Buffalo Gal

When I was a junior high kid, the raciest reading material was found in a cheap pulp magazine called TRUE CONFESSONS.  There were also pulp publications called True Detective, True Love, True Crime, et.al.  They were all like forbidden fruit—we wanted to read them so badly.  Every now and then, one of the girls would get their hands on one and the rest of us waited to read it—like buzzards lined up on dead limbs of trees overlooking a decaying carcass in the desert.  The stories in the magazines were sort of like decaying carcasses too, but….we had to read them.  Oh so naughty!  So daring!  So out of our league!!

Today I have True Confessions of my own to make:  that of being a mixed up, ding-batt-ish flounder-er for most of the morning.  It is such a gorgeous early spring day.  The sun is blazing, the meltwater is running fast and furiously over the streets, and here on the Buffalo Bluff the streams are pouring toward the river down below. It is glorious.   

  I went to the community center to excercise today…to actually attend a class called "Silver Sneakers".  I took my good friend with me and both of us were raring to go.  We got there early and I showed her around the place…all the great features of a complete and marvelous facility that draws so many people of all ages to get in shape in so many possible ways.  We arrived in the spacious room for the Silver Sneakers class but were advised to have a bottle of drinking water under our chairs, so we went in search of the Dasani machine by the walking track.  Bottles of water gotten, we went to open the door to the excercise room, and (I was in the lead) opened a door…….that showed us the great outdoors. It also had a fire escape linked to it and no sooner did it open than a very LOUD alarm went off and kept going off.  Two gentlement who were excercising on some nearby weight machines began to laugh heartily when I said, "How do you turn it off?"   "You don’t." the laughed back.  My friend was already fleeing the scene,eager no to be associated with me at that moment…. back through the REAL door to the excercise room and I fled too.  I am afraid the Fire Dept. had to come to answer the call I set off.  I sat down on my chair and tried to look like nothing had happened.  I did not get arrested, at least.  

We did over 45 minutes of very good excercises designed for older people.  After chatting with the instructor for several minutes and turning in our excercise balls, our stretchy ropes, and our hand weights, we headed downstairs to the snack shop where we chatted more with some ladies we knew from our community.  Then off to the parking lot to get in my vehicle, make a stop at the library, and then check out a really nice Oriental Buffet place that was highly recommended to us.   I made a beeline for the silvery colored van I drive and put the key in the lock to open the doors.  I could not get the key to go in fully so I went to the other door and repeated the process.  Suddenly I noticed the word "Plymouth" on the side of the silvery van and I shrieked, "It’s the wrong car!" to my friend who was waiting patiently  to get in it.   I galloped off in search of MY silvery Previa van while my poor friend was being disabled by her hysterical laughter.  Both of us had a lot of water at the class so we were both in pretty bad shape to find a "ladies room".  This led to more hysterical laughter and a lot of leg-crossing.  I finally found my real van and opened it up so we could drive to the Buffet.   It was sensational, just as the recommenders had said it would be.  As we left, I looked in the back seat, and sheepishly told my companion we would have to backtrack to the town library since I had totally forgotten (in the van panic) to go there before we left the main part of town.  Back we go, still weak from laughter and full of too much delicious Oriental food.  The library books and films got returned but in the process of returning them, I parked temporarily in the lot, blocking one of the patrons who wanted to get out of a parking space.  More gazelle-like galloping to get my car out of the way and we finally headed home.   Senior citizens, especially female senior citizens , are just not meant to run around wildly in parking lots.  I had way more excercise than what I got at the Silver Sneakers class.    But we got going  in the right direction and are back home now. 

Both of us need naps badly.  So I am off to the recliner with my wonderful new book I am reading.   I hope all the ding-battishness has disappeared after I wake up from a good nap. Yawn!

The collegiate basketball tournaments are referred to as "March Madness" and although I do not follow any basketball teams, I am always fascinated by the college tourney, especially as the teams get reduced to the Sweet Sixteen, the ——-Eight, and the Final Four.  Call me a fairweather basketball fan and it is the truth.

But there is another form of "March Madness" abroad in our own region with the high school basketball tournaments taking place.  Class A in North Dakota was decided this past weekend.  On the Minnesota side of the river, the "section" tournaments are on and I still do not "get" the changes from the old "District" and "Regional" tournaments of my youth…probably because I did not like the changes made in Minnesota.  I loved the old District 23 competition.  I recall a District and Regional tournament, probably in 1953 or 1954, when the whole area was agog over a player from Fergus Falls who was 6 feet 7 inches tall!!!!  His first name was Lowell and I cannot dredge up the last name but he was a sensation..nobody was that tall back then.  I remember how he towered over the other players of the time.  I think Fergus Falls took it all that year…in the District and Region anyway.  In the old Minnesota system Moorhead, Fergus Falls, and Detroit Lakes were usually the ones in the tournaments along with one small town who had had a really good season.  The battle of "Goliaths" (big schools) against the little "Davids" (samll schools) was an annual fascination in Minnesota basketball of days gone by. The state tournament was even more so than the Regionals…usually one or two small town "Davids" had to take on the Twin Cities "Goliaths". Little Halstad MN was one of the "Davids" in about 1952 I think.  The whole area was avid in following the Halstad Pirates of the time.

On Saturday night we went to the second round in Section 6 (?) at the Concordia Fieldhouse which always brings back a lot of basketball tournament memories…..the smell of hot popcorn emanating out of one of the small gyms, people lined up to buy either tickets or concessions and lots and lots of deep and lively conversations centered upon the prospects of the teams making it through the tournament to yet another Sectional playoff. There is always the long lineups for the bathrooms at the Fieldhouse since they are still the same ones installed in 1952 and are small, cramped in space under the bleachers..tall people have to lean their heads to one side to avoid hitting the sloped ceilings in the bathrooms!!  It makes it even more nostalgic going back to the 1952 bathrooms!!!      We saw Pelican Rapids triumph over Hawley and Breckenridge do in Glyndon-Felton.  According to the sports gurus, this was a case of two upsets over favored teams…always a strong possiblity in tournament play.  It seems to happen that way each year…some favored team gets knocked off early on and another less – favored team goes on to win  it all.  According to the truly avid followers of both favored teams, both of them were "off" in many ways on Saturday night leading to their downfalls.  Tournament nervousness at trying to maintan the favored status?  Who knows?  They were "off"…even I could tell that.

I am glad we saw one game, up close and live…..I will be watching it on TV from here on and enjoying it; also watching North Dakota Class B,  which is way more interesting to me than the Class A games.  It is the small town thing that I like.  Anyway we can all go  "March-Mad" for awhile like the proberbial "March Hare" from folk lore or myth….I do not know the origin and may have to look it up to satisfy my curiosity.

It is 8 p.m….very light outside, and I am not tired (thanks to a doze on the sofa this afternoon after feeling cheated this morning by the "spring forward" phenomenon we all have to endure).  It is also very noticeable that the sun is setting nearly "in the middle" of the horizon now.  I refer to the spring equinox coming soon and I am always overjoyed to see the sun tracking to the north again from its nadir in December when it sets far to the southwest on our horizon.  Of course it is not the sun moving, but the earth tipping toward it again in the northern hemisphere, but I always love to watch the sunset right in the middle of the horizon, equidistant between the far SW sunset and the far NW sunset in the third week of June.

"Spring has sprung, the grass has "riz", where last years’ careless drivers is."  That is the one ditty from the old red and white Burma-Shave signs I still remember.  There were hundreds of them posted along the old two-lane highways when I was a kid.  We all loved to read the evenly spaced little signs; I think I began to read them almost as soon as I learned how to read in first grade!    Last years’ careless drivers is no joke;  it seems that drivers are driving faster and in a more careless manner with every passing year.  It is not uncommon to get passed on Highway 10 where the speed limit is 65 mph by drivers doing 80 or more.  Unfortunately many do not signal when they become a real road hazard switching in and out of lanes so as not to impede their speed on the highway.  It is alway amusing to pull up next to one at a red light when we both arrive at the same point, I, the "turtle" and the 80 mph person, the "Hare". 

 I have had too many close calls recently with careless drivers so I think about it all the time when I drive.  Someone who was entering I-94 on a ramp near Moorhead, nearly side-swiped me as I was in the driving lane with a large Semi next to me in the passing lane and the entering driver was blithely speeding onto the highway without looking at what was going on.  I still can feel the panic I felt when that car nearly hit me but I laid on the horn and avoided the impact just in time.  I think she was yakking on her cell phone–after all what is most important?…..blabbing contantly on a cell phone or watching where you are going at 70 mph??? 

 It seems to me that the root of our traffic troubles is lawlessness…and that same factor, lawlessness, lies at the heart of a lot of social ills these days.  Too many people are too willing to shuck off law-abiding on highways…and elsewhere.  There is a growing rebelliousness and a growing arrogance, like a cancer invading the body  of our general society, and lawlessness is its name.  I am of the older generation.  I grew up being very conscious of obeying laws and rules; my parents taught me to do this and I learned early and well.  I am always surprised when I encounter those who do not have this ingrained sense of responsibility that was a key component in the fabric of our society past.  Thankfully there are many who have that same sense of responsibility and teach it to another generation of young people….but the decline is getting very noticeable.

I see more birds in the Winter than I do in the Summer….not because there are fewer birds to watch from spring to fall….there are way too many in the warm weather to really watch them and the green leafy bowers below our home hide them.  We surely hear them!!  Summertime brings bluejays and brown thrashers who are  determined to strip our little appletrees of their tiny bud-like fruit as soon as they appear.  We are torn about bluejays and thrashers….we want our apples so they are sort of the enemy for a few months.  This summer I am trying birdnetting but our strong winds out here on the big bluff above the Buffalo often removes the birdnetting in gusts and gales.   Maybe we need to leave a tree for the jays and the thrashers instead of fighting them…that would be my preference.  Our flock of woodducks and bluebirds keeps increasing each summer.  Listening to the wrens and robins sing each day is an indescribable pleasure all summer long.  The swallows swoop and fly like F-16 jets doing manuevers.  I figured out that they "buzz" the grass first and then do the fast reverse turns to go back and pick up the gnats and mosquitoes that have been "scared up" into the air.  They do a fine job of controlling the biting pests.

Wintertime lets us see the birds since the trees are bare and gray.  The woodpeckers that stay around are the noisiest as our woods are full of deadfall from a big windstorm in 1995. Their rat-a-tat-tats ring all over the woods and up into our domain in our yard.  The Red Heads and the Pilated woodpeckers  are really the most interesting…the Pilated ones are HUGE!   They are almost the size of ducks.  I observed a bird feeding station at my sister’s new home south of Fargo and along the river.  There were nuthatches, chickadees, several kinds of finches and some birds I did not recognize.  I have thought of setting up a bird feeder but our woods are full of bird food all winter, especially the berry bushes that fed a whole flock of fat robins one unusal winter when about 50 of them lived in our woods all winter.  The woodlands protect the birds also, giving them a comfortable home out of the winter winds with running water (open springs along the dead river).

My daughter in law and grandkids in St Cloud feed birds year round as they live near a fast disappearing woodland in the far edge of SE St. Cloud.  Unfortunately the developers are doing their best to destroy that small woodland.   My family has two pairs of cardinals this winter.  The birds have become so tame and so dependent on their daily food, that they actually wait for my daugher in law to come out in the morning to refill the bird feeder.  In the summertime it is wonderful to watch a pair of mourning doves eat from the ground underneath the feeder.  They fly in early in the morning and proceed to feed on the ground- food til they are satisfied and fly off to spend the day in the woods til evening when they come back to repeat the feasting under the bird feeder. None of the bird food every gets wasted.

I never watch birds but what I do not think of a portion of scripture…the part about the way God feeds the sparrows.  The birds do no work except to simply find the food that has been provided.  It always gives me a lesson in trust and faith.  I think it is in the gospel of Matthew and it is worth reading again.

This Saturday night, March 10, for crying out loud, we have to turn our clocks ahead for D.S.T….  that dreaded change for me, each spring.  Now with a new law, it is happening almost 4 weeks ahead of the former time change.  I do not take kindly to having my biological clock messed with, so the changes back and forth between central time and daylight time is always a trial for quite a few days….the "spring ahead" thing gets to me for several weeks and I feel really messed up.  

 I am not looking forward to this Saturday.  I wish I understood how this is a good thing;  I hear stuff about saving energy but I still  do not get it.  For me, I prefer light in the mornings and do not much care about extra light at night…my biological clock tells me when it is time to sleep and when it is time to wake, whether it is light outside or not.  It has been this way for as long as we have had daylight time thrust upon us. When I was still teaching and leaving home about 7 a.m. I would be disturbed greatly by suddenly driving in the darkness after enjoying the early daylight that always came in Februrary and March as the sun came up earlier and earlier.  Then we were plunged into morning darkness again.  I have never liked it for one  reason:  that small children are forced to stand out in the morning dark to catch a schoobus as soon as the time changes.  It seems dangerous to me.

When I was a college student, daylight time first began in Minnesota but North Dakota did NOT have DST for the first years after it became a Minnesota law.  We had a music professor who lived in Fargo and taught music in both Fargo and Moorhead…at my college and also at the old Fargo Conservatory of Music.  He wore two wristwatches when DST took effect in MN…one watch for Fargo and one for Moorhead.  He was a  very eccentric personality anyway, so the two wristwatches sent us into hidden giggle fits every time he showed up for class and would consult his two watches.  We ever saw our professor laugh or smile so  we were pretty "cowed" by this "nutty professor" (or so we thought)   His eccentricity masked musical brilliance that knew no equal at that time.  It was tough to follow him though; he assumed that we all knew as much as those who had studied piano a lot and many of us had not, so we were often lost during his lectures or piano excercises we were forced to do.  I did learn something though,  but it did not become apparent til years later when I realized I could figure out the chords for any musical key….due to my class from Mr. Eccentric Music Man.

Meanwhile, I better steel myself and my biological balance wheels for the big change that is going to hit me on Saturday night.  It is never a pretty scene.  I will be tired, grumpy and discombobulated for a few weeks——–poor Buffaloguy will have to put up with me. He will spend much more time in the woods or the pole building to get through the "transition" that accompanies daylight savings time each spring.  ARGH!!!

A childrens’ ditty begins with the line, "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll got eat worms! Big fat juicy ones, little teeny slimy ones, juicy slimy worms!"    According to one of the columnists for the Sunday edition of the FORUM, this is what the USA should be doing,  because everybody hates us.    This thought  was triggered by reading a letter to the editor this morning (March 8) by Mike Hulett regarding one of Jane Ahlin’s more recent columns about a "vacation" she recently took to South American countries, Chile and Argentina. 

 Hulett’s letter is amusing and nearly hilarious, as he pokes a little fun at the Limousine Liberal who goes "globe trotting" to a couple of countries and comes back concluding that the whole world hates the USA.  I suspect Ahlin had a pre-set conclusion if I  read her columns correctly.  She follows the line of all the Libs who say the same things over and over about how wicked we are and how stupid we are for fighting back at Terrorism in the way we have done.  Negotiating is the only way according to Ahlin…..if you can picture making any progress by negotiating  with the likes of lying dictators that populate many middle eastern countries.  Recent history has proven that negotiation with such dictatorial governments has lead to lies, more lies, broken pacts and treaties, and absolutely no committment to leaving anyone else in peace; the only agenda visible so far from such sources is the committment to destruction of western civilization and the stated goal of turning the world into a Caliphate by 2020.  (check it, out by googling " caliphate by 2020" and you will find a lot of "hits")   The negotiations reasoners think that if we give them enough land (Palestinians), if we take back any embargos, if we listen to their grievances….all will be hunky-dory and they will stop acting so hostile to us and respect us again.  These "thnkers" should review some past history of similar situations in the not -so -distant past, as in Neville Chamberlain’s securing "peace in our time" by negotiating with that "peace-loving dictator" in Nazi Germany. That is only one example.

All of us  have seen or read, personally,(if we follow news at all) of how "effective" the corrupted United Nations has been in dealing with these world leaders who seem to be committed only to destruction of others’ ways of life.  Take a good look at what Europe has become by being passive to the vast influx of potential terrorists in their midst.  Journalists have named it "Eurabia" in referring to what has happened to that continent.

Hulett’s letter is worth reading…especially if you enjoy satire, irony, and sarcasm!

I did not check with the John Steinbeck estate before using the somewhat similar title to "Travels With Charlie" so please, nobody turn me in on this one!  I am not going to sell this blog for any personal profit.  Back to traveling and doing other stuff with Otto:  Otto is one of my "grand-doggers" and he is currently staying with us while his "Mobby" and his kids are in Duluth for a couple of days. 

 My son is too busy at his business to give Otto the care and attention he needs when the others are gone, so Otto gets to stay with Gramma and Grampa.   He is a mixed – breed dog, half Springer Spaniel and half Dachsund…an interesting combinatin which has produced a long-bodied, all-black dog (a bit of white on the tail tip and on the chest, a sweet face that is Dachsund shaped and long,  strong muscular Springer hind legs, and the most sweet disposition that anyone could want in a pet.  Yesterday he spent the day looking at the doors and listening for his "people" to come back and get him.  Today he seems more comfortable with being with just Grampa and me.  He is accustomed to going with the family in their  van,  so when I went to a monthly friendship breakfast with some friends, Otto traveled with me to the Holiday Inn in Detroit Lakes.  I loaded him up with lots of blankets when I left him so he would stay warm and he was glad to see me return.  He jumped into the passenger seat and accepted a good wrap up in a fleecy blanket on the way home again. He dozed all the way. 

  He slept beside me on the bed last night…I will have to explain to my daughter in law about the excessive spoiling because I know he sleeps in his own bed at home but he was "needy"  last night and rejected his oen bed in favor of a spot on the king- sized bed.  He slept all night and did not even snore once but he probably heard a bit of snoring from some other quarter and I won’t say which one. 

Dog sitting is always a precarious balance between keeping our cat away from the dog….never the twain shall meet..nd I have to keep it that way.  It keeps me busy putting the cat upstairs in one room in the morning and taking her out in the afternoon without letting Otto see her.  She is terrified of him, with a memory of being chased up a tree seared into her cat-brain.  Otto has been going "out" frequently due to a very nervous bladder from being excited about the change in his life for two days.  You always know when Otto wants to go out..he spins like a whirling dervish (this must be a Dachsund thing, since the other grand-dogger who spent 10 days in February, did the same thing over and over).. both of them whirl madly til you think they will fall in a heap from sheer dizziness.  Otto has a special spin when he is home.  Every night after supper, his family sings a couple of songs while they are still at the table and Otto goes into his mad spin, knowing that the end of the singing will bring him some table food as a treat.  It is hilarious to watch Otto spin while  the music  goes on.  We forgot to sing to him last night, but he did not seem to mind…it is a "home thing" for him.  I hear him gulping from his water bowl now….an assured "spin" to go out very soon.  The water drinking is another sign of his slight insecurity with out his family. 

 I can do this for one more day!!   In and out, in and out, spin, spin, spin, but the sweet disposition and the cuddley dog beside me on the sofa or the bed are worth the efforts.   The cat will go back to her own routine in a day also.  She knows just as soon as one of our dog relatives are gone and goes back with ease into her daily routine staring out the east window and napping, mostly.  It seems like all pets develop their daily routines and do not like to depart from them.  I know a lot of humans who have the same dislike of departing from thier own routines.   I think this is one reason why we understand and love the pets in our lives.  Otto and I will do a small bit of traveling today…I have to pick up a book I requested at the library, but I know Otto will want to go with me.  Any trip to the post office or grocery store will also be travels with Otto….he requires it and I obediently give in to him.  That’s what Grammas do…."if Mom or Dad say "no", Dial 1-800- Grandma/Grandpa".  It’s on a T-shirt so it must be true.

Not that I can do much about it……..but there are many ads on television currently that are very tough to take.  The ones that "advertise" prescription drugs are the ones with which I am most disgruntled.  It seems so tacky to actually advertize prescription drugs!! Not so long ago, a drug prescription was a very personal thing between a patient and a doctor; now the drugs are hawked on television in a manner I imagine to be similar to the old time traveling snake oil shows of yore when sleazy salesmen drummed up enthusiasm for "cure-alls" at medicine shows conducted from the back of a wooden wagon that would have been a bit like the prairie schooners.  I actually feel embarrassed when these prescription drug ads come on…and unless you excercise your "turn off" button (the best choice) they come into your home unbidden by the power of television.  I know that prescription drugs are also hawked in monthly and weekly magazines, sometimes with full-page ads.  The truly uneasy part of these ads is when they cheerfully list some of the possible side effects of the drugs…they could not list them all…have you ever examined a copy of the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR)???  It is quite an experience and can be had at any bookstore of size in the area.  I have looked things up in that book while browsing at Barnes and Noble in the West Acres area of Fargo….and sworn that I would never take another prescribed drug again til I had read everything there was to know about it.

But when the side effects are done on TV, it is always done to light-hearted musical background, usually with video of happy people at  a picnic, on a beach, frolicking in a field of daisies, pushing a child on a swing  or some similar "happy" place.  Listening to the words is a different story and I am sure the drug companies are hoping you will not listen.   Shortness of breath, mysterious chest, leg, arm, abdominal, back and other anatomical area pain, diarhhea, constipation, burning thirst, blurred vision, kidney shut-down, liver malfunction ("your doctor will check for liver funcion" a.k.a. "you get turned into a patient automatically for as long as you consume this product".)  Also listed… but not too often… are the dangers of developing cancer from taking the drug, seizures, heart attacks, going blind, or developing  blood clots.  

 I have the unfortunate trait of listening whenever I hear the spoken word so I am pretty badly spooked by the world of "modern medicine".   Whatever happened to that part of Oath of Hippocrates that says, "first..do no harm" ??   It seems to me that by prescribing such a wide variety of drugs, physicians are very apt to "do harm" just from the side effects.  I know what they say though…the risks outweigh the benefits.   If I have a heart attack or suffer a blood clot that goes to my brain, I sincerely doubt that statement.

Another series of irritating ads are the current ones for Nutrisystem which seem to depend greatly on sexism and the power of convincing people that the appearance of one’s body is supreme over all else.  A former football player hawks the diet plan for men with statements issued like "My wife doesn’t think I’m so disgusting anymore."   A big fat belly or "furniture disease" (when a man’s chest drops into his drawers") doesn’t bother me if the man of my choice is an honorable, caring, loving person.  In an ad for women for the same diet program, women say things like "I haven’t had such a smokin’ hot body since I was in school" and "My husband calls me his Trophy Wife."    I thought that kind of language was gone forever but obviously it is not when it comes to attempting to play on people’s baser instincts through advertising.  I know that weight control is a part of being a healthy person, but weight loss for the sake of a "a smokin’ hot body" should be the last consideration of going on a questionable diet program of any kind…and there are plenty of them out there.

The line that always gets to  me in the drug ads is when at the end, a voiceover says, "Ask you doctor about __________"(name of drug)   I have heard the testimony of people who have spouses who are hypochondriacs and they want every drug they see advertised and they DO ask their doctors… often with the result that they get a prescription for yet another drug, piled on what they are taking already, and it is usually multiple drugs.  First do no harm?    Seems to be an archaic idea in the modern world of medicine, doctors, pharmaceutical companies and other related enterprises.  Buyer(and User)  beware!

The birthday party was belated due to last Friday’s weather but the spirit was still there….a celebration of the birthdate of Dr.Seuss, that author of childrens’ picture books that have captivated several generations of young readers.  Today was the designated birthday of the famous Doctor and I was there to read aloud to a lot of kids in various classes.  There is nothing that a parent, a grandparent, or any adult that knows a child…can do to help that child along  the path to becoming a learner, a reader, and a writer later in their life.  Reading aloud is a proven way to create another generation of eager readers. 

 School children always have the desire to read the same book that has been read to them by a teacher or a librarian.  If they enjoy the reading aloud, they invariably want to read it for themselves.  I saw it happen over and over during 25+ years in an elementary school spent encouraging reading in that age group.  All the instruction manuals, all the workbook excercises and questions to answer, all the vocabulary worksheets….none of these can substitute for a good adult reader who reads with conviction, enthusiasm and great dramatic effects.  I used to listen from a certain hallway to a sixth grade teacher who had mastered the art of reading aloud.  The voices that he could assume and the dramatic reading he did was such an inspiration to his students. They never forgot the story of "Superfudge" read aloud by their grade six teacher—as well as other novels.

Another group of sixth graders never forgot the high drama of "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle"…an exciting and adventurous story of a girl who sailed on a ship and became a member of the all male crew somewhere in the 19th century out of England.  Their teacher even crawled up a ladder with a lit flashlight in a dark classroom to enact the descent into a dark hold of a sailing ship by the heroine Charlotte.  It was breathtaking. 

I still remember my third grade teacher reading to us…a slightly abridged version of "Tom Sawyer"  I remember other books as well; every one of them was special because of a teacher reading aloud to us.  We waited for that time of day, after recess at noon, when she would pick up that copy of "Tom Sawyer" and take us into the world of the middle 1800s in Missouri and the Mississippi River life.

 With the preponderance of gameboys and other computer games and gadgets, with the constant drumbeat of television in many homes, reading either to oneself or to a child out loud goes by the wayside in too many cases.  It should not. There is no better way to encourage reading in a young child than by reading to them before they are able to read to themselves…and read aloud even after they are able to read.  The comfort and the coziness of snuggling against a much loved adult is half the wonder of the reading experience.  No child should ever miss out on such a wonderful experience.

I heard a great story about a child’s comment on the Bible this morning when our Pastor based his sermon on the 14th chapter of Exodus, which contains the account of the parting of the Red Sea by Moses and the safe crossing of the Israelites, followed by the total destruction of Pharoah’s armies.  The story concerns a Sunday School class that had the same Bible story of the Red Sea crossing; however there was a fairly liberal teacher who told the children that it really wasn’t the Red Sea but just a shallow marsh where the water was only about 2 inches deep in the place that the Israelites probably crossed over to safety.  One little boy, raised his hand and said, "Well Praise the Lord!  God was able to drown all of Pharoah’s armies in only two inches of water!"   I appreciated the humor and the candor of such a story, especially since I have been reading about James Cameron, a film maker and "researcher" whose declaration of the finding of the bone boxes containing Jesus, Mary, and Judah, is being touted by the Discovery channel this week.  Of course there were no bones in the boxes and the names (barely decipherable on the boxes) said Jesus, Mary, Judah—-ignoring the fact that the names "Yeshua" (Jesus), Mary and Judah" were some of the commonest names in the times directly after the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  James Cameron has also come up with his own interpretation of the Red Sea crossing in yet another  forthcoming "special" in which he maintains that the Red Sea crossing by the ancient Israelites involved an earthquake and a tsunami.  Cameron, like Dan Brown, and several others before them, seem mainly interested in chiseling away at the foundations of the Christian faith in order to do as much harm as possible.  I am highly suspicious of such people who have a definite agenda in doing their so-called "research" which is shakey at best and probably, mostly invented, at worst. I have been doing some research of my own on these subjects and find Cameron’s theses very unstable.   The Discovery channel has leaped at the chance to show this program anyway.  I am not at all surprised.  I have seen similar "faith-chiseling" "specials" on the History Channel, on PBS , ABC and other networks who are given to grabbing onto such productions gladly……..which always undermines those networks’ credibility for countless people all over the nation and the world.  They still persist and will continue doing so, mark my word! The persecution of Christians and the Christian faith is plainly stated by Jesus himself in several places in the gospels.  We now see them beginning to come true more and more all the time….and it should be no surprise.