Earlier this month, CNN reported on how a large family in Texas is coping with the rising food prices. The report opened with the father, Larry Stotler, describing his family:
It happened on a Wednesday evening in October 1975. That was the day I went to my first concert that featured a nationally recognized band. I was a freshman in college and the concert was in an arena that was located near the college campus. The band that played was the Beach Boys. They toured the country that year and performed in 100 concerts throughout the United States.
During the years that Georgette and I were raising our children, we did our best to go out on a date at least once a week. There was only one condition that applied to our weekly dates: no one else could join us. If we had friends or family members we wanted to go out with, we planned one evening for our weekly date and a different evening for our friends or family members. It didn’t matter where we went, but most of the time, we ended up at a local restaurant.
During my seventh and eighth grade years at St. Mark’s Grade School, one of the games that the boys played during recess was “Kill the man with the ball.” The object of the game was to steal the ball from the person who had it, and then hold on to it as long as possible. The boy who had the ball was chased around the playground until someone was able to wrestle the ball from him. Sometimes there was a pileup of boys that occurred while they tried to push their way through to the ball. Whoever got the ball was then chased until someone else pried it out of his hands.
There’s an old movie that came out in 1966, when I was nine years old. I didn’t see it until a few years later, when it was shown on TV for the first time. The name of the movie was The Bible: In the beginning. . . One scene from the movie popped into my mind recently when I was thinking about how children and students in our public schools are now being taught that homosexual behavior is “normal” and that the students have a right to change their gender any time they want to, as long as they have a desire to do so. This teaching is supported by our mainstream media, evil politicians, corrupt executives that run our global corporations, prominent celebrities, and “influencers” on social media.
Her name is Victory Boyd. She’s 27 years old and she grew up in an African American, Christian family of nine children. She started singing with her family when she was four years old. I had never heard of her until I read an article that reported that she had been scheduled to sing the national anthem on September 9th at the National Football League’s (NFL’s) opening season game. The day before the game, the NFL cancelled her performance because she had not received the COVID-19 vaccination.
I’ve written before about my sister, Anna Maria. She was the 11th child in my parent’s family of 17 children. One of my earliest memories of her is when she was two years old. Every time I saw her, she was clutching her security blanket. It didn’t matter whether she was sitting, standing, walking, running, or laying down, it was as though her security blanket was attached to her body. She was always happy, and out of all my sisters, she had the sweetest disposition.
Over the years, I have periodically written about when my six daughters were teenagers. During those years, I attempted to drive home the point that they needed to be careful not to let their guard down when they met a nice guy who appeared to have his act together. I did my best to persuade them to work at discovering the qualities and defects of the young men they met before developing a relationship with them.
My wife and I took a few days off last week and drove to Branson, Missouri, for a short vacation. It was our third trip to Branson. Our last trip there was more than 15 years ago. One of the reasons we wanted to go to Branson was because we had heard about a Broadway-quality musical show about the life of Jesus that was playing at one of the theaters. The title of the show was Jesus.