it was pretty good for a low-budget, Christian film. I figured I better review it because most mainline journalists wouldn't give it a chance. I was honest but fair -- and I don't think most movie critics would give it a chance.
* * *
Meanwhile, a dear woman who has sung jazz for decades in Toledo, Mary Ann Russo, died of cancer this week. She was a great singer and a wonderful person.
I also got a call this week from a friend who said that Rusty Monroe, one of the finest persons you'll ever meet, nearly 90 years old now and dealing with cancer, had fallen and broken her neck.
I had a nice chat with Rusty a few months ago and the last thing she said was, "I love you, David." I cried when I hung up.
The whole world will miss this classy lady when she leaves this mortal coil. I am praying she recovers from this tough setback, despite how dire it looks, and shine her light for a few more years.
* * *
I had a church board meeting on Thursday and it went from 6 to 10:30 p.m. Quite a "night off."
* * *
My sister called, her former neighbor in Tampa committed suicide. The woman was in her 40s with 3 young kids. Obviously unstable to everyone who knew her, it was still a shock that she would do something like this. Her husband never saw it coming.
It's bad enough that someone would be so depressed that they take their own life, but the pain it causes the family survivors is unimaginable. I will be praying for Jeff and the kids.
* * *
Tonight I actually did have a free night. Janet and I got takeout from one of our favorite Mediterranean restaurants and watched the presidential debate -- what a romantic evening, huh?
To be honest, I am getting increasingly weary of the partisan rhetoric and political posing. It will be nice when the political crazy season is over.
* * *
Well that's enough for now... thanks for taking a quick spin around my block. Have a great weekend and come back soon, y'hear!
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
September 26, 2008

Back to work today after a three-day weekend. We went to visit my daughter, Lisa, who lives and works in Rockford, Illinois.
It's about a five hour drive from Sylvania and it's always so wonderful to visit and hang out with her. Then it's always so hard to leave.
You want to raise your children so they can be independent and responsible, and then when they grow up and are independent and responsible you wish they were still in the same city. That's life in the 21st century. But deep down, it is just good to know that Lisa is thriving and that she is right where God wants her to be.
* * *
The proposed $700,000,000,000 congressional bailout of the banking system is the most massive economic crisis I've ever seen. The chickens are coming home to roost, as the saying goes.
Our country's immense prosperity in the 1990s was not based on production of goods and services, but largely on speculation and expectations. Housing prices kept soaring, banks and mortgage brokers were lending tons of money to people who shouldn't have qualified.
The bubble burst and it was a pop heard round the world.
Congress is going to have to do something to save the day, there's no doubt. But I hope they do build in restrictions they've discussed that would keep corporate execs from walking away with obscene bonuses. That's been an injustice for years -- when companies fail and the CEO's bail out with golden parachutes, while the little guys are left totally broke with no recourse.
I've never seen such an economic meltdown in my lifetime and all we can do at this point is wait and see what our elected officials do about it. I think it's time for some serious prayer.
* * *
Speaking of dark nights, I saw The Dark Knight over the weekend. I didn't like it much at all.
It got so much press and was such a hot commodity when it came out. Why?
It's not a fun movie. There's a lot of suffering and pain. The plot is jammed full of twists and turns that are hard to follow.
The Joker is a despicable madman with no redeeming qualities. Batman hisses every line in a weird snake-like whisper. Maggie Gyllenhall is supposed to be the beautiful babe all the men are fighting over -- and not to be superficial, but she's just not very attractive.
The action scenes were OK and I loved the Batmobile -- but it got mangled after only a brief appearance.
Overall I'd give the movie a "D". I think Heath Ledger's unfortunate death is what made The Dark Knight such a blockbuster.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Sept. 30, 2008

One of my pet peeves is poorly written signage, either with bad grammar (mens room, for example), or sloppy thinking. I mean, by their very nature, signs are meant for public display and consumption.
The creators of the signs must realize that whatever their sign says will be read by many people, some of whom are going to be writers or editors. If they are unsure of the wording, punctuation, spelling or grammar, they have time to check it out. Consult a dictionary. Ask an expert. Google it.
One of the most annoying signs, in my opinion, that is popping up all over the country is:
NO PED XING
That is such a linguistic atrocity, and yet it is gaining in popularity.
There are lots of cutesy short cut words like "thru" and "nite" instead of through and night. They're probably technically acceptable by now, unfortunately.

Church signs are another source of bewilderment. The purpose, one would think, is to attract the "unchurched" passersby, to entice them to attend the church. There have been some very good ones -- such as "CedarCreek Church sucks -- signed, Satan."
There's a little church down the street from me that seems to dredge up the worst possible slogans, ones that either cause you to scratch your head and wonder what it means, or else it seems so out of touch with society that it would repel any potential customers.
I drove by tonight and here's the latest catchphrase:

LOOK TO THE ROCK
FROM WHICH YOU
WERE HEWN

Do you think that is going to cause sinners to put on their best suits and race to church on Sunday morning?
This is just the latest in a long line of bizarre and counterproductive church signs. I'm going to start keeping a list of the most incredibly bad church signs.
* * *
Flash: The U.S. Senate passed the economic rescue bill. I don't think the senators really knew what they were passing, it was voted on under such tremendous deadline pressure. The house is now up to bat.
* * *
I spent the morning at a local mosque for Eid ul-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan. It was a joyous occasion and I was glad to hear the imam preach a strong message of love and peace. The mosque was jammed -- people were crowded outside the doors and an overflow room carried the service on closed circuit TV.
For Muslims, the Eid ul-Fitr is like Christmas to Christians. A lot of Muslims who don't go to the mosque all year will show up for this holiday.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 1, 2008

Claudia Vercellotti, the Toledo co-coordinator of SNAP, met with Governor Ted Strickland this week and their conversation turned to crime and cover-ups in Toledo. Claudia told him about the Gerald Robinson case. The governor said he was aware of it. They had a long talk about it and Claudia mentioned my book. Governor Strickland was interested. Claudia promised to send him a copy. We shall see what we shall see.
* * *
I got several letters and many emails congratulating me on my recent journalism awards, including notes from State Sen. Teresa Fedor and attorney Jon Richardson. It's nice to hear positive comments from so many people -- so thanks to everyone who wrote, I greatly appreciate it.
I'm going to have to make it a point to enter more contests.
* * *
I was walking past some bushes this morning when a few sparrows darted out and flew away.
It's a common sight but today it had an unusual impact on me.
Like many Americans, and undoubtedly Europeans and Asians and Africans as well, I've been watching the news about the economy with trepidation and concern.
Even though Congress passed the emergency bailout package and Bush signed it immediately yesterday, there are some questions about how successful this rescue plan will be. And then you wonder, how did we get into this mess in the first place? I've read a lot about it but there is still a lot of mystery and vagaries in what we're being told.
I'm ever the optimist, but the stock market turmoil is downright scary. My, and other people's, long-term financial goals and retirement plans are on the line.
Meanwhile, the news business is going through the most foundational shift since Gutenberg invented the printing press. Newspapers around the country are cutting back, laying off workers, trying to find ways to stay healthy and profitable. It's a bit ironic that one of the main reasons I got into the news business in the first place was for its stability.
So in these uncertain times, a sparrow flies past and reminds me of Jesus' reassuring words to his disciples (in Luke 12):

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And [yet] not one of them is forgotten or uncared for in the presence of God. But [even] the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not be struck with fear or seized with alarm; you are of greater worth than many [flocks] of sparrows.

(Incidentally, James Patterson uses "canaries" instead of sparrows in The Message version of the Bible, but the prevailing image is sparrows).

The world may be in turmoil and people all around us may be losing their heads in general -- and their tails in the stock market -- but I honestly believe God is in control and cares for us, more than the sparrow.
Jehovah Jireh, God is the Provider.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Oct. 4, 2008

This speech was given by Chief Seattle in January of 1854, to territorial governor Isaac Stevens, negotiating a treaty with the native people of the Pacific Northwest. The exact text is the subject of great debate, but even if this isn't word for word, I thought it's worth sharing with you in light of the new 'Greening of America', which isn't that new after all.

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.

Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.

Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.

To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.

A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.

We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.

A colleague was telling me that he watched the congressional hearings on the AIG $85 billion bailout yesterday and that one of the corporate honchos who kept claiming everything was all right ended up being fired -- with a $230 million severance package. Then, to top it off, AIG hired him as a consultant for $1 million a month. Small wonder Wall Street imploded.
Also, I received an email directing me to a 1999 NY Times article about subprime lending market, which really does give some important background for understanding the factors that led to the crisis.
Here's a link to that article.
* * *
UPDATE: Here's an Associated Press story about AIG and the incredible profligacy of top executives even after the taxpayer bailout:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said on Wednesday it was “despicable” that American International Group Inc. executives spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a posh California retreat just days after getting a federal bailout.
Lawmakers investigating the meltdown of AIG said the retreat didn’t include anyone from the financial products division that nearly drove the company under, but they were still enraged that executives of AIG’s main U.S. life insurance subsidiary spent $440,000 on the retreat, complete with spa treatments, banquets and golf outings.
“It’s pretty despicable,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
AIG sent its executives to the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government that it needed to stave off bankruptcy. The resort tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees, according to invoices the resort turned over to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“The president did not want to move forward on this rescue package to help anybody in the top positions on Wall Street,” Perino said. “He was concerned about everyday people like you and me. ... He didn’t do that to help top executives and certainly not to help executives go to a spa.”

Toledo, Ohio
Oct. 8, 2008

Margaret "Rusty" Monroe and Jon Hendricks

You meet a lot of people when you work for a newspaper. Some of them earn a special place in your heart and mind and memories. One of the people who meant a lot to me is Rusty Monroe, who I'm sad to say passed away yesterday at age 89.
She was the longtime owner of Rusty's Jazz Cafe in South Toledo, a place where you could go seven nights a week to hear live jazz, which in itself is an incredible accomplishment. Even in her 70s she worked long days and nights and not for profit but for people.
Her love of people and jazz helped so many aspiring musicians get their careers started.
She was always encouraging, open-minded to music and ideas, quick to laugh, devoted to friends and family, and dressed to pefection with her hair and her makeup done.
Rusty was a lady in the highest sense of the word.
Her funky little club not only had live jazz, but it had chess tables and a fireplace where you could roast marshmallows (even during concerts) and always home-made food in a low-priced buffet.
She didn't mind if some college kids sat in the back, drank cofee and played chess all night. It didn't bring in any money for her but it gave the students a safe place to hang out and kept them out of trouble, she'd tell me.
I remember when she let a band of young Toledo musicians play in her club. They were definitely 100 percent rock and didn't fit into the jazz category at all. But Rusty laughed and told me, "I call them jazz-rock." She just wanted to give musicians a little boost and found a weeknight slot for them.
When she would get a call asking if she knew a drummer or a bassist because some group needed anothe rmusician, she'd flip through her thick address book and find someone who not only was a good musician but also needed work and a few extra dollars.
One time I was there to see a Russian bluegrass-jazz band called Kukaruza. The musicians got there early and wandered around the club, smiling deeply and soaking it all in. They told me that had heard of Rusty's in Moscow and were thrilled to be there. In Moscow! That's how big a reputation Rusty's Jazz Cafe had.
I saw so many terrific local musicians play there, as well as some national artists. Maynard Ferguson performed there regularly. Wynton Marsalis dropped in after a local concert and played a few songs. Alexander Zonjic used to play Rusty's all the time, driving down from Detroit and cramming his gear onto that tiny stage, not to make a buck but only because he loved Rusty so much and she had called and asked.
Who could say no to Rusty?
She knew her time was short. I spoke with her a few weeks ago. Her cancer had recurred and there was no way to fight it. But she was at peace. "I had a good run," she said with a chuckle.
Rusty's legacy will carry on in our hearts and minds and memories.
And in all the great jazz that will still be played around the world by musicians who were encouraged and inspired by Rusty.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 12, 2008

Went to see Denny Schaffer speak at a banquet last night. He was a local radio star in the 1990s, dominating the airwaves with his shock-jock "Breakfast Club" program on KISS-FM.

Denny moved to Atlanta, had a great gig going, then the station dropped all its deejays and went with an automated format. He's now running an internet show called dennyradio.com and runs a morning slot from Atlanta that is broadcast weekdays on WCWA-AM in Toledo.
He spoke for an hour last night about his faith in Jesus and how it helped him deal with the ups and downs of the radio business. It was a heartfelt talk about the important things in life and how focusing on God will carry you through the good times and the bad.
Denny was a wildman for years but had a life-changing spiritual experience in 1999 and although it's an ongoing process and, as for anyone, sometimes a real struggle, anyone who heard him speak last night knows he is genuinely a believer.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 12, 2008

Did you see "60 Minutes" last Sunday? There were two great segments -- one on Jack Garcia, a 450-pound Cuban-American who infiltrated the mob for the FBI. The most amusing thing is that he spent a lot of time in "mob school" watching the Food Channel because food is such an important part of the mafia life. He needed to know how to pronounce all the spices and entrees correctly.
I also thought it was an interesting little tidbit that all mobsters carry their cash in a wad that has to be wrapped with a purple rubber band taken off a stalk of broccoli from the grocery store. If you don't carry your cash like that, the mobsters will know you're a poser, according to Garcia (aka Jack Falcone).
Be careful if you're dealing with someone who reaches into their pocket and pulls out a bankroll wrapped with a purple rubber band...
Garcia ended his undercover gig when one mobster attacked someone in the housewares department of a department store, cracking his head open with a crystal candlestick. Garcia/Falcone didn't follow mafia protocol and join in on the beating, so his FBI bosses figured he'd be suspect and ended the sting, which led to dozens of arrests of high-profile mobsters.
Garcia said he realizes he's a target now but said he's the good guy and he's not going to go into hiding. And if they come after him, "they'd better be ready," he said.
Here is a link to CBS' 60 Minutes site.
Falcone wrote a book about the operation, published yesterday. Here's a link to the Amazon site.

The other fascinating episode was about the war in Iraq. The battle for Sadr City was not won by a surge of American troops but by the use of high-tech weapons that are simply amazing.
The Army has drone planes that fly stealthily above the city at 12,000 feet.
When insurgents fired a rocket, it zeroed in on them and started tracking them. Rather than attack right away, the Army kept watching them for 8 to 12 hours until they rendezvoused for a group debriefing.
Then the Army would call in another rocket-equipped drone that would fire a missile at the building where everyone was meeting. Instead of taking out one or two of the militiamen, the attack would take out dozens.
By doing this, along with putting up a concrete barrier to keep the insurgents out of mortar range of the Green Zone, attacks against U.S. troops dropped from 60 a day to 2 or 3.
That's the way to win a war in the 21st century.
Here's a link to that segment.
* * *
Saw on the news yesterday that there's 100 days left for President Bush's administration. Change is coming soon, one way or another.
* * *
I'm still stunned that University of Toledo beat the University of Michigan Wolverines 13-10 on Saturday at the Big House. Michigan has never been so humbled. It was the first time U of M lost to a MAC team and they lost at home to a UT team that was in the throes of a disastrous year.
We all knew it would be a rough season with the new head coach and a freshman QB, but I personally never thought the mighty Wolverines would be toothless and cowering in the corner with their tails between their legs.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 14, 2008

Interviewed John Tesh last week, he's a realy nice guy and I enjoy our conversations. One thing he said that didn't fit it into the article I'm writing, which runs tomorrow, is about his recent meetings with radio show sponsors.

Most companies were wary of signing up for 2009, he said, given the state of the economy. But he has one sponsor whose business is booming: Kraft Foods. And you know why? Because of their famous and famously cheap macaroni & cheese. When the economy falters, people still need to eat. And when they cut their food budgets, they buy more mac & cheese.
Tesh is playing in Toledo next Wednesday at the Stranahan Theater.
* * *
I read an AP article yesterday about a 19-year-old girl in Asheville, N.C., who legally changed her name from Jennifer Thornburg to (drumroll please) CutoutDissection.com.
She's protesting animal dissections in school.
It's not enough to hold a sit-in or a rally, I suppose.
I wonder if she'll ever find her new name on a keychain in a souvenir shop?
* * *
Off to sit in a sukkah -- for a story about the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. A local family bought theirs on www.sukkah.com. Isn't the internet wonderful?
Tonight, I'm covering a local speech by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is rolling through the swing states to get out the vote. Should be fun.
* * *
Reading Cathleen Falsani's new book, Sin Boldly (the title is from a sermon by Martin Luther). It's really a collection of essays on faith, written by the esteemed religion reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 15, 2008

My wife, Janet, and I celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We had made some plans that fell through and we ended up with the best day ever -- going to Pokagon State Park in Angola, Indiana, about 80 miles west of Toledo just over the Ohio state line.
We hiked the trails for narly four hours on a perfect fall day, leaves about at their peak colors, and then had dinner at the Potawatami Inn.
Janet and I spent our honeymoon in the mountains of North Carolina, hiking a lot of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and we've been fans of, and frequent visitors to, Pokagon ever since we moved to Toledo 27 years ago.
So it seemed especially fitting to spend our anniversary in the midst of autumn splendor in one of our favorite parks within easy driving distance.
So even though our other, "first" plans for our anniversary fell through, we agreed after all was said and done that this was God's first plan for us to spend our day together.
He knows us pretty well by now.

Here are a few photos I took (some using a timer) as we walked through one of our favorite parks on a glorious autumn day. Hope you enjoy them.
-- David

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 19, 2008

I have been reading Become a Better You by the Rev. Joel Osteen, best-selling author and pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston.
He and his wife, Victoria, will be in Detroit Friday (here's a little story I wrote about it) and I've arranged to interview the couple, whose church is the largest in the United States, with 43,500 average weekend attendance.

So far, Become a Better You has been a fairly interesting read but there's no big revelations, just lots of positive words and pats on the back for people to rise above their circumstances and not settle for a life of mediocrity, drudgery, or unhappiness.
The fact that it is a best-seller (as was his previous book, Your Best Life Now) is proof that people are not getting enough of that message elsewhere.
Too many people are getting beaten down, discouraged, worn out, tired, and depressed. They're giving up and looking at life as a grind. That's sad. Every day should be an adventure and a time to count one's blessings and enjoy life and the world around us.
The world is desperate for positivity and Joel Osteen gives it to them in mega-doses.
I'm looking forward to interviewing him and Victoria and hope it all works out.
* * *
At the opposite extreme, we have Gore Vidal, the 83-year-old author who was supposed to speak in Toledo last week but canceled due to an injury. He fell at home and was unable to travel.
I mentioned to Tahree Lane that I was disappointed at the cancellation. Tahree has interviewed dozens and dozens of authors and said Vidal was extremely nasty and denigrating to her. He insulted her numerous times, regarded himself as a high and mighty, world-renowned writer for whom doing an interview was beneath him, and generally treated this kind and competent reporter like dirt.
After hearing about Vidal's attitude, now I'm glad he didn't make it to Toledo.
* * *

Remember going to concerts where audiences lighted matches or lighters during the ballads and lifted them high, illuminating the room? That was almost always a concert highlight.
But now, with the no-smoking policies (for which I am thankful), fans have been raising cell phones in the air in place of matches.
It doesn't have the same impact, obviously.
Coming to the rescue to fill this gaping hole in modern society are Zippo lighters and a software company called Moderati.
You can download an app to your iPhone that creates an image of a Zippo lighter (you can pick the design or customize it). With the flick of a finger, you "open" the Zippo and crank it, and a flame appears that looks like the real thing.
So now when you heard Skynyrd play "Free Bird" or McCartney sings "Yesterday," you can hold your iPhone up, flick your Zippo, and bring back the old days. In a virtual way.
Modern technology at its best, don't you think?
Here's a link to a demonstration of the virtual Zippo.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 21, 2008

Tonight is the opening game of the World Series with the cinderella team of the Tampa Bay Rays taking on the Philadelphia Phillies.
Having lived in Tampa for 11 years, and with relatives living there now, and having gone to lots of Rays games when the team was pathetic, I'm really hoping they can win it all this year.
They do have the talent now, thanks to lowly finishes giving them high draft picks every year. And they showed some character by hanging on to beat the mighty Red Sox, so it's not like they've been lucky all the way.
This could be their year.
As I've noted before in this column, this is the first season the team is not officially called the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. So once the devil was exorcised, the team achieved greatness. Coincidence? I think not!
The only obstacle for me watching the series is that I've got something going on almost every night for the next week or so.
Tonight we're going to see John Tesh in concert. He's one of my favorite people to interview and I love his radio show, but I've never seen him in concert before. He is just two years older than me, grew up on Long Island like I did, and went to N.C. State when I was a student at Duke. He played lacrosse while I covered lacrosse for the Duke Chronicle (long before the infamous Duke lacrosse team scandal of 2006). I might even have mentioned him in a sports article.
I'm looking forward to the concert tonight and if all goes well, we'll be home in time to see the Rays win Game 1.
* * *
Yesterday I interviewed Tom Klein, a retired BGSU professor who is active in local interfaith efforts and will be teaching a class on that topic for the public starting Oct. 27.
Tom is a pretty amazing person whose interests in interfaith projects began when he signed up to teach at Semester at Sea, circling the globe and teaching literature to students as they visited different countries. The trip exposed Tom to world religions in a new way and inspired him to build bridges between faiths instead of letting the walls keep everyone apart.
Tom surprised me yesterday by saying that as of January, he will be teaching in Thailand, signing on indefinitely. He has been drawn to Buddhist culture and tradition and feels this is where he should be.
He also extended an invitation to visit, which I would love to do someday.
* * *
I'm considering a trip to Albania in February. My church is sending a short-term mission team there. But it's a month before my daughter's wedding and I just don't know if it'll work out for a number of reasons.
Albania is an intriguing country, extremely poor and once closed to western civilization. The people really could use some help and that's why our church is going.
* * *
I'm still reading Joel Osteen's Become a Better You, because I'm interviewing him on Friday, but also juggling a couple of other books.
One of them, whose author will not be named here, kept making me feel annoyed every time I read a few chapters.
I couldn't understand why at first, but it finally dawned on me: the writing comes across with an attitude and I'm pretty sure the author doesn't even realize it.
She writes as if she is dropping pearls of wisdom before her loyal readers. But the pearls aren't very big and the wisdom isn't very deep.
It must be hard to write a book while looking down your nose the whole time.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
October 22, 2008

On Thursday, I left the office and went to a program about interfaith relations held at the University of Toledo. A documentary film, "Talking Through Walls" was shown that details how people from diverse religious groups banded together to help Muslims in a Philadelphia suburb get a mosque built despite initial opposition from neighbors.
I left before the panel discussion to go to a private home in the Toledo suburb of Perrysburg where about 25 people had gathered, by invitation, to pray for our country and the upcoming election. It was an interesting and earnest group of people who are very concerned about the future of America.
Yesterday, I left early in the morning for the Detroit suburb of Utica, where I had an interview set up with Joel and Victoria Osteen, pastors of Lakewood Church in Houston. We met in the back room of the Borders bookstore before Victoria's noon book signing.
I think these two people are genuine and by the way their ministry has grown they obviously have a special touch from God. I enjoyed sitting down with them and doing the interview and they were as courteous, humble and sincere as any ministers I've ever met.

Yet their church has grown from 6,000 in 1999 to 43,500 today, in the nine years since Joel succeeded his father, John, after the senior Osteen's death of a heart attack. Plus Joel's television ministry reaches millions of people around the world and his books are NY Times bestsellers. Victoria's new book, "Love Your Life," was published Oct. 14 and is No. 2 on the NY Times list.
After the interview, we stuck around for the book signing and I interviewed people who waited in line, including one guy who drove 300 miles from Lagrange, Ind., just to meet the Osteens.
* * *
We were out of the bookstore by 1:30 or so, and the event at the Palace of Auburn Hills didn't start until 7:30 p.m.
There's no way I would've driven 90 miles back to Toledo and then made the return trip to Auburn Hills for the evening program, but my friend Ken, who works as a consultant in the automotive industry, took me for a personal tour of the Warren Truck Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit. They manufacture Dodge Dakotas and Ram pickup trucks at the rate of one per minute, and Ken knows the plant inside and out so it was a fascinating firsthand tour. Unfortunately I couldn't take any photos.
* * *
We then headed back to the Palace for "A Night of Hope". I have to say my impression of the Osteens is that they are the real deal -- the same people and personalities backstage as you see onstage. At one point in his sermon last night, Joel forgot the next point he was going to make and paused, saying he had to check his notes. I thought it was funny when he said, "You never see me do this on television because I edit it out."
He also joked that when you pray for those who attack you should say, "Lord blast them ... I mean, Lord bless them..."
Before the concert, I met a woman sitting near me who said she lost her husband in a motorcycle accident a year ago. He had run a few businesses and they lived comfortably but when he died he left the family nothing, no insurance and no way to profit from the businesses. She has three teenage children and her life has been turned upside down. She also said she didn't really consider herself a Christian.
In his sermon, Osteen made several references to people who lost loved ones or spouses, and how God has something new in store for them. He said a few other things that seemed to be aimed directly at this woman. At the end of the sermon, he gave a prayer of salvation and this woman stood up... and I looked around and I would guess that 40 percent of the people at the Palace also stood up -- somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 is my guesstimate.
I never had strong feelings one way or another about the Osteens before yesterday, but now after a day's immersion in their ministry I believe they really have something special going on. Talking to them and to their followers, people are in need of encouragement and that's exactly what their message is. It seems simple but it obviously is having an impact.
Here's a link to their website.

* * *
At a radically different part of the ministry spectrum from the Osteens is Bob Larson, aka The Real Exorcist. I thought the article I wrote about him, published today, came out well. Here's a link to it if you're interested.

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
October 25, 2008

Several people have called and emailed me recently asking if there have been any developments in Fr. Gerald Robinson's legal situation.
The short answer is No.
The civil suit by Survivor Doe against Robinson is still working its way through Common Pleas Court, with a trial date set for May 9, 2009. No big developments there.
The appeals court upheld his conviction and his attorneys plan to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction still lists him as incarcerated, so Fr. Robinson will be spending his third straight Halloween in prison.
I wonder if the inmates are allowed to observe this holiday of dubious spiritual origins, and if so, what do they dress up as?
* * *
I was walking downtown the other day and saw a guy peering into a garbage can. People often do that to remove recyclable items like pop cans or glass bottles. I saw the man lean in, pick up an open quart-sized beer bottle, hold it up to the light to inspect it, sniff the opening, then quaff a few ounces of (presumably) beer.
Yuck.
What should we think when someone does such a thing? Times are not that tough, are they?
* * *
Here's a short but bizarre news story from the Associated Press, published last Friday, that brings to a point all the talk about frivolous lawsuits, people feeling that society owes them something, about greed and corruption, and self-absorption and deception... It's all here in just a few paragraphs:

Man who sought to sue for lost pants tries again

WASHINGTON - A former administrative law judge who unsuccessfully sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a pair of lost pants tried to convince an appeals panel yesterday that he deserves the money because he is a fraud victim.

Roy L. Pearson argued before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that the case is about whether the owners of a neighborhood business misled consumers with a sign that claimed "Satisfaction Guaranteed."

Mr. Pearson said the sign was deceptive and that the burden was on owners Jin Nam Chung and Soo Chung to explain whether the promise came with restrictions.

He lost his job when a D.C. commission voted not to reappoint him.
* * *
This reminds me of a joke by one of my favorite comedians, the late, great Mitch Hedberg:

I was walking by a dry cleaner at 3 a.m., and it said "Sorry, we're closed." You don't have to be sorry. It's 3 a.m., and you're a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I'm not gonna walk by at ten and say, "Hey, I walked by at three, you guys were closed. Someone owes me an apology. This jacket would be halfway done!"

* * *
Extreme religious intolerance reared its ugly head again when a a 34-year-old Christian aid worker from Great Britain was shot and killed by the Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Oct. 20.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the Taliban attack on Gayle Williams.
"We killed her for spreading Christian propaganda. This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan. Our [leaders] issued a decree to kill this woman," Mujahid told the Associated Press.
This kind of fanaticism should never be tolerated. World leaders must not only condemn the attack but take action against the Taliban and any regime that would allow such brutality.
We need to learn to live together despite our differences.
* * *
I watched a documentary with some friends over the weekend called "Finger of God." Very interesting film, starting with an investigation of people whose teeth were turned into solid gold at a revival in Toronto.
When the documentarian went there, he also found a pastor who has gold dust appear on his head and shoulders while he preaches; people who have had gold dust materialize in their Bibles, and in one episode he even filmed a pile of gold dust appearing on the pants of a man who had fallen down after prayer ("slain the spirit," as the saying goes).
Oddly, the gold dust appeared right beside the man's pants zipper, which the minister took as a sign of fertility... even though the guy looked to be in his 70s. Definitely strange.
One man, a Lutheran, showed the cameraman a handful of manna that had materialized in the pages of his Bible. It happens all the time, he said, and people who eat the manna have been cured of illnesses and diseases.
From there, the filmmaker traveled the world checking out modern-day miracles. It was an amazing journey, including visits to Mozambique, Africa, where he was told that more than 80 people have been raised from the dead over the last 10 years.
In China, he interviewed pastors of the underground Christian church. They have prayer meetings every day at 4:30 a.m. until they have to leave for work, and on Saturdays they meet for prayer from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m.!
An American minister who's been there for 40 years said the more the government tries to suppress the Christian church, the more it thrives.
We are spoiled and lazy in America, no doubt about it.
One of the most touching moments, for me, was when Heidi Baker, an American minister with a PhD in theology, went to pray for a Gypsy Muslim woman's eyes in Turkey. The Gypsies are the lowest of the low on Turkey's social ladder, and Baker just went up to her to pray. Her translator was a Turkish Christian minister who kept trying to get the woman to accept Jesus. The woman kept saying Mohammed and Allah healed her. Heidi Baker told the minister to let her be, just show the woman love and don't worry about proselytizing. The minister kept politely disagreeing but finally gave in.
Baker's way of showing love without attaching any strings is the real deal. I hope the minister learned a lesson from that dispute.
You can find out more about this film here.
* * *
My daughter had a friend from Australia stay with us last week. I was thinking that in the last few years we've had young people from Australia, Norway, Samoa, New Zealand, Fiji, and Uganda stay at our house.
I'll never forget standing in our kitchen and holding hands in a circle as one of the men prayed for us in Fijian. I didn't understand a word he said but it sure sounded heavenly.
I always enjoy providing a place for these international visitors, and it always seems like we're the ones who get blessed.
* * *
Sarah Palin's coming to the area on Wednesday. I've tried to put in a request for an interview with her about God and faith. It doesn't seem likely, but it doesn't hurt to ask. What a great story that would be.
* * *
Tampa Bay Rays are on the ropes against the Phillies. Game 5 is tonight and they're down 3-1. I'm still hoping they can pull it off. It was a rough weekend for my sports teams. Michigan got trounced by Michigan State, no surprise there. Ohio State, which I don't like but don't hate, also lost, to Penn State, so their season is going downhill fast. And the Unviersity of Toledo lost to Central Michigan, 24-23, and Tampa Bay Bucs lost to the Dallas Cowboys.
The only one of the teams I like that was victorious was Duke, who beat Vandy 10-7, to go 4-3 for the season -- a big year so far for Duke football.

* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Oct. 27, 2008

The Phillies finished off the Rays last night, probably the merciful thing to do. Was anyone watching? I'll bet the ratings for this series was one of the lowest ever. I was hoping Tampa Bay could be the Cinderella story but when they get blown out 3 1/2 games to 1, or was it 4 to 1? just kidding... who tuned in for the death blow?
The suspended game threw everything into disarray and when the Yankees, Red Sox or Dodgers aren't in it, the ratings plummet.
I'm glad that if the Rays lost, they lost to a good team. The Phils played great ball and haven't won it all since 1980.
Closer Brad Lidge was simply amazing. His slider dives like a smart bomb. No wonder he had a perfect year, never blowing a save the whole season.
When it was over, Lidge fell to his knees and as his team raced toward him, I read his lips and it looked like he shouted "Praise the Lord".
When they interviewed him afterward, he thanked his teammates and his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and went on to describe how great it was to win the Series. He did a great job of making it clear he's a Christian and then talking about baseball player instead of looking like a one-trick evangelist.
* * *
I went to see an early showing of "The Secret Life of Bees" yesterday... pretty good movie. The director really tugs on your heartstrings, which was a bit overbearing for me, and I'm not a big fan of Queen Latifah who always seems to be herself and can't sink into a role.
But Dakota Fanning was fantastic as the feisty hard-luck teen and the setting -- South Carolina in 1964 -- provided the emotionally charged backdrop of ugly racism resisting the dawn of the new civil rights era.
* * *
Tonight, Elie Wiesel will be speaking at the University of Toledo. Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Wiesel has written more than 50 books. He's an inspiration to me and I'm looking forward to his lecture.
* * *
Also tonight, the reality TV shw "The Real Exorcist," starring Bob Larson, will debut from 7 to 11 p.m. on the Sci Fi channel. I set my TiVo.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Oct. 30, 2008

One of the most interesting terms coined in the last decade was "affluenza," the "disease" in which people are negatively affected by having too much material wealth.
I saw a TV news magazine report on it years ago, I think it might have been on 20/20, mostly focusing on children growing up today and how they have so much and don't even realize how blessed they are. They expect it all, and they expect to have even more in the future.
The cover article in the Nov. 10 edition of Newsweek, written by Robert J. Samuelson, addresses this issue in a way that ties in the economic strife our country has experienced of late.
The headline is "The Economy: A Darker Future for Us All." Samuelson reviews the economic factors that led to the stock market's roller coaster plunge and said the primary culprit behind it all is the rise and fall of double-digit inflation.
When inflation hit 13 percent in the early 1980s, Paul Volcker and the Fed combated it vigorously, and the result was a consumption boom. The economy prospered as people saved less and spent more.
"What's clear now is that prosperity bred bad habits," Samuelson writes. "The present crisis, though usually attributed to dubious 'subprime' mortgages, really traces its origins in the widespread optimism unleashed by disinflation."
In other words, Americans got into the consumer mindset more than ever before, fueling business success and driving stocks through the roof as heavy investors switched from bonds to stocks. The Dow climbed from below 1,000 in 1982 to 2,500 in 1989 to almost 11,500 in 1999.
In 2006, Samuelson says, household debt was 134 percent of personal income. "Sooner or later, consumers had to retrench."
That's where we are now. The affluenza bubble has burst. People are not spending so much. Businesses are tightening up. People are losing jobs or afraid of losing their jobs so they're not buying cars or redecorating their kitchens.
The article spells it all out pretty clearly but doesn't get into the spiritual side of this. We as a nation have put our trust in money. We have kept our eyes on the advertisements. We have sought peace in material acquisitions.
I haven't read John Ortberg's new book, but when I interviewed John Tesh he said he was reading it. It's titled When the Game is Over it all Goes Back in the Box. . That puts a spiritual light on our materialism. Tesh said that if your life is all about acquiring things, you've missed the point.
U2 also looks at this spiritual-material dichotomy with the song, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," which at times has brought tears to my eyes. (Incidentally, it contains one of my favorite lyrics, which doesn't exactly fit this message but it's about heaven and it's so powerful: "I'm packing a suitcase for a place/none of us has been/A place that has to be believed/to be seen." Think that one over!)
At the same time, I often think about my friend Craig Wagner, now Brother Francis, who quit his job at the newspaper to beome a Benedictine monk. His whole day revolves around prayer and serving others. He doesn't own anything as an individual, it's all the community's.
Another friend, Steve Dailey, also quit his job as a computer tech at the newspaper and he his wife Beth, and their two children left Toledo to serve as missionaries in the Philippines, where today they feed 800 impoverished children every day.
We don't have to take vows of poverty or drop out of society and move to the Third World to live meaningful lives but we do, as a nation, need to get our priorities straight.
Our next president, whoever he may be -- and we'll know all too soon -- will "sit at the eye of this storm," Samuelson said. He concludes that it will require the right balance between the past and future "to advance American affluence."
I don't think that should be the goal, however. The goal should be to live within our means as a country, find alternatives to fossil fuels, promote peace, and stop trying to find the meaning of life as a nation and as individuals in consumerism and militarism.
That's more than any president could accomplish.
* * *
I wanted to share a little joke Elie Wiesel told in his lecture at the University of Toledo last week. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor said that Jews believe the Messiah is yet to come to earth, while Christians believe he has already been here and will come again. The answer, Wiesel said, is simple: Wait for him to come and then ask him if he's been here before.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Nov. 4, 2008

Few writers could spin a tale as compellingly as Dr. Michael Crichton, the medical doctor turned author who created such phenomenal best-sellers as "Jurassic Park" and "The Andromeda Strain" as well as the TV show "E.R."

It was sad to hear that he died of cancer Tuesday at age 66. I've read a dozen of his books and always marveled at his ability to get you to turn the page. His characters weren't the deepest and dialogue wasn't always the sharpest but the plots were always so compelling. He had a knack for using technological advances as a scare tactic in a way that highlighted the double-edged sword of scientific discovery. His exploration of the ethical and moral implications of new technology is a lasting legacy.
I reviewed his book "Next" in December 2006 and concluded that the theme was powerful, about genetic mutation, but that the plot was fuzzy and the characters undeveloped. I'm sure that really hurt the feelings of an author who has sold tens of millions of books. I wonder if he even reads reviews?
Interestingly, Dr. Crichton's first few novels were written under the pseudonym of John Lange, because lange is German for tall. Crichton was 6'7".
The world has lost a great writer and thinker.
* * *
Finally, the endless presidential campaign is over, Barack Obama is our next president. I hope he's up for the task. His backers are confident he is, but as I've said previously, whoever moves into the White House on Jan. 20, 2009, is going to face a maelstrom of troubles.
I think Obama's lack of experience is going to be problematic, although he's a quick learner. He sure ran an impressive campaign, and raised double the campaign money than McCain.
I hope he surrounds himself with qualified, veteran people. That's the mark of a good leader, especially one with so many responsibilities as the President of the United States.
One thing that bothers me is the way people are almost delirious about his race. While it's a great thing that racism is finally being overcome and the election of an African-American is definitely a historic moment in American history, a person's race should never be the main or sole reason to vote for him or her. I think some voters were too preoccupied with the racial issue to pay attention to more important election criteria.
* * *
Speaking of President-elect Obama, he spent four days at Maumee Bay State Park near Toledo preparing for the final presidential debate, which gives me the chance to digress and mention that I played golf at Maumee Bay yesterday.
My son-in-law Matt and my friend Fred and I enjoyed the perfect weather -- 75 degrees in November, amazing for Ohio. Matt and Fred played well but I didn't score that great, although I didn't expect to since I haven't played much golf this year.
My father used to say that playing golf is like shaving, if you don't do it regularly you look like a bum. Words of wisdom.

I particularly enjoy it when I can walk a course instead of riding a cart. It's such a great rhythm and flow when you walk a golf course and get to soak in the ambience, the green grass and the shady trees and the animals scurrying by -- saw a huge white tail deer yesterday, lots of Canada geese, and, since I spent so much time in the tall rough, a few snakes.
I didn't know until I called about the course that the clubhouse closed for the winter on Nov. 2. The course is open, however. You put money in an envelope, write your name on it, and drop it in a box. And get this it's $10 all you can play now. It would be great to get out there again before the snow flies.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
November 6, 2007

I was listening to Tripping the Light Fantastic, an old Paul McCartney live album, and between songs Sir Paul said something that showed his love of language:
"Anyone here an F major?"
That's one way to interpret the phrase.
The ambiguity of the English language is what made his question so funny. The other way to interpret it is: "Anyone hear an F-major?"

OK, maybe it didn't sound as punny to you as it did to me and Sir Paul.
* * *
I've been off for a week but working very hard on a personal project. It's not easy to push yourself to excel and to accomplish goals. When I tackle something like this, it makes me marvel at the great athletes and musicians of the world.
We sit on our couches or in the stadiums or concert halls and watch them do their thing and often don't realize the tremendous dedication and hard work that goes into their achievements. Yes, they have natural abilities, but they also don't just sit around watching TV and eating ice cream all day and night. They are disciplined to the utmost.
So many people with tremendous talent have wasted their skills because they don't have discipline. On the other side, many people with modest talent have risen to the top because of their dedication and discipline. Wade Boggs is someone who fits that category. He was a low draft pick out of Tampa, my old hometown, and worked so hard at the game that he became a top hitter and a good fielder who enjoyed great success in the major leagues.
There was wisdom in a T-shirt I've seen that had an illustration of a basketball player and a saying that went something like this: "While you are watching TV, somebody, somewhere, is out there practicing and getting ready to beat you."
There are many examples of people who have frittered away their formidible skills, like Ohio State's Maurice Clarett and Art Schlicter, and some who have made fatal mistakes, such as musicians Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
I heard about John Daly the other day and couldn't believe how low this golf phenom has sunk.
He hit the ball longer than anyone I've ever seen and won two major golf championships and a ton of money and then lost everything because of alcohol and gambling.
He admits to losing $80 million at casinos -- that's $80,000,000. I remember an article in in S.I. when he said Calloway Golf agreed to pay his debts and sponsor on condition he got professoinal help with his gambling addiction. He did but said he still gambled, only with restrictions. If I remember right, Daly he said he limits himself to betting no more than $30,000 at a time.
He's been divorced four times, got in trouble with police for domestic violence, and said he once ran 17 red lights in a row, explaining: "I ran this one red light and pretty soon I'm like, 'F--- it', and just kept goin'."
An Arkansas TV crew recently interviewed him on a golf course. Daly still has that full sweet swing but what a sight: he was playing in jeans, no shirt and no shoes, his huge belly hanging out. The reporter mentioned that Daley was recovering from surgery on a torn muscle in his stomach.

Here's a link to the interview with Daly.
No matter what, I'll never let my skills devolve like Daly has. But I have a long way to go to reach my personal goals. I pray daily (no pun intended) that God will help me make the most of the talents and experience He has given me.
* * *
Did you know George Orwell's real name was Eric Blair? He had trouble getting his work published because it was too political, so he wrote under a pen name and became a literary legend. He lived an ascetic life, forsaking material wealth, and died at age 46 of tuberculosis.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
November 8, 2008

My father, Ferdinand, was drafted into the Army in World War II and served in Europe during the war. He rode an amphibious "Duckboat" onto the beach at Normandy on D-Day and also fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
I have three brothers who were in the Navy, including two who were in Vietnam during the war.
I have so much respect for our military veterans and wish them all the best on this Veterans Day. We owe our freedoms to you and we are grateful.
* * *
I went to see my primary care physician this morning and, thank God, he gave me a clean bill of health. I've gained a little weight since my last checkup, he pointed out. I do need to do something about that.
I'm going to set a goal of losing 20 pounds. Since it's the end of 2008, should I call it an Old Year's Resolution?
I once got a comment about my weight more from an unlikely source: Julio Iglesias.
It's true! I was backstage at his concert in Toledo and he came out of the dressing room looking for me, gave me a hug and poked me in the belly and said, "David, you need to exercise!"
Julio was a world-class athlete, by the way, playing goalie for Real Madrid, one of the top soccer teams in the world. He was severely injured in an auto accident and started strumming a guitar to help regain motor skills. That led to his music career. So when Julio says I need to lose weight, it's coming from somebody who knows about being in shape.

Here we are backstage at the Stranahan Theater. It's not the best photo because Julio's eyes are closed and I'm looking to the side, but Janet is all smiles.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
November 11, 2008

I have been asked to take the Food Stamp Challenge, which is to try to eat for a week based on how much money a poor person gets in food stamps -- or $23.
If more than one person does it, you can pool your money with other family members or roommates which theoretically makes it a little easier. But if I do it, I'll be on my own.
The challenge is from Toledo Area Ministries, which tries to raise awareness of what life is like for our nation's poor.
I'm probably going to go ahead with it next week... Stay tuned.
* * *
At the other end of the financial spectrum, travel writer, television host and author Rick Steves is in Toledo tonight for Authors! Authors!
I'd love to see him, and am hoping I can get there despite some other things I should do. I really like Steves' shows on European travel and have bought some of his books and videos. He gets off the beaten path and always has great appreciation and enthusiasm for local culture.
* * *
Our book club met last night and we discussed Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. Nobody liked it. They wanted to get off the subject asap and talk about other things. They felt Miller is a whiner with nothing positive to offer, he just airs his gripes about the church.
That may be true, but young people love the book. It has sold more than a million copies, which shows that it is connecting with people.
I think it's a generational thing. Fans of Blue Like Jazz are typically college age and grew up in the church but are put off by hypocrisy and self-indulgence. They either (a) avoid church altogether now or (b) attend an alternative kind of church.
What we need to learn from Miller's writing is what is important about church and what is not important; what is it about a church that promotes Jesus and spirituality and what is it that throws up barriers and turns people off?
Society is going through an upheaval, and Blue Like Jazz offers a view from inside a generation that feels alienated by "religious" people and disappointed by church as usual.
* * *
This is blog entry No. 400.
Thanks to all you readers out there in the great blogosphere. Your interest is what keeps me interested in keeping this going.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
November 12, 2008

It was rainy, gray and cold in Toledo yesterday but I had a full day that included two fascinating interviews during the work day, followed by an amazingly entertaining presentation in the evening by travel writer Rick Steves.
My first interview yesterday was with Kim Phuc. If you're like me, the name at first did not ring a bell. But a photo did.
She is the little girl whose most horrorific life experience was captured in a photograph that has become an indelible reminder of the Vietnam War.
Kim was 9 years old when Americans dropped napalm on her village. She was burned over 65 percent of her body and ran down the road, naked and screaming from the pain of the burns.
Today, she is 45 years old and a devout Christian. Kim is coming to Toledo this Sunday to speak at Liberty Baptist Church on Jackman Road.
I spoke with her from Toronto, where she lives, and she said that for years after the attack she was so filled with anger and bitterness and pain that she felt hopeless and wanted to die. She prayed to Buddha and numerous other gods and kept asking, "Why me?"

Good question; tough question. At age 19, she was in a library and picked up a copy of the New Testament, in Vietnamese. The words of Jesus in John 14:6 struck her deeply: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
That led her down a new path and one that led to peace and forgiveness. Today she is 45 years old and travels around the world speaking about love and peace and Jesus Christ.
Quite a story. You can read more on her website.
I'll have a story about her this Saturday.
* * *
Next up, I interviewed Darren Wilson. He is a professor in Chicago who wrote and produced a documentary called Finger of God. It started when his aunt and uncle told him that some of their teeth had turned to solid gold at a church service.
He was skeptical and probably would have dismissed as sheer looniness except that he knew these people well, and trusted them.
Wilson started to look into miracles God was performing today and that led him to travel literally around the world. In Africa, he spoke to someone who had been resurrected from death after people prayed for him, and in Cour d'Alene, Idaho, people testified that gemstones just appeared on their lawns.
Lots of amazing, mind-boggling stories.
Wilson started as a skeptic but ultimate began to believe these miracle stories were true.
Here's a link to his website.
My article will be running sometime in the next few weeks.
* * *

In the evening, I went to see travel writer Rick Steves give a talk in the Authors! Authors! series. He spoke for 90 minutes, with some great slides, speaking mostly about his European travels, with some sharp political jabs included that you don't see on his PBS show.
About his trip to Iran, he said, "I think it's good to get to know someone before you bomb them." He went on to explain that it's easy to demonize people and to bomb stereotypes, but it's a lot different when you get to know the people. If you still need to go to war, then so be it. But don't make it too easy by looking at the enemy as a bunch of sinister maniacs.
He also spoke of the benefits Europeans enjoy by legalizing marijuana and prostitution, compared to the crime and costs involved in the U.S. system.
Steves "took a break" to sign books for 15 minutes in the lobby, then returned to the stage and gave a 75-minute encore presentation about the recent two-week trip to Iran. An hour-long special is due to air in January.
I like Steves' style and thought his travelogue was extremely entertaining.
The place was packed -- probably 1,100 people -- and I came by myself, which I'm not used to doing. I spotted a seat at the end of an aisle near the front and asked the man sitting next to it if the seat was open. He said with a smile, "Yes, for you it is. We've been waiting for you."
He introduced himself and his wife. What a wonderful gesture. We chatted the whole night and I greatly appreciated their friendliness.
A little effort to be kind to strangers can make such a difference in this world.
Steves has a terrific website jammed with information. Check it out here.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
November 13, 2008

Mark Foley, who resigned from Congress in 2006 after he was caught sending sexually explicit computer mesages to male teens working as Capitol Hill pages, gave his first post-scandal interview last week to the Associated Press.
The former Florida Republican didn't accept complete responsibility for his actions, saying the boys were 17 and not "prepubescent." He also said they never told him to stop or complained that it was "inappropriate."
Foley is deluding himself by (a) justifying his sexual conversations with a minor because the teen is "almost 18" and (b) thinking a 17-year-old boy is going to confront a powerful congressman on sucn a personal scenario. Few boys would have the inner strength to do such a thing and the congressman is wrong to put the burden on the boys, saying they should have told him to stop.
But Foley also talked about being sexually abused by a Catholic priest when he was a boy.
"I loved my early life, and then along comes a priest ... who forces me into a sexual relationship at the age of 12. And right shortly thereafter, I fail eighth grade. I start drugs. I start drinking. I start smoking. My entire life ... implodes."
The clerical sexual abuse was revealed shortly after Foley resigned from Congress, when his attorney announced that Foley was gay and an alcoholic and had been abused as a boy by a priest.
This is a case that illustrates the severity of trauma and the life-changing negative impact of clerical sexual abuse.
As many victims have told me, tearfully, they and their parents trusted their priest implicitly.
When this authority figure, both spiritually and culturally, sexually molested them, it was more than physical abuse. It affected the victims' spiritual lives as well. The painful term that people often use to describe it is "soul rape."
Many victims turn to drugs or alcohol or other self-destructive behavior that can last the rest of their lives.
Studies have also shown repeatedly that people who are abused as children often grow up to become abusers.
I feel sorry former Congressman Mark Foley and truly hope he gets the proper help.
* * *
I had two stories published today that I think were very interesting.
The first is about a post-election poll looking into the religious vote and concluding that Obama's election signals the end of the religious right. Click here to read the article and here to read the poll.
The second was my interview with Kim Phuc, the Vietnamese girl burned in a napalm attack in 1972 and after years of bitterness and suffering found peace when she became a Christian in 1982.

* * *
Odd accident: A local woman was arrested for drunk driving after she jumped out of a car that she abandoned on railroad tracks and which was hit by an Amtrak train.
How do you get your car stuck on railroad tracks? It was raining, maybe her tires were spinning. I can't imagine. It must have been quite a scene.
* * *
I watched American Gangster last night. It was a long movie (nearly 3 hours) but very well done, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, based on the real-life story of heroin kingpin Frank Lucas.
I don't usually like mob stories, they're often too bloody and brutal. This one had its moments but overall was not too gory. There is a scene near the end when they confront one another in a jail holding area -- Denzel the criminal, Crowe the straight cop -- that showed why these two stars are among today's finest actors.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
November 15, 2008

I have been working on a redesign of my website and blog and have been lax as far as new entries.

I’ll be brief tonight: I have started the Food Stamp Challenge, trying to live on a $23 grocery budget for the week, the amount the average Food Stamp recipient receives. It’s not easy, that’s for sure.

I went grocery shopping and every penny counted. I bought off-brand cereal rather than the name brand, to save 28 cents. I bought bananas instead of apples because they are so much cheaper.

I skipped my grocery vices such as cheez-its and substituted as a snack the old-fashioned kind of pop corn, the kernels that don't come wrapped in individual packages and which you cook on the stove.

I'm drinking cherry kool-aid instead of diet coke.

A colleague at work who also volunteered for this challenge asked me today if I wanted to split a tea bag, which sell for 10 cents in the company's coffee room. She figured we could get two cups of tea out of one bag, so that cuts the cost to 5 cents each.

It’s only been one day so far, but living on $3.28 a day for food is an eye opener, and a strong note to the stomach that hunger is real. The purpose of this challenge is to empathize with people whose only source of food is what they can buy with Food Stamps. The program is supposed to be a grocery supplement but officials say there are many recipients who don't have anything except the Food Stamps (which by the way is now a misnomer because the old stamp system has been repleaced with an electronic card similar to debit and credit cards).

Lors more to talk about next time... nice to be back in the swing of things.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
November 17, 20008

I re-read a 2004 interview with Barack Obama discussing his faith with Cathleen Falsani, the Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist.

The future president, who had just won election to the U.S. Senate, said flatly that he is a Christian, but when he was asked to expand on his belief system, the strings started to unravel.
If Obama is a Christian then you have to wonder about the semantics. I am not one to judge a person's spirituality but there are certain non-negotiables in religions and it looks to me, based on this interview, that President-elect Obama is trying to negotiate his own brand of Christianity.
I'll give you a few examples and then give you a link so you can read the entire interview.

Q.: What is sin?
A.: Being out of alignment with my values.
Q. What happens if you have sin in your life?
A: I think it's the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I'm true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I'm not true to it, it's its own punishment.

On heaven:
What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die.

On hell:
I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell.

Miscellaneous excerpts:
I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.

My mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We'd go to church for Easter. She wasn't a church lady.

I'm not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I've got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others. I'm a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at its best comes with a big dose of doubt.

On Trinity United Church Church of Christ and it's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
Q. Do you still attend Trinity?
A. Yep. Every week. 11 o'clock service. Ever been there? Good service.

Q. Do you pray often?
A. Uh, yeah. I guess I do.

Fascinating, don't you think? Here is a link to the entire interview.
* * *

As horrific as the Mumbai attacks were, it is a slight relief that the terrorists were driven by political and not religious motives. It doesn't lessen the severity of what they did, and the nine of the 10 who died are already facing their eternal judgment.
But so much terrorism today is fueled by religion and that carries widespread repercussions, tainting millions of innocent and devout adherents. It corrupts the religion in the minds of others and fuels hatred and bigotry.
Political terrorism is a blight on humanity and whenever possible the perpetrators need to face swift and thorough justice. Of course, I hope it doesn't happen again but that's not very realistic. A small solace is that the demented people who committed these atrocities in hopes of freeing Kashmir are not having their twisted logic unfairly projected onto the world's Muslims or Christians or Hindus or Buddhists or Jews.
* * *
I watched an NBC interview with Andreina Varagona, an American woman who survived the attacks after being shot twice. She spoke calmly by phone from a Mumbai hospital but the horror she experienced cannot be imagined. She was dining at the Oberoi Hotel with other Americans and Canadians when they heard shooting. They ducked under the table but the gunmen saw them and shot at them, killing two of the six. Afterward there was a brief lull and the staff told them that if they were going to flee, now was the time. She was unable to stand, having been shot in the leg, so the hotel staff dragged her into the kitchen and barricaded the door. The gunmen then started shooting at the door and lobbing grenades. Hotel staff literally carried the woman to a taxi and they sped to the hospital.
This is a perfect example of how ordinary people can become heroes under extraordinary circumstances.

* * *
Sorry the blog has been up and down lately as I try to work on the redesign. The home page is not as cool looking as it used to be, but at least it's up to date. Thanks for bearing with me.

Layoffs are hitting home now and it's sad to see good people lose their jobs.
How to deal with the "perfect storm" (to use a cliche) that has hit the newspaper industry?
A friend just got back from London and said all the newspapers are given away free there. The idea is to get people to read the paper and cover the distribution costs through advertising instead of subscriptions. This seems like a logical way to deal with the news giveaways on the internet.
Someone who follows the industry closely told me that several major U.S. newspapers are considering the same step but no one wants to be the first to do it.
The economic crisis continues to wreak havoc across the country and who knows what else is looming in the shadows...
I believe God is in control but history has shown us that even his devout followers are not exempt from trials and tribulations.
I don't have a lot of faith in politicians or our business leaders at the moment but I do trust God completely.
We should do all that is humanly possible to fix the problem, but let's not forget to pray.

Psalm 55:16: I call to God; God will help me. At dusk, dawn, and noon I sigh deep sighs—he hears, he rescues. My life is well and whole, secure in the middle of danger Even while thousands are lined up against me. God hears it all, and from his judge's bench puts them in their place.

Yes, it's true. But I'm going for a story, not for punishment.
I know the chaplain at a federal prison on Milan, Mich., a little north of the state line, and have been wanting for years to write about the faith-based program there. But they have been reluctant to allow the media into the facility.
Recently, I got an offer to come and write about the inmates' Christmas program. This is a bold step for the prison administration and I am delighted they are letting me in. I don't know what to expect but I have a feeling it will be a good story, which I am planning to write for the 12/20 edition.
* * *
Speaking of prisons, going to work has that kind of feeling lately. Major layoffs in the newsroom were announced last week and the specifics are coming out this week.
The layoffs were covered by local TV stations so this is all public knowledge at this point.
I feel terrible for the people who are losing their jobs, most of them young reporters who are extremely talented and have the energy and drive to make the paper a better product. They dig up stories and work hard and make new contacts and have helped the paper get back to where it should be, where it was a few years ago before pay cuts and worker-management animosity caused many of the best and brightest to flee to other newspapers.
Now many of these hard-working and motivated young reporters will lose their jobs effective Dec. 26.
Those who are "left behind" will be working under very difficult circumstances, the details of which remain to be determined.
In addition, management (i.e. the business office or bean counters) in all its wisdom mandated that there will be no more overtime pay. So while there will be fewer workers on the job, the rest will not be allowed to work extra hours to make up some of the loss of manpower.
I have to say there are problems nationwide for newspapers, but I think several factors -- some of which could have been prevented -- make Toledo one of the worst-case scenarios.
What will the results be? Will readers notice the difference? Will people still be buying the paper?
Stay tuned...
* * *
I am reading an amazing book by Dr. Kenneth Pargament, a Bowling Green State University professor, on religion and psychology. This is an area that fascinates me and Dr. Pargament is one of the leading scholars in the field.
For most of the young history of psychology, there has been a chasm between spirituality and psychology. Dr. Pargament is helping to bridge that gap and incorporate religion and beliefs into treating and understanding patients.
Simply fascinating, this is groundbreaking stuff and long overdue.
* * *
I've been listening to Lucinda Williams' CDs lately, particularly "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." She is an amazing artist, someone whose voice carries such tremendous emotion and expression, and her songwriting is among the best out there. She is honest and sincere, and her songs just knock me out. Sometimes she gives me goose bumps, sometimes she brings tears to my eyes. I can listen to her songs over and over and many times pick up something new from them.
Lu is one of the best and most genuine artists in music today.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Dec. 11, 2008

Mom always said that if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all.
Taking that to another level, I have been feeling a bit stressed out lately and wasn't in the mood to bore you with my negativity.
It all has to do with the job situation -- 25 reporters, editors and clerks being told last week that they are being laid off by the newspaper.
That's bad enough, but those who are still on the staff will be facing ridiculous pressures to produce and now the company has banned overtime.
But after the initial shock and sadness, I am now getting back to almost my normal upbeat self. After a lot of prayer, I finally realized learned to accept the fact that it was God who called me into this line of work and God, Jehovah Jireh, will provide.
As it says in Philippians 1:6, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."
Coincidentally, last week I wrote an article on "Blue Christmas" services (you can click here to read it) being held in the area for people who are struggling through the holidays. As one counselor told me for the article, the holidays magnify everything. If life is good, the holidays make them better. If life is sad, the Christmas season makes you more sad.
I feel for all the people who have lost their jobs in the last month or so. It's a tough time all around. And yet many of those who were laid off are in good spirits and have told me they feel confident things will work out for the good.
God bless 'em, as Tiny Tim says.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Dec. 16, 2008

I wrote an article about Bob Dylan's Jesus years, focusing on a new documentary film by Joel Gilbert. It's an interesting period in Dylan's long career and one that I particularly liked, being a Christian and a Dylan fan.
"Slow Train Coming" is one of the finest folk-rock albums ever recorded, religious or mainstream.
I know not everyone was quite so happy to hear Bob sing about his Savior. In 1980, when I went to a Dylan show in Ann Arbor, one of the guys in the row in front of me was grumbling that he hoped Bob wasn't going to play his Jesus stuff (he threw in a few expletives).

Here's a link to the article.
* * *
Northwest Ohio got hit with a winter storm that mixed ice and snow yesterday afternoon. The roads were extremely slippery and my usual 20-minute zippy commute took me over an hour to get home.
My car rides about as well as any in this weather, since it's a front-wheel drive Saab with snow tires. But even so, at one point as I was creeping along the interstate yesterday I tapped the brakes and the car started to slide. Not a good feeling. But I was going slow enough and kept it under control with my Helio Castroneves-like reflexes.

It's odd but yesterday as I was driving on the slick roads, the traffic was moving in my direction, albeit slowly, but totally stopped on the other side of the interstate. I could see the blue and red police lights flashing above the concrete dividers.

Today, the traffic was totally stopped in the two through lanes, but the two local lanes I needed to get to work were wide open.

It was nice to be moving and not stopped in gridlock. It was one of those times where I was grateful for the little things in life.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Dec. 17, 2008

Saw this interesting tidbit online today... Technology at its best, or worst?
Next thing you know, they'll have Teflon-coated sand that won't stick to your skin.
-- David

Dubai hotel to build first air conditioned beach

According to the Australian, the Palazzo Versace, a luxury hotel in Dubai set to open in 2010, is about to create the first climate controlled beach for the rich and famous. The 10-story luxury hotel will house 169 apartments and 213 luxurious rooms, each with their own pool. But the main attraction will obviously be the famous refrigerated beach.

The article says the beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand with coolants made to absorb the heat from the surface. The swimming pool's temperature will be controlled, and giant fans will be installed throughout to blow a gentle breeze over the so-called beach. Everything, including the thermostats, will be linked to computers in order to achieve that perfect temperature.

* * *
Meanwhile, in Toledo we're bracing for a winter storm tonight, ice and snow and sleet. A day on an air-conditioned beach sounds pretty good right now...

Here are a few quotes worth pondering from multibillionaire Warren Buffett:

"Never ask a barber if you need a haircut."

"If you hit a hole in one on every hole, you wouldn't play golf very long."

"I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others
are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."

"The only way to be loved is to be loveable, which really irritates me."

"Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level
of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament
to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing."

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

"We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll
wait, we'll wait indefinitely."

and finally:

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

Madoff victim Elie Wiesel

Have you been following the disappearance of $50 billion from Bernard L. Madoff's investment firm? It's almost beyond belief that anyone could pull off a Ponzi scheme on such a massive scale, or that the perpetrator who did it could live with himself.
I've been reading about it in disbelief, especially when you see the famous people who lost their fortunes to Madoff. Among the respected and well known victims are Fred Wilpon, owner of the NY Mets ($300 million loss), Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Mort Zuckerman, and, much to my dismay, Elie Wiesel.
Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner who spoke in Toledo in October. I was honored to interview him and attend his lecture and have my photo taken with him. He is a remarkable and inspiring human being. But according to Newsweek, Professor Wiesel's Foundation for Humanity was completely wiped out after it lost $15 million to Madoff's thievery.
Professor Wiesel is a professor at Boston U and has written 50 books, so I am assuming he personally won't be destitute. But if this forces his foundation to close, it will be a tragic turn of events because the foundation has done so much to promote world peace and inter-cultural and interfaith understanding.
When you think about Madoff making $50 billion disappear, you have to wonder how the SEC did not catch it.
Here's one way to picture how much money a billion dollars is.
Let's say somebody gives you $1,000 a day, seven days a week, all year long, and you never spend a dime of it. Without even figuring in any income from interest, just stacking the money up in your house, how long do you think it would take to acquire $1 billion?
It would take you 2,737 years, 10 months, and 7 days.
And Bernie Madoff made $50 billion disappear.
There's no punishment in the statutes that fits this crime. He'll never be executed and he couldn't possibly spend enough time in prison. Maybe they should sentence him to 2,737 years, 10 months, and 7 days and keep his mummified corpse in a cell until it's done.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Dec. 23, 2008

Good morning and Merry Christmas!
I'm sure that greeting means different things to different people, but to me and most Americans, it is a day to celebrate the birth of Christ. That is the pivotal point of human history, according to the Christian perspective, when God became human.
I hope you have a wonderful holiday. One of the greatest "traditions" of Christmas is to spend it with your family. I feel so blessed because my three daughters, one son-in-law, and one fiancee-in-law are all coming to our house today. Plus Dana and Matt are bringing our beloved "grandpuppy" Lulu.
Last night, we went to a Christmas Eve service at our church, then went to our friends' house in Perrysburg for a tradition that started in 1999.
There were more than 20 people over, as always, and we had dinner, played the white elephant gift exchange game, and ended the night with a wild and crazy game of Four Men on a Couch. That game is so much fun. It's men vs. women and I've never played such a cut throat, cheating-riddled game but that's part of the fun.
We got home well after midnight and four of us played "Rock Band" for over an hour.
So everyone is sleeping in this Christmas morning, giving me a chance to say hello and wish you all the best for the day.
God bless, have a beautiful day. Remember the reason for the season.
* * *
I've been off work all week but working on my novel. It's progressing well. I am about a quarter done, so I still have a long way to go. But I am very happy with it and very excited about how the story and characters are developing.
I'll keep you posted...
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Dec. 25, 2008

Janet and I had Chinese food for dinner tonight (General Tsao Chicken from the Fortune Inn -- very tasty if not the healthiest meal) and for the piece de resistance (please excuse the mixed idioms), I had a fortune cookie.

Interestingly, there were two different fortunes in one cookie.
The first one I pulled out was ripped down the middle, but said: "You will always be successful in your career."
The second fortune said this: "Now is the time to try something new."
Very interesting, considering the state of affairs of the newspaper industry.
I worked today with a reporter, James Joyce, not the Irish author of course but a 28-year-old journalist from Maryland who, incidentally, once played arena football. Today was his last day at the paper because he was laid off, one of eight young reporters to get axed this week.
James is a good reporter and a nice guy and we all hate to see him go. But he says he does not plan to pursue a news career anymore. Things are changing and the newspaper's piece of the pie is shrinking. He's got other ideas about a career.
James said an interesting thing today: "I feel more alive now than ever before."
His life had been planned out, one step at a time, and now he's facing the unknown. I'm sure he'll do well. Meanwhile, for those of us who are left behind, are we guarding the fort until reinforcements arrive, or is somebody going to be the one who turns out the light?
In light of all that, the double fortunes in my fortune cookie was an interesting twist of fate.
* * *
Got a few new PS3 games for Christmas -- well one new, three slightly used. The new game is FIFA 2009. The game play and graphics are amazing. I used some of my Christmas money to buy the other games yesterday while on a marathon shopping day with my wife and daughters. I could only take so much of the clothing and fashion stores at the mall so I headed over to Game Stop and they were having a buy 2, get one 1 free used game sale. So I bought Tiger Woods and Madden '07, plus a game callled Metal Gear.
I don't have a lot of time to play around with my beloved PlayStation 3 but when I do use it, it's such a blast.
For the Tiger Woods game, I createrd a character that has gray-and-brown speckled hair, very skinny legs, and a belly that is, well, larger than the ones you find on most pro golfers except for John Daly. In other words, it looks a lot like yours truly on the golf course.
And just like yours truly, I won my first challenge match, beating Scott Adams 4 up at Firestone CC.
* * *
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are on TV now, a 2005 live concert from Barcelona. Bruce really puts on an amazing show, with so much energy and enthusiasm. Everybody needs to see Bruce a couple of times.
I've probably seen him six times, starting in 1972 -- 36 years ago! -- when a college friend came back to Duke all excited about this young rocker from New Jersey.
Turns out my friend knew talent when he saw it. I've always enjoyed Springsteen although I'm not a fanatic about him like many good people I know, some of whom follow him on tour from one city to the next.
I had a chance to meet him a few years ago when he played the Fox Theatre in Detroit. My friend and mentor Gary Graf invited me to go backstage after the show but I had to file a review on deadline and could not spare a minute. As soon as I finished writing, I hustled back there but Springsteen had already left. You win some, you lose some...
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Dec. 28, 2008

Every year, some churches have their baby Jesuses (is that the correct plural?) stolen from their creches. It has happened in Toledo a few times.
A few years ago, a Lutheran church in the suburb of Maumee had its baby Jesus stolen and later returned with a new look: partly painted black.
Last year, a church in Wellington, Fla., that had several missing-Jesus incidents was worried about the safety of its new expensive figurine. Church officials came up with the brilliant idea of equipping little Jesus with a GPS (Global Positioning System) device. When baby disappeared from the church's Nativity scene last year, police were able to quickly track Him to a nearby apartment, where they found Jesus face down on the carpet and arrested an 18-year-old woman.

That incident prompted a savvy marketing opportunity for a security firm that offered free rental of a GPS device to any church worried about the safety of its baby Jesus or any synagogue fearful that an outdoor menorah may be stolen. Seventy churches and synagogues took the firm up on its offer of a free GPS for the holidays.
Three thoughts about this crazy scenario:
First, it is despicable that anyone would steal a Jesus figure. It shows a total lack of respect and reverence and anyone who does so has some serious mental or social problems.
Second, it is a sad commentary on modern society that it happens frequently enough for churches to even think about using GPS devices to track their baby Jesus figures. This is partly a reflection of the breakdown of a moral society.
Third, hiding a GPS device inside of baby Jesus or a menorah is a kinder and gentler way to deal with the problem than rigging the creche like a booby trap.
* * *
A friend and former colleague, Paddy O'Gara, who now lives in Spain, posted this comment on his blog recently, and I thought I'd pass it along:

"An Iraqi man has thrown his shoes at Bush during a press conference yesterday. A good idea, but it would have made more sense if he had not taken them off first."

Paddy is a brilliant man and a talented artist with a very British sense of humor. We miss him around here.
He created one of my favorite newspaper front pages of all time, for the Jan. 1, 2000 edition of The Blade. It featured a full color photo of the earth taken from space, with a large headline that said: "We're still here." (Remember all the Y2K fears?).
I'll put a link to Paddy's blog with a caveat: he only posts an entry about once every two or three months. But his self-penned bio is worth a visit. Here is the link.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Dec. 30, 2008

I hope all of you have a safe and enjoyable New Year's Eve. I'm off to work soon, and then we'll be heading to a friend's house for a party tonight.
2008 has been an extraordinary year in many ways, most of them not good.
But it also has been a good opportunity for personal growth and discipline.
I'm reading a book called The Divine Mentor by the Rev. Wayne Cordeiro, a book that our whole church is reading together. It's really packed with great advice for life and one of the first things that jumped out at me was this:

"Life has given us two very effective teachers. Both are top-flight instructors, but neither comes cheap. While both are effective, both require something of us. We have to choose one or the other, and if we choose neither, the second will be chosen for us.
The teachers are Wisdom and Consequences."

He gives an example: Consequences are when you run into a wall and break your nose. What do you learn? "Wall hard, nose soft; wall win, nose lose." So don't run into walls.
With wisdom, on the other hand, a person sees the consequences ahead of time and makes a change before running into a wall.
* * *
As I look back at 2008, there were many blessings in my life. My daughter Cara got engaged. I met a lot of wonderful people. Wrote a lot of stories that I really enjoyed writing. Won some journalism awards. Read a lot of excellent books.
Janet's brother Ed got married in Laughlin, Nev., so we flew out there and also visited Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Zion National Park in Utah.
We spent one terrific week with the entire family on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, renting a house over July 4th.
I enjoyed five days in Washington, D.C., in September for the Religion Newswriters conference.
Our church is doing well and I've been enjoying my tenure on the deacon board and other volunteer work there. We are involved in a wonderful "care group" that has been studying The Truth Project by Del Tackett and which has taught me a great deal.
Despite the problems in the news industry, I still have a job. I also have had a few bites from moviemakers about my book. I'm off to a good start on my next book, a novel.
In some ways, 2009 will be a gut-check year. It also is a time to count your blessings and take stock of what is really important in life.

* * *
Forbes magazine has just listed the biggest losers of 2008, financially speaking. It was a rough year for many but at least you didn't lose $30 billion.

Anil Ambani
March net worth: $42 billion
Current net worth: $12 billion

The biggest billionaire gainer last March is now the year's biggest loser. Ambani lost $30 billion in the past nine months, more than anyone in the world. Stock of his telecom company dropped after his estranged brother helped scuttle a deal with African telecom MTN. It's quite an achievement in a year in which three of his fellow countrymen--estranged brother Mukesh, steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and Indian KP Singh, all of whom ranked earlier among the world's 10 richest--lost more than $20 billion apiece.

Dec. 31, 2008
Syvlania, Ohio

First of all: Happy Birthday, Dana! You are such a blessing and a joy to me! It's an honor and a privilege to be your Dad.
* * *
News from Reuters:
A new prayer for laid-off workers has been published by the Church of England. Only the British would use the phrase "being made redundant" in the title. But the need for such prayer is definitely not restricted to the United Kingdom.
Maybe this prayer will provide some hope and solace to people:

LONDON - The Church of England published a prayer Tuesday to help comfort Britons who lose their jobs in the financial crisis.
"Hear me as I cry out in confusion, help me to think clearly, and calm my soul," says the "Prayer On Being Made Redundant."
The church, part of the global Anglican church, also offered a prayer for those who keep their jobs but suffer stress and feelings of guilt when colleagues are fired.
"Who will be next? How will I cope with the increased pressure of work?" asks the "Prayer For Those Remaining In The Workplace."
As many as 600,000 Britons could lose their jobs this year, a report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development forecast last month.
* * *
I went to Findlay today to cover a lecture by a professor and theologian about the didache. Have you heard of that before? I admit to ignorance on the topic. It was a manual for new Christians written sometime in the early 1st century.
I hope it will be an interesting story. It's always a challenge to take a scholarly lecture on an esoteric religious topic and make it interesting to general readers.
But I figure if I find it interesting, there will be some readers who also find it interesting. I just need to get past the narrow niche audience and put it in a broader perspective.
* * *
Last weekend, I helped my daughter and her fiancee paint an apartment they will be moving into after the wedding. Just to make it clear, they are not living there yet! They weren't planning to rent the apartment until March, but the owners called with a deal that if they rented it now, they would not have to pay anything for two months and then would get $20 off their bill every month thereafter.
Too good to pass up. And meanwhile, they can fix the place up to their liking.
While painting, we put on some music and the soundtrack to Rent came on. I've seen a lot of Broadway musicals but this was the only one that really hit me emotionally. I was not expecting it, because the characters' lifestyles are polar opposite from me. But the play was so beautifully written and captured so much of human nature and life's struggles that it has universal appeal.
It's a tragedy that the brilliant writer, Jonathan Larson, died the night before the play opened on Broadway. He won the Pulitzer and Tony awards posthumously.
One of the most moving and beautiful songs from the play is "Seasons of Love," which breaks down a year into the number of minutes, and then poses questions about how, or whether, you can quantify the passage of time.

"525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life? How about love? How about love? How about love? Measure in love. Seasons of love."

Since the invention of the clock, we can break our days down into quantities. But it's not a numerical unit, as Larson so aptly reminds us. It's the moments and the sights and the feelings and the experiences of being alive, of being human.
As the year 2009 gets rolling, I challenge you -- and myself -- to make the most of those 525,600 minutes. Live each one to the fullest. There is no need to waste even one single solitary minute. They are all too precious. Life is too precious.
* * *
I've got much to say today, now that I'm back in the blogosphere groove. But I've run out of time for the moment. But stay tuned, I'll be back soon.
Thanks for reading. Happy new year and best wishes in 2009.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Jan. 6, 2009

When I was a kid, I loved school and never wanted to miss a day. But I didn't love it quite as much as the 6-year-old in this news story, reported by the Associated Press. You've got to give the kid an A+ for effort. -- David
p.s. If you are under 16 years old and don't have a license, don't try this at home! Even if you have to miss Phys Ed.

Six-Year-Old Takes Family Car After Missing School Bus

Date: Wednesday, January 07, 2009, 12:36 pm
By: Associated Press

WICOMICO CHURCH, Va. - A six-year-old Virginia boy who missed his bus tried to drive to school in his family's sedan - and crashed. His parents were charged with child endangerment.

State police said the boy suffered only minor injuries and authorities drove him to school after he was evaluated at a local hospital for a bump on his head. He arrived shortly after lunch, Sgt. Tom Cunningham said.

It happened around 7:40 a.m. Monday on Route 360, about 61 miles east of Richmond.

The boy, whose name wasn't released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family's 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, police said.

He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.

The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.

"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."

His parents, Jacqulyn Deana Waltman, 26, and David Eugene Dodson, 40, are each charged with child endangerment, Wilkins said. Waltman is being held without bond. Dodson was released on a $5,000 bond.

It was not clear if they had attorneys.

The boy and his four-year-old brother were placed in protective custody.

"This really is a story of miracles," Wilkins said. "The Lord was with him, along with everybody else on the highway."

* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Jan. 7, 2009

Here's a news item that would be funny if it weren't true: Toledo's shining star of the presidential campaign, "Joe the Plumber," is heading to Israel for a job as a war correspondent. He has been hired by a website I've never heard of, pjtv.com.

It all fits the mold.
Consider:
* Joe the Plumber's first name is really Samuel (last name: Wurzelbacher).
* He is not a licensed plumber.
Our friend Joe is consistent with his resume: He's not a real Joe, he's not a real plumber, and now he's not a real journalist.
He has said he might run for political office. With his kind of credentials, he probably would fit right in in Washington.
Plumbing, reporting, it's all the same, right? But if you need any plumbing done around the house ... please don't call me.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Jan. 7, 2009

Event announcement:
“Extreme Cage Fight War,” featuring the best new cage fighters including five-time UFC World Champion Team Miletich in 15 no-holds-barred fights, plus a special boxing bout featuring figure skating bad girl Tonya Harding at the Palace of Auburn Hills, on Saturday, January 24 at 7 p.m.

The Nancy Kerrigan knee-clubbing incident occurred 15 years ago this week (in Detroit), and Tonya Harding is still exploiting her moment of infamy. She's stretched Andy Warhol's "15 Minutes of Fame" comment into 15 years of cheap shots and pseudo-stardom.
* * *

Happy Birthday, Elvis... The King would have been 74 years old today. Or if the conspiracy theorists are right, maybe he really is 74 years old and flipping burgers in Kalamazoo.
* * *
Quote of the day: "If the church wants a better pastor, it only needs to pray for the one it has."
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Jan. 8, 2009

The snow has been falling, light and delicate as stardust, all night and day here in northwest Ohio. It's actually quite beautiful, despite my usual grumbling about winter storms, although we've only gotten 7 inches so far and may end up with as much as a foot of snow.
It's a nice change of pace when you can sit back and watch the snow cover the trees and fences and roads -- as long as you don't have to go anywhere. I had the whole day free, except for a few chores and some fiction writing. So I didn't have to drive, which changes my whole outlook on the snow. Usually when the snow flies I am in a hurry to get somewhere and it's no fun dealing with the nerve-wracking slippery roads. Today was a nice break.
I shoveled the driveway and took my dog(s) for a walk (I have one dog, Scotty, and my daughter Cara has one).
Here's a glimpse of what it looked like out there today:

Winter is not my favorite season but there is something to be said for the climate changes. Winter is a time for working indoors, getting things done around the house that you don't want to do when the weather is so nice it tempts you outdoors.
It's also a wonderful feeling to curl up by the fireplace on a snowy night and read a book and listen to jazz, or to watch a movie. It also seems easier to me to write in the winter, as there are fewer distractions. Sledding, toboggans, hot chocolate or cider, ice skating, skiing, these are all unique things about winter.
When I lived in Florida, I often missed the fall foliage spectacles but didn't think much about the snow and theh cold. Today I have a new appreciation for winter itself.
It would be nice if the season were a bit shorter here, though. Winter tends to lingers and just when you are in desperate need of a bit of spring, it keeps its icy grip and cloaks the sky with a steel gray lining of clouds for weeks at a time. The once-beautiful white snow turns to grayish slush and our cars become coated with a messy patina of salt and grime... You just want to get the winter over with, but it won't leave.
When all is said and done, however, it's a part of God's grand design so who am I to question it? I will do my best to enjoy it as much as possible. There are a lot of good things about winter, I just need to look at the seasons with more appreciation for God's blessings.

* * *
I watched a very powerful drama last week entitled "God on Trial," a show that was originally broadcast on PBS. It's set in the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. The inmates are stridently debating why they are in such a place, how could God have abandoned them, and so they decide to hold a mock trial with God as the defendant.
It raises a lot of powerful questions and really, how can we ever understand why a good and benevolent and almighty God let his chosen people die such a horrific death and on such a large scale.
It's a drama that is not easy to watch but one that makes you think deeply about the meaning of life and the intentions of God.
Here is a link to the article I wrote about it that was published today.
* * *
I have made it through the first step in an application for a Templeton-Cambridge fellowship, to do an independent study on religion and science. I have an interview coming up in New York City. It would be such an honor and a privilege to win this fellowship. I'll let you know how it goes.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Jan. 10, 2009

Sorry I've been away from the blogosphere for awhile. I just got back yesterday from Washington, where I watched President Obama take the oath of office from among the crowd of several million people standing in the cold on the National Mall.
It was a historic moment and I was glad to be able to go there and write news stories about average joes from Toledo who made the trip.
I'll be catching up on a number of things in the near future, including the latest Father Robinson court motion, my bus trip to Washington (including having to undergo a test for possible carbon monoxide poisoning), and the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where I'll be heading tomorrow.
* * *
Meanwhile, here is an interesting video from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's website, where I was doing some research for an interview with bishops who just got back from the Middle East:

* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Jan. 22, 2009

Happy Groundhog Day!
* * *
It must have been an awesome Super Bowl last night.
I missed most of the action because I was in the air, somewhere over Pennsylvania for most of the game on my way back to Toledo from a weekend in New York City.
When we left LaGuardia, it was almost halftime. When we landed, I quickly got an update on my phone and saw how close the score was.
After debarking, most of the passengers stood around the TV in the gate area and watched the conclusion. It was an exciting finish. I tivo'd the game but doubt if I'll go back and watch it. Maybe just the halftime show with Bruce Springsteen.
I didn't have any personal stake in the outcome except that I admire Cardinals' QB Kurt Warner for his integrity, his real-world Christianity, and his rags-to-riches story. I also like the Steelers because Ben Roethlisberger is from northwest Ohio and Nate Washington is from Toledo. Other than that, I have no strong loyalties either way. It was just nice to have a good close battle like last night's game.
I hope Warner doesn't retire after this year, as he said he might, but I'm sure that whatever he decides will be the best choice for him and his family.
* * *
We lost two major arts figures recently -- jazz saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman and author John Updike.
I was greatly inspired by Updike when I was a teenager and read his "Rabbit Angstrom" novels. He had terrific literary skill, with a use of words that were colorful and expressive albeit a bit flowery and dense in parts.
Updike was very open and honest with his writings, getting into the complex and often unflattering thoughts and emotions of average people in average cities or suburbs.
I finally got a chance to meet him when he was in Toledo to give a lecture in 2002. I got him to autograph "The Afterlife" and we chatted about his essay in the New Yorker on 9/11. John Updike was a great writer and his books helped me appreciate his literary flair and insights.
* * *
Fathead Newman was not only a talented jazz artist but also a sweetheart of a guy. His catchy nickname was a total misnomer, he was anything but a "fathead". He was intelligent and softspoken, a deep thinker and a true gentleman. He had been the musical director of Ray Charles' band before going off on his own to enjoy a long career as a bandleader, composer and soloist.
David came to Toledo at least once a year and was good friends with Clifford Murphy, Claude Black, and Joan Russell, playing with the Murphys Trio at their jazz club here. He recorded a live album at their club here and I always enjoyed talking to him.
* * *
While in New York over the weekend, I met up with some friends from high school and we had a great time on Saturday night just wandering around Greenwich Village and Soho.
On Sunday, I went on a photo expedition around the city. I also did some on-site research for my novel, which is set in Lower Manhattan. It was nice to see the actual streets I've been writing about and get some new background detail for the book.
* * *
Every time I'm in New York I try to go to Strawberry Fields in Central Park. When I got there yesterday afternoon, it was almost 40 degrees, which felt balmy compared to the bitter cold the preceded it.
There were at least 50 people sitting or standing around the John Lennon "Imagine" mosaic. A trio of musicians sat on a bench and played Beatles songs -- "Don't Let Me Down" on acoustic guitar stands out in my memory.
It's amazing that John Lennon still draws people together even on an ordinary, non-special-anniversary day. Every day of the week, every week of the year, now more than 28 years after his senseless death, people still come to this little spot in Manhattan to remember his music and his life. That's quite a tribute.
While classically trained or jazz virtuosos have disagreed with me, Lennon was a musical genius in his own way. He knitted melodies and harmonies and rhythms and words in ways that touched people's hearts and crossed all generational and social barriers.
Lennon was a fiercely independent person and a free thinker whose music will never lose its magic, for me or his many other millions of fans.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Feb. 2, 2009

It seems that whenever things are looking their bleakest, God manages to send someone along who gives you a much-needed pat on the back... more on this in a moment.
Although optimistic by nature, the state of the economy and the newspaper industry has been quite unsettling. Even President Obama said he loses sleep over the economy. We are in unprecedented areas now, with the global interaction and dependence. What happens in the USA affects China, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, and Australia... There are no simple answers or solutions.
I've read a lot of explanations for our economic strife and although there are many logical and detailed theories, it seems that everyone is looking at the trees and failing to see the forest. The two underlying themes of all the scenarios are greed and materialism. These are natural characteristics but not healthy ones. As a nation, we need to re-evaluate our priorities. God's ways are above man's ways. If we let our natural instincts rule, we get into these kinds of jams. It happened in ancient Israel, and it's happening today. Human nature has not changed over the eons.
The correction process and transition period are going to be painful. But I am hoping we come out of it a little wiser, a little more in touch with our spiritual side, and a little more considerate and compassionate for our fellow human beings.

Now, regarding the pats on the back: I won a little newsroom award given out on a monthly basis to reporters or editors who went above and beyond the call of duty. I was cited for my bus trip to DC for the Obama inauguration, which would have been a difficult assignment under any conditions but turned into a nightmare when the bus broke down on the way back and I and other passengers underwent tests for carbon monoxide poisoning.
In addition, I got a call from someone whose ministry I wrote about last week who told me that "God has put me in this position for a reason."
I also am a finalist for a major fellowship award that would give me two months to research a topic and present it at Cambridge, England.
And I got a letter today from Jeff Zavac, a Toledo-born jazz musician living in Miami who was so grateful for articles I have written about him and credits me for the sold-out crowd at Murphy's Place last December when he recorded a live album.
So despite the world falling apart around us, it's nice to get a little praise and recognition from time to time.
Everybody needs a little encouragement now and then. And it always seems that God knows just when we need it the most.
* * *
I'm reading Dean Koontz's "Odd Thomas." I picked it up last year to read on a plane and never got started. Then I started reading it on my flight to New York last weekend and couldn't put it down.
Koontz is one of my favorite writers, with his light prose and deep thoughts, and Odd Thomas is a terrific character, a young short-order cook who sees spirits and gets involved in the most bizarre and dangerous scenarios.
This book is the first of three of Koontz's Odd Thomas novels, and I've read the other two. It's good to go back and read the one that started it all.
Feb. 4, 2009
Toledo, Ohio

I'm scheduled to be on YES-FM (89.3) at 8:20 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 5.
The station also broadcasts on different signals outside the Toledo area and can be heard online here.

Just a few quick thoughts to get the morning going...

It's 15 degrees in Toledo, and it feels warm by comparison to what we've had. Yesterday at this time it was 1 degree. My brother in Florida was thrilled that it was getting down to 25 there, a real cold front. And it is -- for Florida. But it's funny how everything is relative. For me, after this brutal winter, 25 would be a heat wave.
And after weeks of sub-freezing, often single-digit temps and tons of snow, it's going to be 47 degrees tomorrow. All the snow is going to melt at once. It will be a real mess.
* * *
How about that woman who had 8 babies recently? She already had six kids, so that gives her 14. In an interview with NBC, the woman, Nadye Suleman, 33, said: "I love my children."
I sure hope so! She's got to have a lot of love -- and money -- to spread around.
* * *
Speaking of large families, I'm going to interview Jackie Frisch next week. She is the woman whose family was featured in the Toledo "Extreme Makeover" edition. They have 11 children.
* * *
Sylvania, Ohio
Feb. 6, 2009

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jackie Frisch today. She's the Toledo woman whose house was bulldozed and remade into a spacious and comfy home by the crew of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in September. The program aired on ABC in December, I think it was.
Jackie is ill with EDS, which causes strokes and soft-tissue pain, and, along with her husband Aaron, a firefighter, is the parent of 12 children.
That alone is remarkable, but there is so much more to Jackie. She is a dynamo despite the physical obstacles she faces. I learned a lot about her today that you never got to see on the national Extreme Makeover broadcast.
For example, she graduated from college with a triple major in 2 1/2 years, earned a master's degree in a year and a half, and is now ready to get her PhD, all she needs to do is make her defense.
She had a book published last year titled "A Walk Through Creation: A Closer Look at Genesis Chapter One" (Tate Publishing), has another book ready to go, and has 9 more in the works. That is 9 as in 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 ... 9 more! Plus raising a dozen kids.
Is that amazing or what?
I'll be writing about Jackie shortly, but probably for the A-1 page and not religion. I'm in the process of transcribing our interview now. I'll keep you posted on when it runs.
A truly remarkable and inspiring woman. Meeting people like her and writing stories about this kind of woman makes my job a pleasure at times.
* * *
Here is a staggering statistic:

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government's commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation's home mortgages. (Reported by the usually dependable Levine Breaking News Alert).

* * *
Speaking of trillions, Judge Andy Devine gave me an illustration on how much a trillion dollars is the other day that is simply mind-boggling, and I hate to use that cliche but it is the best I can think of.
I haven't independently verified this, but Judge Devine is a sharp guy (even at 87 years old). If it doesn't add up, please let me know:
If you were to stack 1,000 thousand-dollar bills (which have Grover Cleveland on them, he said), to equal a million dollars, it would make a stack 3.75 inches high. So, how high would you have to stack thousand dollar bills to reach a trillion dollars?
According to the judge, the stack of thousand dollar bills would be 52.7 miles high.
If that is accurate, then it's a powerful way to illustrate the difference between a million and a trillion.
* * *
Toledo band Sanctus Real didn't win a Grammy Award yesterday. I was trying to follow the pre-televised events to see how they did and couldn't seem to get the specially required media player installed. But the grammy.com had a link to twitter, and i clicked on it and found that the Grammy category in which Sanctus Real was competing was won by TobyMac.
It's not surprising, since most Grammy voters probably know practically nothing about the contemporary Christian music nominees. TobyMac is probably the only name they recognized.
But it was still an honor for Sanctus Real to have been nominated.
Twitter, by the way, is a new concept for me but one that is catching on around the globe. It features short comments, like a running blog or journal, pared down to minimal words and phrases and typically sent by text message via phone.
* * *
Janet and I went to see Slumdog Millionaire over the weekend -- a terrific film. I love the fact that it had no "stars" and was filmed in India. That meant the story and acting had to carry the day, not some celebrity fixation.
It's a real Rocky story of an underdog who escapes the Mumbai slums to become a millionaire, enduring incredible hardships in his lifetime. I've never been to India but it's obvious there are people who really do live under those horrible conditions, and that's what makes the movie so powerful.
Few, of course, make it out of the slum at all, let alone become millionaires. But that is the dream and the fantasy and rooting for the world's lowliest underdog -- both to win the money and the girl -- is what makes the movie so appealing.
Toledo, Ohio
Feb. 9, 2009

First of all, happy birthday, Abe & Charles!
As we all know by now, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of two of the most influential men in modern history, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. A few months ago, Newsweek looked into which one had a greater impact.
They picked Lincoln.
I beg to differ.
Lincoln was the leading American statesman of the 19th century and his work led to the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the Union. Pretty impressive resume.
But abolition was already a driving force in England, led by William Wilberforce, and its arrival on U.S. shores was imminent.
Darwin's theory of evolution rocked the foundations of science and religion and rewrote the lines between church and schools and government. It is still the source of contentious debate and some assert that a belief in evolution undermines belief in God -- after all, if one does not believe in the Book of Genesis, then one might as well toss the whole Bible away with it, they reason.
Whichever one had the bigger impact, it's pretty amazing that these two historic figures were born the same day, and the same year.
* * *
I received a wonderful surprise in the mail today -- a book from Elie Wiesel personally signed to me. I had interviewed Professor Wiesel before he came to Toledo last October, and covered his speech at the University of Toledo.
He asked me to send him copies of the articles for his archives, and I did. But I never expected such a considerate gesture on his part.
Elie Wiesel is one of my heroes -- a Holocaust survivor, a great writer, author of 50 books, and a man who has devoted his life to promoting peace in the world.
I got to meet him briefly in person when he was in town but didn't ask him for an autograph. It's always a bit awkward when you are a reporter and a fan as well... I opted not to blur the line.
So receiving the book today was a real honor. He sent his novel, "A Mad Desire To Dance," and signed it: "For David, who loves stories."
Thank you, Professor!
* * *
I got a kick out of a New York Times story that ran Sunday headlined "You Try To Live On 500K In This Town," by Alan Salkin.
It's a semi-serious look at the plight of corporate execs after President Obama put a $500,000 limit on compensation for executives whose firms received federal bailouts.
It's hard to image someone "suffering" when their salaries are "limited" to half a million, but Salkin details the expenses of the high life and they add up fast.
Especially housing. A $1.5 million condo in Manhattan, which is a moderate price for the market, costs $96,000 a year in mortgage and another $96,000 in condo fees ($16,000 per month).
Throw in the costs of income taxes, parking ($700/mo), chauffeur ($75,000-$125,000 a year), two children in private school ($64,000), wife's gowns for galas (four a year at $10,000 per dress), and that measly half a million goes fast.
It is almost, but not quite, ridiculous. The reality is that shareholders want their CEOs to exude success. They don't want their company to be led by some scruffy looking guy who commutes by bus from Hoboken.
You can read the whole story here.
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My Duke Blue Devils got thrashed last night by the dreaded Carolina Tar Heels. I had expected as much, having seen Duke get blown out by Clemson last week. And I know how good UNC is this year, with Hansbrough and Lawson and the gang.
But the problem last night was that Duke really made a go of it in the first half, coming back from an 11 point deficit to lead by 8 at the half.
Alas, it was false hope, a dastardly ruse, a pipe dream.
Carolina showed its power and might and the Devils looked foolish at the end. I turned it off with 20 seconds left, Duke down by about 16. I couldn't bear to see Coach K shake Roy Williams' hand and watch the Carolina team get delierious inside Cameron.
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
February 12, 2009

I trust you've all come down from Cloud 9, after your romantic Valentine's Day weekend. Janet and I enjoyed a quiet night at home. We've been so busy that it was a treat to not go anywhere, have a steak dinner at home and watch a movie.
We ended up watching "Nights in Rodanthe," a movie based on Nicholas Sparks' novel. It was a typical Sparks romantic tale with a twist, starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. Predictable, too. I'm not a big fan of his work but he's had 14 best sellers so who am I to criticize? I think that his books and stories are all sappy, but he's found his niche and developed a pseudo-formula that works for him, and he's turned it into a money train.
I watched a brief documentary bio about Sparks that came with the DVD as an extra. He founded a private school in New Bern, N.C., for grades 6-12, trying to provide quality education in an innovative system. He also coaches track and has won a number of state and national championships and has donated $1 million to track facilities.
I admire Sparks for giving back to the community.
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I watched the first part of the Daytona 500 yesterday and then recorded the last half, skipping thorugh the boring stuff to watch the finish. Oh wait, the finish WAS the boring stuff.
They suspended the race becauase of rain, then ended up calling it. That gave the trophy to Matt Kenseth who had been sitting inside his car in pit row waiting to hear whether the race would resume.
It was kind of like a team winning the Super Bowl while they're sitting in the locker room.
I enjoy auto racing but NASCAR needs a better system for dealing with rain. Formula 1 cars race in the rain, and a big part of their preparation is whether to run on tires for wet, dry, or mixed conditions.
Grand Am racers race in the rain, also. They race at Daytona in the 24-hour Rolex race no matter what the conditions are. NASCAR could race in the rain, they would just have to make adjustments with the cars, tires, and speeds.
Anything would be better than calling it a race four-fifths of the way through and then naming a winner during the delay.
* * *
Last weekend, my daughter Dana and her husband Matt were in Mexico, Lisa was in Florida, and Cara was in Columbus.
We babysat two of their dogs and our own, so it was a bit crazy around the house. But we love all the dogs, they are so cute and so much fun.
Small world department: Lisa got back home to Illinois yesterday and sent me a text message -- she was eating at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Rockford and guess who walked in?
Tommy Lee, the ex-Motley Crue drummer.
He didn't trash any tables and Pamela Lee was nowhere to be seen ;-)
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Feb. 16, 2009

I know times are tough for auto makers but GM yesterday said it will "sell or phase out production" of some of its less profitable divisions, including Hummer, Pontiac, Saturn, and ... Saab!
No, please, don't quit making Saabs!
Saabs are my favorite cars in the world. They are beautiful machines, fun to drive and designed for safety and efficiency, without sacrificing performance and driveability.
I can only hope that Saab finds a buyer that is a better fit than General Motors, a company that for decades has depended more on image and marketing than on making a better product.
The sad thing about the auto makers' request for more federal billions is that even if they get the bailout it's just a temporary patch to get them through the short term.
In the long term, they need to make better cars -- cars that people want to buy. That's going to take a new mission and vision, not just billions in emergency aid.
* * *
I was talking to my daughter Lisa last night and she told me a great story: Her friend always watches TV on her TiVo or DVR -- in other words, only after the shows have been recorded, so that the family can skip the commercials (my Dish Network remote has a 30-second skip button, works perfectly for that purpose).
Anyway, her friend was watching live TV the other day with her young children and the little girl asked mommy what was wrong -- why is their show being interrupted all the time?
The little girl has never had to watch television with commercials, thanks to TiVo she has always fast-forwarded past the commercials. She thought something had gone horribly wrong!
* * *
Toledo, Ohio
Feb. 18, 2009

I went to see columnist and commentator Gwynne Dyer speak last night at Bowling Green State University on the topic of Climate Wars.
It was an alarming lecture on the status of global warming, energy use, world politics and economic interests.
Dyer spent two years traveling to the global climate change's "front lines," and interviewing more than 100 scientists.
Not one scientist believed that global warming is not an urgent issue.
Human beings are pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere that we are headed for disaster, the only question in scientists' minds is whether the disaster will be on a small or major scale.
The main culprit is fossil fuels.
Over the last 200 years, especially the last 50, developed nations have "built the cliff that rest of the world is now standing on," Dyer said.
Countries that have not had mass auto ownership or major industrialization until the 21st century are of the mindset that the United States and Europe have been responsible for most of the problem and therefore should pay most of the costs for the world to reduce emissions and find alternative energies.
But try to get a U.S. politician to convince voters that we need to export clean energy technology to China and India and subsidize them with $50 billion a year. Politicians are aware of the scope of problem, Dyer said, but are afraid to rile up their constituencies.
As global temperatures rise, now-arable land will become too hot to produce staples such as rice, wheat and corn that cannot germinate in hotter climates.
Rivers, aquifers and water reserves will dry up as mountain snow packs disappear and are replaced by rain. Without the spring snow melt, there will be no melting cycle providing water that flows into rivers, streams, oceans and lakes.
When the ice fields north and south of the globe melt at ever-increasing rates, there will be less ice to reflect the sun's rays. The ice is replaced by more square miles of heat-absorbing ocean water, which thus accelerates the warming process and makes the problem even more severe.

Nations located around 45 degrees latitude north or south of the equator, including the United States, should be able to produce crops but only enough to feed themselves -- not enough to export to the world's impoverished countries, as is now the case. Some land speculators, he said, are buying up property in Canada that is now north of the growing regions, anticipating that global warming will soon make the land arable.

Nations that have money but not enough arable land will find no markets in which to buy food. With no surpluses, the money will be worthless when it comes to buying food.
It's a miracle that we have been able to feed everyone, or virtually everyone, in the world as the population tripled in 60 years from 2 billion to 6.5 billion, Dyer said.

What happens when nations are unable to feed their people? They either move, or they attack their neighbors.
Military strategists are looking at ways of protecting their nation's borders to keep invaders out in case of severe food shortages that could prompt desperate actions.

Dyer believes the technology and resources are available to turn things around now, but there is not enough political moxie to take quick action. Intergovernmental negotiations take time and the world doesn't have a lot of leeway in that area.

It will all work out in time, but not before lots of people around the world die, according to Dyer.
"Sorry," he said with a shrug that reminded me of Simon Cowell on American Idol.

This is all coming fast and furious, much more quickly than the experts predicted just a few years ago.

In a wry aside, Dyer said people are mistaken when they talk about "saving the planet." The planet's fine, he said. What we are trying to save is the climate we like. The planet will survive no matter what happens to humans.

In addition to cutting down our individual "carbon footprints," we need to start thinking about the big picture, looking beyond our borders and taking a long-term view. It's time for politicians to stop worrying about the next election or for business leaders to focus only on the next economic quarter.
* * *
Dyer's latest book is Climate Wars, not yet available in the U.S. but can be purchased at amazon.com's Canadian site. You can go to Dyer's website here.
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Sylvania, Ohio
February 26, 2009

"We don't know for sure who discovered water, but we're pretty sure it wasn't the fish." -- Father John Colbein

(I.e., sometimes you are so close to a situation, so totally immersed in it, that you cannot see the bigger picture.)

I saw a sign the other day -- a bright, LED digital billboard -- outside a local business that had a wavy stars-and-stripes background and the words: "We live in the greatest country in the world!"
Nice idea, pump a little positivity into the people in this time of economic downturn.
It was ironic, however, that the sign was outside a Kia dealer, selling relatively cheap Korean cars.
One of the key victims of the American economy's state of woe is the auto industry. Foreign cars are part of the problem.
People are not buying American-made autos at the moment, for a number of reasons. That''s put the auto makers in crisis mode. So many of our jobs are related to the auto industry, especially in Toledo, just 50 miles south on I-75 from Detroit. We have a Jeep/Chrysler plant and numerous suppliers to the Big Three.

So the people who are selling Kias are trying to give us a little "attaboy" pat on the back.
We're the best country in the world! Yay team! Buy more Kias!

It used to be almost beyond dispute that we live in the best country in the world.
Today, America is not what it