Learning to Speak

I’m learning to speak all over again.  I am enjoying learning a wee bit of the local dialect.
Here is a sample, from a blogger who now lives in Berkely but still calls Buckie home:
As we say in Buckie,
‘Better tae be oot the qweets, than oot the fashion!’
(‘Better to twist your ankle than be out of [...]

Travel Notes 1

Here I am at Gatwick International Airport in London where I am awaiting my flight to Aberdeen, whence I will proceed to Buckie.  I finished reading Last Girl in the wee hours (I can use that adjective here, right?) of the morning, and began reading Traveling Mercies.  I should have reviews on them shortly.
 I also [...]

Easter Wishes from Bonhoeffer

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Christian and Heathen (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Here is the poem by Bonhoeffer that I promised earlier. It is a good meditation for Holy Week and Good Friday.

People go to God in their need,
plead for help, ask for happiness and bread,
for deliverance from sickness, guilt, and death.
So do we all, all of us, Christian and heathen.
People go to God in his [...]

What Does God Need?

The obvious answer would be that God needs nothing from us. It was the answer Epicurus gave: the gods are perfectly happy and their bliss is neither diminished nor enhanced by anything we do. Passages in the Bible also agree, that God in his eternal divinity is in need of nothing–certainly not sacrifices. [...]

Here She Is!

Welcome to the World, Ariana

Our first granddaughter, Elijah’s little sister Ariana arrived Tuesday.  Stay tuned for pictures.

Winning the Cold War

Photo from Daily Mail.co.uk

Ronald Reagan won the cold war against the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union by forcing that empire into bankruptcy. There were other forces at work, not least the force of prayer, but I want to focus on the economic facts. First a little history:
In 1973 OPEC put an oil [...]

Urban Legends

(Pictures from Snopes.com)
You gotta’ love urban legends. They make life so much more interesting. The problem is that most of them turn out to be false. Urban legends show how easily we accept as true anything we have heard–as long as it makes an interesting story and explains something.
Another habit [...]

The Real Beowulf

Photo from University of Nevada, Reno.
Beowulf is one of the epics I will be teaching in Lithuania. In brushing up and getting ready, I’ve found that there is a lot of good information online–so if you can’t go with me to Klaipeda but are interested in learning about the old Dane, here are [...]