Three Days in the Arena

The final horn sounded, the streamers fell from the ceiling, and the crowd spilled out of the arena and onto the street. As my son and I surveyed the situation and saw the wind, rain, and lightening, he said exactly what I was thinking: “Dad, we’d better run”. As we sprinted down the middle of [...]

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The Ugly American

I was “away from home” ever so briefly a week or so back. The colleagues I was due to meet and work with my first full morning abroad had yet to arrive, and given the beauty of the spring morning, I went out for a brief walk. As I often do when traveling, I was [...]

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Hidden From View

Scars are funny things. Do you see the one in this picture? I’ve been up and down this street a number of times in recent years, but it was not until I went last night into the center structure with the gray plaster facade and saw the courtyard behind it that things didn’t match up [...]

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Equipped, not stripped

A Mustang is a Mustang, not matter the trimmings. This was especially true in the early days, 65, 66, 67, when the car was about simpler presentation, but power where and when it counted. As time went on, accolades for the car followed, as did “bling” added by it’s owners to dress up the understated [...]

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I’m thankful for….Morgan Fairchild. Yeh.

Urban legend has it that George Washington could not tell a lie. Yeh, yeh: that’s the ticket. George, meet “the lie guy”. Folks from my generation may well be familiar with the many characters of 80′s SNL star Jon Lovitz. Lovitz portrayed “the Devil” a time or two, but also the humorously bemusing “lie guy”. [...]

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Beyond Babylon

This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and [...]

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The other side of the mirror

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? I wonder what he saw? Did he look below the surface? Did he ever think he might be wrong? More on that in a moment. Touring a museum has only given me goose bumps twice. Once was in Europe in 2008, while viewing relics of [...]

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Do hard things

“How dare you?”, meet “Dare I not?”. People complain. That is a fact of life. People make mistakes. That is another fact of life. Sometimes, mistakes take on the form of fatal errors, and that is a hard reality. Without getting into the details, we all likely know of Penn State head football coach Joe [...]

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The whole body of work

It was College Football Saturday recently. There were wins, and there were losses. There was business as usual, and there were surprises. By days end, upsets were in abundance. Early into the day,I heard a bit of Mike Gundy’s prerecorded OSU press conference from earlier in the week. He spoke of building their system, of [...]

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It couldn’t happen here, in Oz…

What if these walls could talk… Oh miss Elphaba, the things one hears these days. Dreadful things!  I’ve heard of an ox a professor from Crox no longer permitted to teach who has lost all powers of speech. And an owl in Munchkin loch a vicar with a thriving flock forbidden to preach how he [...]

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