A Day at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha

Aging With Grace

Ruthie need not have worried about her transition from a condominium to Scandia Shores, for she is in a cheery place where she entertained us with her usual grace and hospitality.

And her humor has not faded. She refers to her lift chair as her “ejector seat” and demonstrates how it helps her get up after sitting and visiting awhile. She lets us know she doesn't cook or bake much and offers us rootbeer floats instead.

She asks if we know what the device in her bedroom is used for. It's a wonder she doesn't joke about it as her “gumball machine” for it sports a smooth slide on which roll down into a tray . . . her daily medicines. And that is after a voice prompts her that it's time to take her pills.

She is socially active, poised, and can still tell a good story from her years in Ecuador. The people you read about in books like Shadow of the Almighty were her acquaintances and friends.

Then there's Leonard and Imogene with an encouraging word and Imo helping our friend, Kay. Once again it was . . . you guessed it, rootbeer floats. More questions about what the radio station's English Language Service looked like before broadcasts finally ended and more stories from a bygone era rich with ministry, memories and people serving God in a different land.

Leonard tells a joke about a man who put on a new pair of socks every day and after a week he couldn't get his shoes on. He hasn't lost the humor he and Travis shared with listeners on “Cracker Barrel.”

He and Imogene greet me at their front door, Leonard in his “Biola Football-Undefeated since 1908” tee-shirt and so I ask if Biola has a team. “No,” he replies and starts laughing. That was just the beginning of a three-hour visit with friends I had only ever known before via e-mail exchanges.

It wouldn't be fair to say they're talking about the good ol' days, without mentioning their interest in our lives and work as well. They stay abreast of everything that is going on and know about our family. What a wonderful time.

The Floweringest Forty Acres You'll Wanna Visit

Camping West of Minneapolis

Classic Cars at Chamberlain

Care in every detail
Chrome glistening in the sun
Coupes, Chevy II's and 'Cudas

Air Cleaners and Carbs jutting through hoods
Calendar picture Cars
Cameros, Roadrunners, Chevelles -- Classics

Conversations drift from camshafts to cast iron engine blocks
Cars always shedded (except for shows)
Clean, Coddled Cruising machines




Uncluttered, Cavernous engine Compartment
Filled with Cubic inches of power
Unfettered by air protection (or even air Conditioning)

Cards that indicate
each Car's Category
Classy Competitors all

Cash Cows for owners?
A Classics Clique of Collectors?
Or a Community, centered on a Common interest:

Classic Cars

Learning from Pinocchio

By Kathy (as spoken at 6th Grade graduation ceremony)

When I started praying about what to talk about tonight, I immediately thought of the lessons these kids and all of us can learn from the play we worked so hard on “No Strings Attached.”

In the play, Pinocchio and the Purple Fairy let us know that being real is a goal worth reaching. As you all move into secondary school, things are already beginning to change. In some respects this graduation signals a goodbye to childhood. From now on there will be more pressure to grow up, pressure to act – not act in another play but in the hallways of middle school.

Act a certain way so that you will be liked, but please 6th Graders, don’t forget to be real. Be who you really are, not who you think you need to be so you will be popular. The Lord has made each of you so special and unique. There’s no need to act. Don’t copy an upperclassman, or a famous singer, or a movie star or an older brother or cousin . . . just be the REAL you!
I know that this year you have learned a lot about Canada and South America. About multiplying fractions and doing science experiments.

But more important than all those academic advances you have made, my prayer is that you will remember most what you learned in Bible and chapel, and how to apply it as you live out your Christian faith. On the soccer field . . . or in your own homes when no one from school is watching you.

When things don’t go your way.

When you feel like giving up.

Then sing and dance and smile all at the same time. Just like the fish and the marionettes in our play.

Some of you will begin the school year in the fall in a new place. We will miss you. I hope that you can carry the lessons from the play and how that affects your Christianity to your new school.

God made you unique, so don’t rob the world of the YOU that He wants you to be . . . He delights in you. I’m pretty sure that the Lord smiles when He sees you being real, and when He sees you smile and dance and sing . . . all at the same time.

"Radium Girls" and Stumbling Toward Dominion

Chernobyl.

Bophar, India.

These only begin the list of health and environmental disasters.
Thalidimide (see short video of a “thalidomide baby” who now plays
guitar professionally . . . with his toes. Please press "play" below.)




Radium.

When our school drama department recently presented “Radium Girls”, I
had no idea of this chapter of American history. In the mid 1920s, it was a miracle cure and Madame Curie was a celebrity. The dial painters of the U.S. Radium Corporation enjoyed neither health nor fame.



“Radium is one of the most dangerous substances known to man,” says Dr. Von Sochocy, a character in the play. But this was after he had founded and guided a successful enterprise that made luminous watch and clock dials, Von Sochocky then sold his Orange,NJ plant, but workers had already been tipping their radium-laden paintbrush bristles with their lips . . . and getting sick.

And dying. At the U.S. Radium Corporation, it was killing the workers who painted the watch dials.


The Love Canal.

Leaded paint.
Bysinosis (brown lung disease)
Leaded gasoline, something that concerned us personally here in the
developing world. Now it has been replaced with unleaded.

Madame Curie was said to have loved radium but it eventually killed her. She
evidently didn’t realize it had the power to kill her, just as the
character, Harriet Roeder, flippantly dismisses the radium sickness
deaths (as she takes a drag on a cigarette) with “science just wasn’t
as advanced, the way it is now.)

It is easy enough to adopt an attitude that science sufficiently
explains all, but God told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
“Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it; . . . “

In our confidence in science on such controversies as embryo stem cell
research and the scare about global warming, what is our attitude? A
flippant arrogance that looks back on society’s many accomplishments
and advances? Or utmost dependence on our Creator?

Sometimes the scientific advance is a juggernaut, pushing to explore
every benefit the created universe offers. But then again, sometimes
too, it is a stumble.

graphic arts: R. Sams