People Will Talk

Posted on 2018/03/30 by JimR, Chaplain

I’ve seen over the past few years that some of my friends on Facebook vent.  I can’t say how long the rant was pent up, so I don’t know how long their fuse is.  Personally, I don’t vent or rant until it comes to an extreme.

Okay.  Here it is.  For over a year I have been retired.  I worked 30 years in the military and civil service.  Folks, this is not brag. It’s fact and I can show you my DD214.  I served only 19 months active duty and the balance of six more years and five months in reserves.  In that 19 months active duty I went from an E1 to E4 in 9 months and was before the E5 board in my 15th month.  I didn’t get E5 because of the early out, but a recruiting was made by an officer for me to take on Warrant Officer’s Flight School and become a helicopter pilot.  During the end of the Vietnam War, if I’d been more perceptive to the coming end of it, I should have taken that on.  I didn’t because I understood it would have meant a stint in VC territory.  VC loved to kill pilots.  So, I went on back home and became and field engineer in heavy construction where I left off when I got drafted.

I will toot my horn, if I may.  I won’t go into everything I’ve done.  (Some wasn’t so good.)  If you want to know I have no problem telling you personally if you ask.  I left the outdoor work for indoor work as an insurance salesman.  Well, okay, this was seemly a failure on my part.  I was no good at it, but still made salesman of the month one of the 12 months I was there and made more money than my boss, which wasn’t anything to brag about.  Then one day a fellow worker and I struck out across the Cape Fear River to the DuPont plant and ended up as spinning operators over there.  To make this short, in the 8 years I was there I was groomed for supervision, but God had other plans and I turned it down and cross-trained in the staple side as a cutter/bailer operator.

After a failed business of my own I went to work as a store manager for the Bike n Surf Center in Jacksonville.  Over five years I increased the sales of bicycles from 359 some units a year to almost 800 units per year.  The owner was about the most impossible one human ever to work for or so I thought.  God saw that I got a good education in how to deal with difficult people in just that one person.  My customers were great.

Anyway, I’m skipping a lot here, but I eventually parlayed my military advantage as a Veteran of the Vietnam Era.  I was hired on at the Naval Hospital aboard Camp Lejeune.  I spent 28 years plus there and retired.

Starting as a Medical Records Technician (Clerk, then).  Then on to Department Head Secretary.  Then the job was abolished during a consolidation and I was moved to a position as an Office Automations Clerk.  My fledgling computer knowledge got me this position.  From there I became a Health Benefits Advisor in the defunct CHAMPUS office.  Shortly afterward that job as an insurance agent paid off because the hospital was hiring people to do insurance billing for supplemental policies of military folks.  I spent seven of the nine years in that office dealing with attorneys and insurance companies with and without assistance from the Naval Legal Service Office.

Then came the hard job.  Never having been formally trained in computer technology, I landed a job in IT as a Network Computer Security Manager.  I didn’t even know what an IP address was when I started in that department.  Inside of a year I had learned to set up and program a network on my own for the church I attended.  Seven years was spent in this department.  This is when I learned how to not like computer so much.  I did get certified in Security +.

Right after my separation from my wife I was offered the position as the hospital’s Command Personnel Security Manager.  I spent seven years there until I retired the end of December 2016 after seeing to the approval of almost two thousand individuals.  This brings me to the crux of my rant.

After I retired I heard the new person taking my position was bad-mouthing my work.  Two or more employees that know me defended my work and character, but I still hear he hasn’t decided to give me any slack.

I know who he is and I know he’s a retired officer from the Marine Corps.  He’s a buddy to the guy I worked under.  The guy I worked under is a retired Marine Warrant Officer and the Security Department Head is a retired Chief.  I give them all credit for reaching goals much further than I reached, but they got their jobs through the “buddy system” that works on the base without any consideration there are actually people outside their realm that know how to do what they do and some are likely better at it.  I worked my career in the hospital over a 28 year period, which to me qualifies me some respect.  Since leaving the “new guy” has done nothing but cut me down.  It’s been over a year and I still hear that his talk has not ceased to blame me for one thing or another.

I don’t dislike the guy.  Why should I?  He had his job handed to him in a relatively easy condition.  I had over 400-500 active duty to get clearances for so they would qualify for deployment.  Upper command would get very upset when an AD member had no clearance for overseas duty.  Most of my thrust was to get this done.  In the first couple of years I had conquered this task by in large, while handling a large number of new contract employees and civil service.  Civil Service came second to the three groups of people, and contractors last.  Contract employees came last in the line because of the volatility of the nature of contracts.  People in this arena came and went like water in a leaky bucket.  Many were gone before an investigation could even be completed.  I even did a background investigation of a former Miss America.  I had all types of people.

When I took the job it was a collateral duty.  The person handling the job also was a security patrolman and was in charge of random urinalysis testing for drugs.  The position was in very poor care.  This collateral duty went from person to person about every six months, so there was not any continuity under the watchful eye of someone to see a clearance process to an end.  I had my Secret clearance done during that time and it took three years to complete because my paperwork kept getting lost between people.  It wasn’t their fault.  They knew they wouldn’t be there that long so no one took ownership of the function.  Not even the Commanding Officer or staff up that high cared.

I took ownership of the position knowing full well the importance of it.  Still no interest was taken by senior leadership except for on officer who I’d known from the time he was an Ensign until he was a Captain.  He and I worked well together.  At the end we got a person in his place who questioned every thing done only because she had no idea of what I did nor did she really care.  I was left to make decisions above my pay grade.  At some point that became an issue when an employee was relieved of her duties for having several areas of shortcomings like lying about an illegal parent in-country.  She was mentally unstable, yet very smart.  She stated that she would leave work daily and go home and drink to excess and talked her problems with fellow employees who passed their concerns on to me along with her supervisor and department head, who I left the decision with to move her out of her position until an evaluation could be determined.  The chain of command finally took interest in what I was doing.

I have ought with the chain of command not doing their job properly by essentially paying her off to settle a lawsuit she eventually brought against the hospital.  I caught flack about it, but I didn’t make the decision.  I made the recommendation for her clearance to be put on hold.  Doing so prohibited her from doing her job.  Her department head had to make the decision on what to do with her over all.

That being a rabbit trail, I must get back on subject.  These are things I had to deal with.  But I did them with care and by the instructions allowing for me to do what I did.  I never wavered from doing what was right.

There were many areas to judge a person’s ability to pass or fail a security investigation.  No one area was or should have been a deciding factor in their staying or dismissal.

One of the biggest issues I faced numerous times was people in financial trouble by one or more reasons.  Most of the issues involved divorce, medical problems, unemployment or other unforeseen issues that did not mean I would cut them loose from employment.  Most of the time the worst cases were relegated to conditional clearances where I would sit and counsel with the individuals about their situation and how to plan out a method of getting through the problems to a more secure financial life.  Two negatives I must say here that would eliminate a person was lying that they had any debt and had habitual criminal offenses involving money.  Irresponsibility to debt is something I could not tolerate.  This lot of people was small.  Even then, if a person appeared to misrepresent their debt I would interview them about the debt to find out if they were doing so because of embarrassment or to hide some sort of criminality behind it.  If I find the embarrassment of debt was the major cause for misleading me, I would overlook that and go to conditional approval.  If they failed to follow the conditions then dismissal was recommended.

The new guy who took over after I left doesn’t consider the individuality of the investigation process.  He’s too cut and dry.

The following is why I did what I did.  Being a follower of God, the Bible and its principle’s I compare the Old Testament to the cut and dry side of the law of sin and death.  The Old Testament says if you did something wrong you were liable to die for it without proper sacrifice.  But, under the New Testament the Law of Grace was given where unto Jesus died on the cross to reconcile the believer to the Father.  Even when the harlot was brought to Jesus and asked for her stoning, He only stooped at put his finger into the dirt and began to write.  Some have ventured to say those present demanding her stoning were having their names written in the earth who had committed sin with the harlot.  I tend to think so, because when Jesus asked who among you is without sin, cast the first stone.  All of them walked away.  Then Jesus didn’t condemn the harlot for her sin.  He said to her to go and sin no more.  There is therefore no condemnation to them who believe.  I think she became a believer at that very moment.

That, my friend is how I judged people under investigation for work at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune.  I’ve done no wrong.  I think I afforded each individual the opportunity to come clean with me and I would go to great length to see to it they were properly functioning employees in the command.

If the new guy doesn’t like the way I did things, he’s free to come to me and talk it out.  I hope he can find it in his heart to learn more about human nature from God’s view.

This has followed me even into my bus driving.  Kids on my bus get a fair shake.  Not to say I don’t get loud when one hangs their head or arms out the window.  Before I let them off the bus I explain to them why I don’t want them to do that.  I’ve had two friends get very serious injury from passing vehicles.  One was inside the vehicle.  The other was standing beside his vehicle on the side of the road.  Both, by all rights, should have died.  I don’t want my kids on the bus to get injured in such a fashion by a passing vehicle.

I’m not a mean, inept person.  I don’t hate people.  Some times I say things I probably shouldn’t, but give me time and I’ll make that right.

Sean Covey

“Isn’t it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?”
― Sean Covey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Christian, Ponderings, Spiritual Investment, Work | Leave a comment

Lost Possibilities

Posted on 2017/12/16 by JimR, Chaplain

children progressionWhile watching a documentary called Anne Frank’s Holocaust on the History Channel this morning while sitting wrapped up on the couch one comment cemented itself in my mind.  “The loss of a child is the loss of possibilities”.

As many of us know, Anne Frank’s Diary was a story of the stark knowledge of German concentration camps.  Various people commented on the trail she and her family led right up until her death only weeks away from the liberation of the holocaust prisoners.  The keyword “almost” dangles above the hopes of being liberated for which she did not see.

Two of the commentators were friends of hers who did make it through.  They spoke of her last days as she wasted away in a camp where prisoners died at such a rate that the camp’s Officer in Charge could not dispose of the bodies and eventually just left them in piles by the thousands within the camp’s fences.

It was during those last few minutes of the documentary that I heard the commentator speak of the children who died by saying the above statement.

Stop for a moment.  Please?  I said to Libby just a few minutes ago that this loss of life in such numbers will happen again.  She told me to not have such a negative attitude.  It was then that I heard in my spirit the voice of the prophets of the Old Testament.

Amos 5 is a chapter that laments for Israel.  In a verse or two there is a positive nature inbeded in  verses 4, 6, 14, 15.  In this chapter God laments, calls to repentance and eventually to those who heed not, judgment.

In fear and trembling I speak not prophesy, but from the knowledge of study and observation.  Judgment is coming to America.

Only a generation, maybe two ago, this country has digressed from a Republic of states into a country that held great admiration from other nations to the anarchy that threatens our very fiber.  With all the world’s governments undermining our integrity we find there are people of our own citizenry that plot treasonous deeds upon this nation.

I’m losing my main thought here, so perhaps I should back up a moment.  I consider what the person in the program said.  Many little foxes have been spoiling the vine of this great nation for decades.  Removing prayer from schools and most any function on national interests.  Legalizing abortion.  Oh, this can go on, but this is my two point short list.

What I’m aiming for is that there are many options for unwanted children other than ending life before birth.  Life begins at conception.  That first split cell starts the process of human life.  That first heartbeat seals the conception.

Psalm 17:14 says: From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.

Children in the womb are hidden treasures.  Treasures are full of promise.

Ecclesiates 11:5 says: As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

These treasures are wrapped in the womb of the mother to be unveiled in it’s time.  This means there is reason for this child before it’s born even though we know not its purpose.

Isaiah 44:24 says: Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

Even to all of mankind, all life is created by God.  Lost and saved members of this earth.  All life even in the womb has purpose, hence comes the question, why do we as Americans purpose in our hearts that an unborn child has no purpose other than useless flesh to be cast aside, because we don’t want it?

So, the words of the commentator stuck in my spirit like a spear cast into my heart.  Why do we have so little concern for unborn children?  Each lost child, unborn or not may be the prodigy of great possibilities.  How many have died needlessly in the name of selfishness for a moments pleasure?  One of the possibly millions may have had the talent to study the depths of science to cure many types of diseases.  How many may have been the one who saved another’s life from a deadly circumstance?  How many may have been great contributors from their talents to society that could uplift the hearts of the beholder?  What if.  Just what if.

The loss of a child is very well the loss of many possibilities.  I know some may be ne’er do wells, but what if.  What if even their journey in life taught a lesson to others that leads to a positive outcome?

Search your heart.  I leave it there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Abortion, Children, Ponderings, Possibilities, Sobering Thoughts, Spiritual Investments | Leave a comment

Dangling Participle

Posted on 2017/11/25 by JimR, Chaplain

Life sped by, heading towards demise.

Okay, okay.  So I started with a dangling participle, but that’s about it.  Just enough to grab your attention.

I’m nowhere near the end, although I know some people who would consider me knocking on death’s door.

I’ve written many pages about my life in my previous blog.  It is filled with one hundredMe 20170601 twenty some pages up to my age 28.  I hope to get back to putting it back together in this blog, even if it’s in it’s rough form.  A few pages are already posted.

Of late, I’ve been bombarded by the demise of quite a few people of whom I had no idea would be gone.  I don’t want to be morbid.  I just want to note the fragility of life.  From the vantage point of youth there seems to be an eternity to enjoy and accomplish lofty goals.

During this phase of life we think of all the things we intend to do in life feeling we have so much time to accomplish it.  Then one day we inevitably come to grip with the fact that we are coming towards the twilight of life and the objectives we had set early in life are no longer available due to time constraints.  Some of those objectives are time consuming.  When we weigh the time to accomplish those goals and time left to enjoy the fruit of them we find it would be short.

As I traveled through my career in Civil Service I found that the longer you stay in one profession you will see many go before their time.  One was my closest of friends.  She died from cancer at the young age of 53.  An even younger lady in, of all places, the tumor board registry office passed away from kidney cancer.  Cancer seems to eclipse other diseases by leaps and bounds.  I only watched one Hospital Chief pass away from the results of AIDs.

Over the years I watched the passing of my dad and mom, my grand parents on both sides.  Then in 2002 my next to youngest brother took his life.  It is sad, but I understand the frailty of the mind when depressed.  That I’ve experienced, too.  Then the brother next to me died of heart failure in 2006.  After my divorce I found a relationship with my remaining two brothers and I felt secure in them and developed a new foundation of family, yet, again, cancer claimed the middle brother not long after.  This now leaves me with my youngest brother.  He lives so far away in Hawaii.  To think back, I was entering the Army when he was just beginning to pull himself up from crawling to walking as a toddler.

I’ve lost three cousins with whom I had spent time with growing up.  Two of them went by way of cancer.  One by a cyst of some sort around his cervical spine.

What makes it hit home is that I’m the oldest of all these brothers and cousins.

I told my dad, who told me I’d die by age sixty, that I was not buying his prophesy.  Why?  Because God told me I’d live well beyond that age simply by following what He told me.  I’m now 67 years old and in relatively good health for my age.  The only down side is I watch others disappear into the mist of the unknown, although we are assured as believers that there is something beyond.

0528171020God gave me another lease on life when Libby came along.  I was on the fast track to death early on, but she came along and has been that gift from God that allows me to have a fresh new outlook for the future yet to come here in this plane.  I am enjoying a fresh new awakening of my faith in God.  He has set Libby and I in a church body that is thriving.  Libby has experienced God’s salvation and understands the totality of forgiveness.  She has been filled with the Holy Ghost and He has energized her spirit to seek Him with all diligence.  She is only a short few weeks of having read the entire Bible for the first time.

Yes.  I am nearing the twilight of life, but I come running to it with renewed vigor and strength to still accomplish things in life.

My words to those of you who read this.  Never, ever speak negative about anything.  Always allow a wide berth for positive thought in your spirit that is inspired by God.  Don’t apply yourself even to the message of the power of positive thinking.  Even when negative circumstances approach you, don”t look at it’s possible damage.  Look at it as a challenge that is to be overcome.  Let God be your power and positive results will follow you.

So.  Great things are coming, you will do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Christian, church, Death, Dreams, Family, Health, Home, Old Age, Ponderings, Sobering Thoughts, Spiritual Investment | Leave a comment

No More Dangling the Carrot

Posted on 2017/10/04 by JimR, Chaplain

As I begin to type this entry, I have yet to determine a title for it.  So, to start I’ll say this writing came from my dream state last evening.

I suppose the dream was influenced by last evening’s musician’s meeting.  You see, I’m attempting to learn a new instrument and I need to find a way to learn more by picking up notes in songs by listening and picking them out.  I don’t read music nor probably ever will.  I play by ear and feel the music.  I’ve played drums for decades and never picked up a lesson under a professional instructor.  I love this instrument, but I’ve always wanted to play another instrument of some sort.  I came to realize a single note instrument was my best avenue in the form of an alto saxophone.  I’ve learned to play only one song in two keys and I’m fairly proficient at it.  From that i can pick up notes in other songs simply by listening.

I’ve learned to read people over my years of experience dealing with people and ascertaining their demeanor.  I felt from certain of those at the meeting last night that they didn’t really care if I was there.  Sorry, but it’s true.  I did, however, sense certain of them were receptive of me, but for me to experiment with my new instrument I was relegated to sit in the sound booth way away from the platform.  That’s okay, though.  I totally understand.  I’m new.  I’m not experienced with my new endeavor.  I don’t want to interfere with the flow of practice for the upcoming service of which the practice was intended for.

The end of practice did lend me a moment on the drums long enough to prove my worthiness at actually having a valid talent to do so, even though I have not played in nearly a year.  It had my redeeming moment, I suppose.

But to go deeper into this subject in my mind this morning, I have to tell about my dream last night.  I usually have pleasant dreams, but last night was more combative in nature.  I was dealing with my past position in security.  I know since I left my name has been used in less than a desirable light.  I’m sure had I been there still I would be chastised for my work methods.  Sure, I was not able to get everyone in a staff of 2500 people vetted for their strictest nature of checks.  But, I knew the vast majority of the staff and I knew there were bad apples, but I also knew the majority of the staff was trustworthy.  If I knew someone was not, I recommended action on the part of their supervision.  I never took it upon myself personally to terminate someone’s employment.  If a supervisor deemed the person worthwhile to work, I left the responsibility of the person’s actions to their supervisory staff.  I would surmise I had about four hundred in process, or had been underway of process of some nature in terms of questionable needs.

When I took the position from a military staff member, who might have had six months time at most in the position as a collateral duty, I found it woefully in need.  There were probably over a thousand staff members who had not been vetted at all.  Many of them were active duty.  I was tasked in the onset of my taking charge to get the active duty vetted ahead of anyone else, because these staff members were not deployable without a clearance.  Civil Service staff was second and thirdly, contract staff.  I did initiate everyone who walked through my door to the process if they had not been.  In the seven years I was there I saw to completion just shy of two thousand clearances to completion.  That’s no small task.

Contract staff fell to the bottom of the list because of the nature of contract changes and higher attrition rates than that of the Civil Service staff.  I had to keep a closer eye on them while I worked to get the active duty staff in order.

In my dream I found myself in contention with my successor over how I performed my job while I was there.  I’m sure he doesn’t know from where I found this program nor how much time I spent seeing 25 to 35 people a day for the first couple of years trying to get everyone into the process.  I’m quite sure he isn’t seeing that many people now a days.  My last drop by there he was sitting alone at his computer just gazing into a screen of information.  There was no crowd waiting to be seen like it was when I was there the first half of my tenure.  He has no idea of the work I did to get the program to where it was when I left it.

I woke up this morning feeling exhausted from battling, once again, the nature of what I previously wrote about.  I did my best.  I did my duty.  I find myself to have accomplished a difficult task.  Had I not, my successor would be completely overwhelmed with unvetted people.

Some people have lost their jobs needlessly since I left, though, because of the heartless nature of my successor.  He goes by the book.  If they don’t line up, they are gone.  I worked with people to get them through the appeals process as much as possible.  Folks most of the staff in question were in that position because of financial issues.  Eighty percent is my guess.  I couldn’t go by such a bureaucratic plumb line.  In that form, you take away the human factor and base it strictly on something that has no positive outcome.

Oh, I’m sure some people lied, which to me, would be a more serious issue, but financial issues don’t get fixed for an individual if you take their job away from them simply because they had a rough patch in their lives.  Most found themselves thusly simply because of layoffs, medical issues or divorce.  I counseled with most of these people on how to recover from it and let them continue to work while monitoring their progress.  I had some come back to me as much as two years later to thank me for allowing them to work and rebuild their credit to the point they were able to finally buy a nice home and live on par in life again.  I feel more contented in knowing I helped someone this way than to throw them back on the street without a job and thereby compounding their financial woes.

I’m sure there were other issues such as legal immigrant status.  Homeland Security had approved one young lady to work and have legal status, but I found out after I left she was fired because she was not a citizen.  She had told me she was working towards naturalization, which I don’t know for sure where she stood on that, but she did have a right to work.  Still, they fired her.  She’d been working there long enough to have established that she was dependable and forthright.  There was no reason she should have been fired.  Yet bureaucracy won out.

The answer came to me in the form of an article I read when I got up this morning about bureaucracy.   It’s written by Hannah Arendt’s writing called Prediction on Violence in Modern Society.  It has to do with the increase of violence when bureaucracy takes hold and no one can get an answer because this avenue of government breeds totalitarianism.

See if you recognize it here.  You call a company and get a call list of punch 1 for this punch 2 for that and punch 3 for another only to find the person at number three has bad English and the best you can make out is they don’t handle your type of issue.  That my friend is bureaucracy.  There is no meaningful answer to your situation nor will there ever be.  How does that make you feel?

My dad always dangled that carrot in front of me when I was growing up.  I never made the grade.  Almost did a few times, but that carrot would swing on the end of that line away from me.  When I hear such things and feel the negative feelings now a days I think back to those days.  People still either don’t want you around or if they do let you be around they dangle the carrot.  I’ve over that.  I will not be put in a demeaning state of mind.  Some people simply don’t know me and until they do I can deal with that.  I will prove myself sufficient for the day without resorting to some extreme.  Violence, as the article state, is the end result of frustration with bureaucracy.  It’s not my style.  I adapt and then overcome.

I’m not mad or upset with anyone.  I give people credit for not knowing me first and foremost.  Get to know me.  I think you’ll find me amenable if it’s reasonable.

Posted in Dreams, Ponderings, Sobering Thoughts, Work | Leave a comment

How Much Is Enough

Posted on 2017/09/19 by JimR, Chaplain

As many of you know, I describe myself as the eldest son of a poor dirt farmer.  The storyPoverty 1 of no running water in the house I lived in for the first nine years of my life.  I won’t belabor the depth of how I lived those first years again.

I have to do this as my form of therapy.  The writing, that is.  My soul is stirred at times and I’m urged in my spirit to write down how I feel.  So, here goes.

The picture to the right here is of my granddad, grandmother, my dad and his two sisters standing in a tobacco field.

My dad lived a life that was hard on him.  He did the best he knew how.  He got his methods of raising a family from his dad, who I loved immensely.  My granddad was the best granddad ever.  But when I grew up I found out some things that saddened my heart.  He, too, was a good man in principle, but I was saddened to learned he was a harsh man.  Quick tempered I would imagine.  I remember hearing him chastise grandmother once in a tone of voice I knew wasn’t nice.  I was probably five years old at the time and he was standing by the back door with a straight razor in hand, shaving while looking in a small mirror over a shelf that held his shaving cup and brush.  I don’t remember for sure, but I think there was a razor strap hanging below it.

This explained why my dad was a hard man.  He may have mellowed in his later years after his heart attack, but I wasn’t home to notice.  Why do I say he was a hard man?  Well, I can at least take into consideration I was the first born and most any first born can say after some thought, that they were the experiment in child raising.  He took a hard tack at raising me.  So, beyond that, I considered in my later years as being nothing more than a farm hand.

I was on a tractor at the age of seven.  I was farming thirteen acres of soy beans at age thirteen with a Farm All Cub tractor.  I pulled weeds from between plants in the field.  Fed the hogs and chickens.  I transplanted tobacco where it had not taken root at the original planting.  I shucked corn and ran it through the corn sheller to fed the hogs and chickens.  Some of it got bagged to take to the mill to be ground into a fine feed for the animals.  You name it I did it.  One hundred pound bags of fertilizer were tossed around from storage under the barn to the back of the pickup to take to the field come ground prepping time for planting.  That was me at fourteen and fifteen, driving that truck to field.  Did I complain?  No.  I thought that was what I was supposed to do.  Military life in boot camp was like the letter from the Marine talking about how easy boot camp was after leaving the farm.

I built a work ethic that made most my age look lazy.  Even the four brothers below me in age didn’t work as hard on the farm as I did.  I do remember dad putting Danny on a tractor at age five, but that’s the only time I remember him doing much else.  By the time Danny reached his teen years, dad had pretty much given up farming tobacco and had fewer hogs and no chickens.  By the time Mike was old enough there was no working the farm, besides, the only time we let him drive a tractor he almost killed about four or five people at the shelter where the women were tying tobacco.  He hit a post that was holding up the shelter at full speed and pretty much broke the post into two pieces.

So.  What am I getting at with this post about “How Much Is Enough”?

Everything I ever did resembled the commercial where the two women are in a store looking at pocketbooks and one looks at the other and asks if she can afford this.  She then does this little witchy thing and her Allstate insurance agent appears and she asks how much she saved on auto insurance.  Low and behold it was enough for her to afford the pocketbook she was looking at.  The other, then, does the same thing and an old man appears with waders and a fishing hat holding a rod with a dollar on the hook.  So the woman reaches for it and he pulls it away and proclaims “Oh! You almost had it!”

The latter woman was me.  It mattered not what I did, my dad would always say I did good, but I could have done better or I could have done more.  On many occasions he would get angry with me for not doing something a particular way even though I got it done.  I always felt I was reaching, but never achieving.  I never felt accomplished in anything I did.

I was an A student all the way through the fourth grade and then I tumbled to C’s and D’s and stayed there.  One of my problems was my eyesight was failing and even after my teachers had told my parents I needed my eyes checked my dad didn’t consider it a priority for at least two more years.  Finally after more coaxing and low grades my mom insisted I get checked.  It was found I was extremely farsighted and couldn’t see a page in front of me without getting a headache within ten minutes of straining, so I had given up trying to read.  Once I got my glasses I was able to see again, but by that time I’d already formed a habit of not studying and no one to encourage me to re-enter the academics of the day.  I struggled through till it was apparent in high school I wasn’t going to graduate with my classmates of eleven years if I did not do something.  My dad was no encouragement.  He’d already took football away from me, which I so desperately wanted to play.  But the summer before I was to be a Senior I found out about summer school and my mom saw to it that I went.  My mind was rejuvenated and I went on to graduate with two A’s, two B’s and a C.  But it was no thanks to my dad.

Years later after my dad died, my mom apologized to me for the way he treated me and said that was why she tried to get me the best of things, which put her in jeopardy a few times.  She also told me it wasn’t right that he doted over Danny, but made a farm hand out of me.  I have to keep my humor in it all.  I guess you could say I was the Pepino of the family.  (You have to remember “The Real McCoys” to understand that.) The Real McCoys

There is an up side to my growing up.  It made me always carry things to a higher level to meet the elusive goals set in front of me.  It made me tough and I created a solid work ethic.

When I was a Senior in high school I remember walking into the back door of the gym where I saw guys trying to see who could lift the most weight on barbells.  I asked how much was on the bar.  One hundred twenty pounds was the answer.  I asked to give it a try.  I lifted and pressed it above my head to their astonishment.  Then it was on.  I weighed 150 pounds at the time.  The weight went to 130. . .140.  The crowd who could lift the weights as they increases slimmed.  One hundred and fifty pounds.  It dwindled to maybe three.  One hundred sixty.  It came down to just one other and myself.  By this time we were clean and jerking the weight, but it was still over our heads.  One hundred seventy. . . and by this time a crowd of spectators had formed.  I lifted the weight high.  Walter Yates was my only remaining competition.  One hundred seventy five.  We both got clean lifts, but I was done.  One hundred eighty was not for me.  But what I lifted was twenty five pounds more than I weighed.  The amount was not the obstacle to me.  It was all mental.  My mind was so challenged to do better that I would not let go.  Determination had been established in my mind at that small unofficial event.  That settled the positive aspect of growing up such as I did.

In the Army the final physical testing was the GT test with a possible score of 500.  All the North Carolina boys had scores above 490.  Mine was 493.  One of those made a perfect 500.  He must have had a harder life than me.  Out of my company of 120 soldiers 85 were from Texas.  Let that sink in.

From there till I was about six months past getting out of the Army before I quit doing pushups.  Married life fattened me up.  I was doing 120 pushups a day to keep myself in shape, but that went to the wayside for two or three years.  Then DuPont shift work took that weight off of me.  I lost 60 pounds and was down to 145.  I was back to tough as a cob and stayed that way for eight years.

I finally came to the point I gave my life to God and became fully immersed in the Word.  I had to know God.  Not just read about Him.  That same determination to go a step beyond carried me deep into study.  I learned principles, but one came to the surface when I was thirty seven.

That principle was concerning the sins of the fathers visit the children.  What my dad had told me prior to that time was no Rowe men lived to the age of sixty.  I told him I was not buying that story and turned to God for an answer.  This principle came to mind and was given the reason why they died before 60.  God had called all of them to ministry and had refused or neglected the call.  I confronted my dad and he turned pale from the red Cherokee complexion he normally had.  He asked me how I knew and I told him God told me.  He said he’d never even told mom.  He made it to sixty in such frail shape he died only a couple of months later.

What came of me has been not surprising.  God spoke to me that I would live to an old age.  Where all died in their late 50’s, I will be 67 next month and just got a clean bill of health in the last month or so by my cardiologist and regular doctor.

Oh I still have issues.  I’ve had to lose weight and in doing so I’ve become a member of the non-diabetic side of humanity again.  I do have a touch of arthritis, but my doc says it being in my fingers such as it is is because of use and a bit from age.

Where I am today has not kept people from still trying to put that same old curse back on me.  I still repel it.  I know in my core I am good.  I’ve had my mistakes.  From that I’m forgiven.  People can rebuke me, talk ill willed about me, but I know where my strength is.  God has granted me this life and I’m going to live it.

At the moment Libby and I are going through a hard place, but I can say God has never left me, nor forsaken me.  Libby is a strong Christian woman, who lifts me up as God’s earthly form of help.  She truly loves me as I am.  Unconditionally.  It’s strange that she has this gift and I had to learn the reality of it from her and not one other person in the entire Christian world.

Even since I retired I’ve learned that the person who took over my job has not had anything good to say about how I did that last position I held.  I felt it first and then someone told me.  They don’t know where I brought that position from.  In seven years of performing the functions of that job I saw to completion almost two thousand clearances processed.  I saw several overcome the hurdles they had to endure to get a clearance.  Some had been trying for as much as five years in the process.  I got them through.  It’s still strange that the last person who does a job successfully gets talked bad about simply because they did it different than someone else.  They didn’t take into consideration what hurdles that person like myself had to get over to make the program what it was.  That being in spite of transformations that occurred during that time that made the function of the job unrecognizable in the end from the beginning.

In this end of life I have to say I have many more years to go.  God has told me so.  Why?  Because I found out how much is enough.  We, as humans can’t do everything, but we can do our part and do it well and pleasing to God.  He has given me life well beyond my predecessors.  That’s proof enough that I did find out how much is enough.

 

 

Posted in Christian, Days in Small, Health, Love, Memories, Old Age, Ponderings, Sobering Thoughts, Spiritual, Spiritual Investment | 1 Comment

Hurricanes?

Posted on 2017/09/06 by JimR, Chaplain

As I continue to watch the unfolding track of Irma, I’m reminded of the path of Fran in Hurricane Irma 20171996. It wasn’t the path of Irma, but it took aim at Wilmington like a cruise ship coming back to port.

What strikes me most is the ever changing path that Irma has taken.  First, the west side of Florida, then the middle and now the east coast of Florida while it skirts up the coast and coming in around Charleston.  What’s to say this curving doesn’t continue until it comes in around the ENC coast.  Other hurricanes have done this, too.  North Carolina sits just too far out from the states south of us.  In fact even too far for the states above us, too.  We’re like a sore thumb for North Carolina.

You know what else I don’t like?  It’s that Onslow County is considered a coastal county as this is true, but I live in the west end of the county just a few minutes from Duplin and Jones County, which neither touch the coast, yet Jones County goes much closer to the coast than I’ll ever be.  So is Craven County.  I’m further inland than these two counties, but they share a cheaper homeowner’s coverage rate than I do, because this county has a coast line.  Personally, I think the industry should draw a line so many miles back from the coast and call everything east of the line the higher cost areas for homeowner’s insurance.  I pay more for mine than someone in Jones and Craven County that lives several miles closer to the coast than I do.

Having survived Bertha and Fran, back to back in 96, was an experience I don’t like the idea of experiencing again.  Bonnie was the nicest, if you can call a hurricane nice, with winds still around 100 mph plus.  We never lost power.  All the others we lost power every time.  Dennis was mischievous.  It came, went and came back after a loop out in the Atlantic.  Floyd was horrible, too.  Last year our Walmart across from us down the street lost all of it’s frozen foods.  I hope they have thought ahead to get generator power at least to it’s frozen food sections.

My former house sat in an open area and almost, or could have lost its roof during Fran.  I had to nail the sheeting back down after daylight came after that horrible night.  A tornado spun up and crossed my backyard and demolished my work shop and destroyed the double-wide next door.   I’ve never experience such a weather event ever in my life.  Perhaps around 1960 or so, give or take, I was too young to realize the devastation of such a thing until the next day, when we got out and surveyed the houses I lived in, the old house we lived in and my grandmother’s house.  We came out okay on our two houses, but my grandmother’s had a huge cedar tree that fell on her bedroom and another fell by the pack house.  One other tree was blown over and everything was a mess.  My two favorite trees survived.  They were the mulberry and pear trees.  It was a good thing my grandmother had stayed overnight with us.

One hurricane that we didn’t suffer a direct hit from was Hugo.  It was also a Cat 5 part the way to the U.S. and came ashore in Charleston at 135 mph.  It went to the western part of our state around Greensboro on its way up north.  It was tough on them to say the least.  Charleston survived, but was extremely damaged and flooded.  I am feeling this may be the landing zone before us for Irma.  Hopefully scrubbing just off the coast, Irma will deteriorate somewhat before making a solid landfall.

Jose?  Not sure about that hurricane yet.  I see from reports that it is expected to be a much smaller one with winds in the 90 mph range.  Still enough to do inexorable damage.

Hang on folks.  2017 looks to be a history setting year for hurricanes, seeing that Harvey has already made a mess out of Texas.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Memories, Ponderings, Sobering Thoughts, Weather | Leave a comment

No Flag For You

Posted on 2017/08/16 by JimR, Chaplain

I’m thinking this morning about how I retired.  When I was ending my last month or soMF0499  of Civil Service, I was asked did I want some sort of ceremony, audience with the CO or a dinner with the department.  Well, I said no to all because I am not a ceremonious sort, nor have I ever really met the CO.  If he were a friend of sorts or even worked closely with on a regular basis maybe, but no.  Dinner with the department?  I hardly knew two people in all of Security.  My office was apart of theirs.  I knew them in face and some, name only.  Why would I want to attend a dinner for me and I not know anyone?

All I asked for was a flag that had been flown over the command.  I was told I could not do that because I wasn’t military.  I’m thinking, well I was and I am a Veteran of the Vietnam Era, so why not?  I was refused and to this date I have nothing other than a boiler plate letter congratulating me for my 28 years of Civil Service.  That and a five month wait to see my first retirement check after having spent most all my savings to live until that happened.

Now I have bills that I was going to pay with that and I don’t have any of it.  Now I catch what I can running cars.  Now I’m taking a class to be certified to substitute teach hoping to make up the difference in what I owe and what I need to buy groceries.  Seems that is life, so I deal with it and go on.

Posted in Ponderings | 1 Comment

Race

Posted on 2017/07/28 by JimR, Chaplain

Race.  What is it?

Throughout time, people of many races throughout the world have always taken some degree of unkindly thought of anyone not of their own.  From as far back as one can remember of societies it is seen.  Countries developed for this very reason.

The Scotch people would rival one another over who’s clan they belonged to.  Same skin color, but I get it.  Hatfields and McCoys.  Both white but different families.  Differences start for many reasons.

Blacks and whites.  Oh wait.  There are yellows, too.  Perhaps creamy in between.  Even whites, like blacks have shades of white.  Norwegian verses Hispanic shades of white.  Indians are red.  Is it really color as or more so than just plain fear of someone who’s culture is different from another one’s culture.  Color I think is more the defining feature to identify the differences in culture more than the color itself.

I’ll admit whites of the colonial days considered native indians to be savages.  In today’s light, who is a savage?  That leaves for a debate on it’s own.

Whites would have never made success out of making blacks from Africa slaves without the help of  neighboring tribes of blacks dabbling in slave trade, by selling members of other tribes into slavery, thus blacks played as much a role in black slavery as did whites.

A quote here from a NYT’s article goes thusly.  The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

And to go on, The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly Frederick_Douglass_portraitacknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.” (in part from an Article by HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr. APRIL 22, 2010)

There is such a thing as white slavery as well, but it seems white women bear the brunt of this type of slavery.  It’s not for picking cotton, but deemed, at least by myself, of a deep rooted kind of character assassination of women’s souls simply for the lust of sexual satisfaction by evil men of all races.  Iran played this with whites as well as blacks prior to 1826.  It’s history.  It can be readily found in books and on the internet.  Russia put an end to it in 1826.

The United States in its formative years was not a fluke nation on slavery.  It’s been a practice world-wide since mankind appeared on the face of the earth.  Every nation is to blame for this practice.  Even Jewish people would sell themselves into slavery when dire circumstances befell them simply to pay a debt.  At least they had the Year of Jubilee (every 50 years) when all people were freed of debt and slavery and were allowed to return to their rightful property.  Those who remained slaves then did so out of respect for their masters and their own willingness to serve their masters out of their own love for them.  The Greek word for these type slaves was called a “love slave”, but not in the physical sexual sense.  It was out of devotion to another.

Racism in my own younger years was best described as a member of a family who were members of the KKK.  but then again, the KKK back then didn’t hold solely to the idea of an Aryan race.  We actually were equal opportunity in justice.  I knew a woman in the neighborhood who was fooling around on her husband and a cross got burned in her front yard just as quickly as one that might have been burned in a black family’s yard for some other issue.

I witnessed racism first hand in my battery in Germany where I was stationed.  I was quietly trying to write home one evening and a potentially violent confrontation erupted in the hallway outside my door when a group of whites and blacks got into a shouting match over race.  It dawned on me at this time that this type of behavior was detrimental to the cohesion of the moral fabric of this nation.  The military had to deal with it.  Some people were transferred to other units the next day and I was assigned as security in the transport of one of those who instigated the prior evenings event.  The military doesn’t play favorites on race.  All races have an equal footing to either excel or fall upon their own sword.  It’s not an experiment.  It’s a ladder of responsibility set forth by rank.  You obtain that rank not because of color, but because you accepted the requirements within that rank and performed them to the best of your ability.

I came home with an entirely new view of the world.  No more color.  It became evident to me later on when I realized that Sunday mornings were the most racist of all days.  Blacks went to black churches and whites went to white churches.  No one seemed to dare encroach on that sacred ground.  It was the late 70’s when my pastor brought in a speaker for a Sunday evening service and I could hear a collective gasp when the young man appeared when introduced.  He was a black minister who had started a church in the heart of downtown Wilmington on the busiest drug exchange street corner.  He called it The Soul Saving Station.  This church is still there and has brought up in its midst several with the calling to spread the gospel of Christ.  Since that time I began to see Sunday mornings as less than racially divided.  Still, sadly, we have remnants of that divide still with us.  God didn’t create men to be racially divided in our minds.  I feel He created it as a challenge for us to overcome in our maturity as humans in His sight.

I’m a fan of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  He was a man of vision well before his time.  One black man who’s courage stood in the face of opposition with a heart that stood for the right reasons.  Some will say ill of him, but like David of old whose heart was not perfect kept it soft for God’s hand to shape and mold it for the Kingdom.

Racism has no part in my vocabulary.  We are all men and women of this earth.  It’s not just a “can’t we all just get along”.  It’s a “let’s settle the issue in our hearts”.  We’re in this together and race isn’t to play a part in our lives.

I think it’s more a fear of not knowing one another because we just don’t get together and weigh our differences and see the good in situations and work from that.  Together we can build a lot more when we have the following quote in mind.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. . .   I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.  –  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Unconditional love.  The basis of all problems are solved when we learn that kind of love for one another.

Posted in Ponderings | Leave a comment

Goals

Posted on 2017/07/25 by JimR, Chaplain

What are goals?  Of course you know.  It’s something you plan and work toward.  How much does that play in your life?

I’ve discovered it plays quite a bit in my life since retirement.  When working it came about naturally from the nature of climbing the ladder in the working world.  I never really thought much of it, but I stopped recently to take stock of what goals in life I had ventured into.

I set a goal early in life because of what I felt was a calling by God to be in the ministry.  The age of thirteen was young, but I’ve been in conversation, or prayer as most call it, since I was at least this young.  Praying without ceasing, is more like what I consider my conversations with God.  I admit I don’t listen all the time, but He’s always there to talk.  Sometimes He gets my attention without my having the slightest of intention towards conversation at that particular moment.  Okay, I’m rabbit-trailing.

Goals.  Other than that, I had none.  When I graduated from high school I found being 1A for the draft was a huge deterrent to making solid plans.  I did sign up for something I enjoyed.  I took one year of architectural drafting from Chicago Technical College and it landed me in a job in industrial construction and a field engineer, but the Army swooped me up for a two year active duty enlistment.  That period of time in my life made me grow up something like overnight.

It got me out of a dead-end relationship and unfortunately I put myself into another that ended in divorce many years later.  I feel really bad, since looking back on it I found I wasted my ex-spouses life as she was trying to put up with me.  She wasn’t well received by my family I found and I know the feelings were mutual.  I was just a country boy gone to the city.  I tried to fit in, but it just didn’t happen.  I’ve made my mistakes, but still in those early years, I just kind of took things as they came until. . .

When I was twenty six years old I became depressed and did not know why.  It took some time, but I came to realize God was calling me back to Him and I began to search.  It took a couple of years, but I found myself on my knees in front of my couch one Monday morning around one, in the dark, crying out to Him.  I had found that life had become nothing without Him in my life.  Just prior to that moment of the night I had gone to work and on the way over Cape Fear River bridge to DuPont for the night shift, I felt without Him in my life I was worthless and should end it if He wasn’t in it.  For a small sliver of time I felt the void of God in my life and almost ran my car over the rail into the river.  He stopped me.  That’s why I was on my knees in my living room crying out to Him.

I knew that my dad’s life was shortened because he did not answer a similar call on his life and I vowed my goal was to serve God and end the curse that was on the Rowe men before me.  That curse is broken.  I still believe God has more for me to do and I wait on Him.

Other goals.  Aside from the that one main goal, there began to be other smaller goals that took shape.  I honed my drumming skills as a member of a worship team.  I went on to become a deacon in the church, but I fell from grace to some extent due to a mistaken avenue of help to someone taking a wrong path.  I am all the more careful now to avoid mistakes.  The multitude of counsel is a wise avenue to take.  Don’t try to do things alone.

I took a new a new direction at the age of thirty eight.  Blue collar type work was left behind for more administrative white collar work.  This was due to conversation with God.  He instructed me to take the open door and He would restore me to my revenue at the time, but not without a test in finances and health.  Three months after taking the Civil Service job I was three months behind on my mortgage and other bills and in the hospital for the first time in my life since I was born.  He told me five years I would struggle and I did.  On the week of my fifth anniversary I received a check in the mail to cover all my back expenses and put me ahead for a change and was awarded a job I had wanted with better pay.  The rest of my twenty three years in Civil Service saw my salary double from that date of restoration.  Goals.  May not seem exactly as such, but I heard from God and obeyed Him.  His Word was my goal.

I did not retire as well as planned.  OPM is a slow moving giant in the Federal Government I found.  All the goals I had placed in front of me were quashed with no pay for five months and we had to spend all the savings and buy-backs on leave I had hoped to pay off bills with.  But remember, those I now see as my goals.  Not God’s.  He sets my goals.  I have to recognize that.  I am being patient as much as allows.  I know down the road my goal is to be where God wants me.

In the mean time, I create small goals to keep me busy, like drive cars for dealers.  I’m attending a class for substitute teacher certification next month and/or anything else I feel the unction to delve into.  God can’t do anything unless I’m moving, so it pays to be moving.  Just sitting at home is not a goal oriented function in life.

Even smaller things are goals.  I still have trim to cut and put in place in the house, new tile for the bathroom, new pedestal sinks, which will require small re-plumbing issues as funds allow.  In short, stay busy.  God can’t help a stalled life.  If you feel that way, do something.  Anything to occupy the time.  Do it as unto God and He will reward your efforts.  Nothing is wasted.

Remember the old adage.  Idleness is the devil’s workshop.  It still applies.  Have goals, no matter how big or small.  And work towards them.

Posted in Ponderings | Leave a comment

Sobering Thoughts

Posted on 2017/07/17 by JimR, Chaplain

Daddy, meet my fiance’.

“Who’s your car insurance with young man?”

“The General, sir!”

“Welcome to the family son”.

I dunno, I just sit here dumbfounded at commercials.  Oh well.

What does life have to offer any more besides quips n quotes?  I don’t hear a lot of solid talk anymore.  Scripted programming, even in “reality” TV can’t fool me.  The media is full of self-absorbed agenda ratings building.  Smearing people is about all they care for.

Leadership has no agenda other than cutting the legs off of tall men to make them the same as they are.  Short.  Short on smarts, short on morals, short on about most everything including assuring the public, who voted them into office, of getting an honest days work out of them.

I know there are still honest hard working people out there, who will make society proud of their being a part of solutions to problems we have, but by in large, leadership has not proven the same for us.  I’m ashamed of these self-aggrandizing people whose agenda has no value to humanity at large.  A woman, who isn’t an Indian, claiming she is.  Men who only stir the public’s nature to violence, yet call themselves reverend.  The same who owe millions in taxes yet flaunt their status, practically daring someone to force their hand to pay such debts.  Men and women who are guilty of crimes, but play it off over “technicalities”.  Well, guilt is guilt.  Technical or not.

People with money that pay the poor to create anarchy for the rich’s benefit, not knowing they, the poor, are considered simple-minded people as simple pawns of a grander scale plan to overthrow a governmental system that doesn’t suit their taste.  We, the people, need to awaken and become vigilant to these stabs into the side of the Republic of these United States.

I’ve always said “the tiny foxes spoil the vine”.  It’s my Biblical paraphrasing, but it’s the small stuff that goes unnoticed.  They nibble away at small bits and pieces until the small pieces fall together into a large whole in society that will create an irreparable issue to deal with and once we pass that point nothing will ever be the same.  Even if we overcome such an atrocity, the thing we hope for is a stronger society that is more vigilant over such small issues growing ever again.

At this point in time.  This is what we are dealing with.  Small issues that have begun to grow exponentially and  leads me to believe my sons and their children will have to deal with the brunt of what’s coming.  I hate that for them.  My spirit and strength go with them to overcome and create that better society.  I won’t be here physically most likely.  Hopefully, I can only hope it doesn’t happen, but likely history is as always, repeating itself due to the forgetfulness of the present generation.

That being said we are going to repeat history, because this generation has no knowledge of history like we have.  We know of what it’s like to be poor, some having gone through The Great Depression or at least were raised by parents who did.  A World War,  Korean War or Vietnam.  Not nearly so many have died since Vietnam.  Fifty eight thousand died in those jungles.  Even more during the World War.  Will it take this level of upheaval to create a new awareness of morality in people?  A soberness that will last for at least a handful of generations?

Let’s hope for the better.  I’m not pessimistic.  Just a realist.  I don’t foresee the better.

Posted in Patriotism, Ponderings, Sobering Thoughts, Spiritual Investment | Leave a comment