First of all, Happy Birthday to two of my favorite VIPs: My wife, Janet, and evangelist Billy Graham. Billy’s 93 today. Janet is a LOT younger, but I won’t begin to quantify that comparison.
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Congratulations to Bishop Rance Allen, the Toledo pastor and gospel music star who was consecrated a bishop today in the Church of God in Christ at the denomination’s Holy Convocation in St. Louis.
Rance is a nationally known singer and songwriter but few Toledoans are aware of his stature. Along with stardom, he has been pastor of a Toledo church for 27 years.
I am proud of Rance for his devotion to God’s work as a pastor and as an artist.
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We went to our daughter Dana and son-in-law Matt’s home last night to celebrate Janet’s birthday, with Dustin and Cara.
Dana made pierogi and kielbasa, celebrating the Polish strain of blood in our veins. I’m 50 percent Polish so they’re 25 percent Polish — and quite proud of it.
Tonight, Janet and I were thinking of going to dinner and a movie, but ultimately we decided on a carryout meal from the Grape Leaf and a movie from Family Video. It was Janet’s choice and I wasn’t arguing — to me, it’s a great way to spend a rainy November night in Toledo (we watched Crazy, Stupid Love).
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Tomorrow is election day. There are some important issues on the ballot, notably Issue 2 which, among the bill’s 340 pages, limits collective bargaining for public employees.
However you feel about the issues and about politics, be sure to vote. If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.
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I just finished Robert Ludlum’s novel The Matarese Countdown. I think it’s the first Ludlum book I’ve read. I don’t think I’ll pick up another one unless someone recommends it to me.
I love spy thrillers but this book didn’t impress me. The main drawback for me was that the plot was absurd beyond reason — an ancient mafia-like group with its tentacles secretly extending around the world, whose leaders aim to control the world’s financial markets.
I don’t know why some of these mega-level plots work and others don’t. But I surmise you need either a James Bond superspy or a comic book superhero to be battling the evil megalomaniacs in order to take the book far out of the realm of reality, enabling the reader to just relax and not worry about little things like logic and believability.
However, one aspect of the novel that did impress me was Ludlum’s description of how the world’s economy is such a teetering co-dependent house of cards that a collapse in one area, geographically or categorically, could knock over the whole global economy. This novel was written in 1997, long before the global meltdown of 2008.
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I am now reading two new books by authors who describe their failures to live up to spiritual ideals, yet in the process learn to grow as people and to live lives of meaning: Jana Riess’s “Flunking Sainthood” and Brennan Manning’s “All Is Grace.”
Will report back to you when I am further along with my reading, but so far so good.
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I was sorry to see that Andy Rooney died last weekend, just four weeks after retiring from 60 Minutes.
I feel bad because I had dissed Andy in this blog after he quit, and now in light of his demise it seems like a cruel thing to have written. However, even I with all my unfathomable talents had no idea that the Grim Reaper would call so soon. Sorry Andy. I hope you are at peace.
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Speaking death and dying, I interviewed a woman today who worked with hospice for decades. I mentioned that I was curious about Steve Jobs’ final words, as reported by his sister, when he looked past his relatives beside his deathbed and said, “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
The hospice veteran said without hesitation that Jobs was seeing people who had passed on to eternity before him. She said that is a common occurrence at the end of life when the veil separating life adn death is thin.
I asked if he might have gazed upon the face of God, and she said yes, that was another possibility.
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The Penn State scandal looks like it will shape up to be one of the worst ever in college athletics. It looks to be a criminal coverup of child sexual molestation by a football coach emeritus, who was caught in the act in 2002 but never reported to civil authorities. In comparison, the mess in College Station seems bound to make the Ohio State scandal look like jaywalking.
