I’ve written before about a confrontation I was involved in when I was in high school. It happened during the second semester of my senior year. At that time, my class schedule was arranged in such a way that every afternoon I passed one of my cousins in the hallway at the same time. I was two years older than my cousin.
Last week, I wrote about how the Mother of God appeared on six occasions during 1917 to three children in Fatima, Portugal, and asked them to warn the people of the world that they needed to pray and amend their lives. In one of her apparitions, the Blessed Mother told the children, “More souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.”
A lawsuit was recently filed by a Christian-based nonprofit women’s homeless shelter against the City of Anchorage, Alaska, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, and the executive director of the commission. According to the lawsuit, the Hope Center, which operates as the Downtown Soup Kitchen, is asking the court to allow it to exclude individuals who were born as biological males, but who now claim to be female. The Hope Center has been in business for more than 30 years.
On Monday, August 20, 2018, a Catholic priest was physically attacked while he was praying in the sacristy of St Michaels Byzantine Catholic Church in Merrillville, Indiana. According to the Merrillville police chief, Joseph Petruch, the attacker grabbed Fr. Basil John Hutsko by the neck and “threw him down on the floor and immediately started slamming his head against the floor, both sides, front and back.”
If you could choose a superpower that only you would possess, what would it be? Would it be the ability to fly like Superman? Or would you choose the ability to travel through time like Dr. Strange, or to live forever like Peter Pan? There’s one superpower that I think would be of great benefit to me in my dealings with other people on both a personal and business level.
Last week, I wrote about a conversation I had with a contractor to whom I referred as “Ray.” I told you how Ray tried to convince me that in addition to needing new shingles and gutters, I also needed to replace the fascia and soffit on my house. One thing that I didn’t tell you was that he also tried to convince me that I needed my sidewalk, concrete patio, and landscaping blocks spray-cleaned and sealed. He bragged about how he had the best equipment on the market for cleaning and sealing concrete.
Last fall, I submitted a claim to my homeowner’s insurance for the replacement of the roof of my house. The shingles on the roof had been damaged by a hail storm that had occurred earlier in the year. A few days after I submitted the claim, an insurance adjuster came to my house and verified that the shingles had been damaged. A week later, he provided me with an estimate of the cost to replace the shingles. I told him that I wanted to get estimates from some contractors before I decided what to do. I then contacted a few roofing companies and asked them to provide me with estimates.
Last month, I scheduled a time to donate blood at the Red Cross. In order to save time, prior to showing up for my appointment, I logged onto the Red Cross website and answered all the preliminary questions that I’m required to answer before I can donate blood. The questions were designed to allow the Red Cross to determine any blood safety risks that may be present.
Last week, I wrote about the importance of practicing healthy paranoia. The definition of “paranoia” is “a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others.” My definition of “healthy paranoia” is “the intentional practice on the part of a person to be reasonably and rationally suspicious and distrustful of people who the person is not intimately familiar with, so the person can guard against unanticipated surprises and dangers.”