by jphilo | Aug 20, 2012 | Current Events
The Little Missouri winding through Teddy Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota.
On August 7 during Morning Edition, National Public Radio ran a story about Theodore Roosevelt and the Little Missouri River. The story titled Roosevelt’s Badlands Ranch Faces Potential Threat gave the history of TR’s connection to the North Dakota Badlands and the Little Missouri. But the bulk of the article was an expose about how the North Dakota oil boom is threatening the wide open spaces of TR’s historic Elkhorn Ranch.
My grasp on the details is shaky because when I first listened to the piece and during each subsequent reading of it, the same questions pop into my head. Can this really be the same Little Missouri that meandered through Harding County and past Camp Crook, the town where Hiram and I lived and worked for seven years after we graduated from college? How did I miss the historical connection?
The answer, of course, is that we were young and ignorant when we moved there. Plus, we lived in Harding County, South Dakota, about 150 miles south of TR’s ranch. And once Allen was born, our lives got…complicated. Even so, I can’t reconcile our South Dakota Little Missouri and the surrounding countryside with the concerns about TR’s North Dakota Little Missouri and the land around it.
Because Little Missouri country was wide open in TR’s day, it was wide open when we lived there from 1978-1985, and it’s still wide open today. If you’re wondering how wide open it is, consider this.
We drove 90 miles to the hospital the night our son was born.
The first 55 miles of the trip were gravel back then.
They’re still gravel today.
And it’s not too far from the Mcfarthest Spot.
If you need more convincing, here are a few pictures I took during trips to Harding County in 2007 and 2010.
State Highway 20 west of Camp Crook, three miles from the Montana border. This is about a mile from the Little Missouri.
Custer National Forest, about five miles from the Little Missouri. The view reaches well into Montana, about forty miles.
One of the horses on our friends’ ranch which is along the Little Missouri.
This country is big.
Wide open.
Huge.
No wonder I can’t wrap my head around the worries articulated in the NPR story. Not that they aren’t legitimate or newsworthy. They are. But there’s also a lot a land in them thar hills, and in my opinion, the story downplayed that fact to emphasize others.
There. I got that off my chest and feel much better. Except for one thing. Now I’m homesick for Harding County and all my friends there. I want to go to visit. But it’s a long way to drive.
About a thousand miles.
And the last fifty-five miles are still gravel.
On second thought, maybe I’ll wait to visit next summer.
by jphilo | Aug 14, 2012 | Current Events, Top Ten Tuesday
Hiram and I went to the Iowa State Fair Sunday. The weather was cool and the rain held off – a perfect day to celebrate our state’s agricultural history, people watch, and eat food we don’t touch the other 364 days of the year. If you haven’t been there yet, here are my top ten reasons the fair is worth visiting:
10. Eating something relatively healthy, like say a gyro and an apple slush, instead of totally decadent foods like deep fried mac and cheese or deep fried candy bars makes the average person feel like a health nut.
9. Visiting the livestock barns will conjure up good memories of parents or grandparents who lived on a farm. For me, it’s visiting the cattle barn and remembering Dad.
8. Fairgoers get to see Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin in the flesh.
7. For those of us who didn’t make it to the Olympics and see Queen Elizabeth, the fair’s another chance to glimpse royalty.
6. Those of us who have lived West River in South Dakota can pretend we’re back in cowboy and cowgirl country.
5. Non-mechanically inclined spouses can listen to their mechanically inclined spouses explain how contraptions like this one work…and come away still clueless.
4. You can watch a family member or friend’s face light up when totally engrossed in something he or she loves – say old-timey music or figuring out how some contraption works or watching a carpenter make furniture by hand – until you get bored.
3. Nothing says “happy” like watching kids dance to the music of a one man band. Get a load of his socks!
2. The State Fair’s the perfect place to analyze the latest in wool fashions.
1. Where else will you see the butter cow and the seven dwarves and Snow White and the Evil Stepmother and the Magic Mirror all in one dairy case?
Now it’s your turn. What are your top reasons for attending your State Fair?
by jphilo | Jul 30, 2012 | Current Events
Thanks to British comedian Rowan Atkinson and the Olympic Opening Ceremonies being scheduled the evening of my birthday, I received the funniest birthday present ever.
Hiram thought I was a little deluded to claim the ceremony as my personal birthday bash. But those of us with a summer birthdays, like me and Dorothy Hamill, spent our entire elementary careers celebrating birthdays with our classmates born from September through May, but never celebrated our own. So we’ve learned to grab glory where we can, and the opening ceremonies did the trick for me.
After James Bond and Queen Elizabeth entered via parachute, the extravaganza was pretty hard to follow…until the London Philharmonic began playing the theme from Chariots of Fire with Rowen Atkinson (known to many as Mr. Bean) keeping the beat on the keyboard. By the end of the skit, I was laughing so hard, my sides ached.
Rather than try to describe what happened, you can watch for yourself at dailypicksandflicks.com. But hurry! The Olympic committee already took down any clips posted on You Tube, so this one could be next. But until that happens, get ready to laugh at one of the best comic actors of all time.
Thank you, Rowan Atkinson, for the funniest birthday present ever!
by jphilo | Jul 20, 2012 | Current Events
Yup, The Amazing Spiderman is making an appearance on this blog, even though superheros don’t get a lot of play along our gravel road. To be honest, the only reason Spiderman gets his due is because I was plumb out of stuff to write about.
I thought about writing an I-told-you-so post about how I predicted the drought of 2012 way back in January. But that seemed kind of evil, and I ditched the idea. My next thought was to gush about The Amazing Spiderman movie, which we went to with our daughter and son-in-law on Tuesday. The movie was good. Really, really good. But writing a review is hard work, and I wanted to keep the memory fun.
So I ditched that idea, too, and didn’t have a thing to write about until a Facebook friend of mine posted the above picture. It shows the window washers at Michael Hopkins’ Evelina Children’s Hospital in London.
I almost ditched that idea, too, since this blog is for fun stuff and DifferentDream.com is for kids with special needs stuff. But then I read the text accompanying the photo and decided it was fun enough for this blog:
Evelina Children’s Hospital was the first new children’s hospital to be built in London in more than a century. The hospital was designed with a goal of “making a hospital that didn’t feel like a hospital.” Accomplishing this required hospital designers and staff to create a patient experience that included touchpoints fostering a sense of inspiration and wonder – in addition to healing – for children throughout their stay.
Perhaps the most remarkable touch point of all comes from an unexpected source: the hospital window washers. As part of their contract, Evelina requires that hospital window washers dress up as superheroes while cleaning the hospital windows. Bedridden, sick children delight in seeing Superman, Spiderman and Batman dagling just beyond the glass. The window washers report the superhero visits to Evelina are the highlight of their week.
I thought maybe the window-washers-dressed-as-superheros was urban legend. But according to Hugh Pearman’s article first published in The Sunday Times, London, on November 27, 2005, the window washers are for real. The article, “Just What the Doctors Ordered” tells the story of the vision behind Evelina’s Children’s Hospital and mentions the superhero window washers.
I think the idea of window washers at a children’s hospital dressing like superheros is way cool. The perfect medicine for a nation full of hot and thirsty people worried about a drought they’re powerless to control.This story is just what the doctor ordered. Do you agree?
by jphilo | Jun 25, 2012 | Current Events
On Friday, an envelope in the mail contained an urgent message from Essence Magazine warning that our subscription HAS ONLY THREE ISSUES LEFT, so we need to RENEW OUR SUBSCRIPTION RIGHT NOW to avoid any interruption in delivery. Because, as the ad copy proclaimed, we don’t want to miss a SINGLE ISSUE of the country’s premiere black culture magazine.
Quite the sales pitch except for one thing.
We never subscribed to the magazine in the first place.
Every time a new issue appears in the mailbox, Hiram and I speculate about why we receive it.
- Does the marketing department send complimentary subscriptions to randomly selected families to generate interest? If so, maybe they should do market research to find people in their target audience is in order.
- Did a friend sign us up for a guest subscription as a joke? If so, it was a good one because Hiram and I kid about who gets to read it first right before we toss it into the recycling bin. Though if we’d received the Denzel Washington issue, I might have read it.
- Did someone order it to expand and add color to our cultural horizons? In that case, we’d much prefer an all expense paid trip to Kenya. Or South Africa. Or Nigeria. Or Harlem.
Those questions will most likely remain unanswered, but one thing I do know. Even though it only costs $8.00 a year to subscribe and the e-version is free, we don’t plan to renew our subscription.
Which brings me to the essence of the matter.
If this company delivers magazines to people who don’t order it, charge only $8.00 a year for people who do order it, and the e-version is free, why are they still in business?
Anybody else out there receiving unordered magazines? If so, leave a comment about your mystery subscription.
by jphilo | Jun 8, 2012 | Current Events
Today, I’m delighted to introduce you to Cheri Cowell. She’s the author of several Bible studies, including her latest, Parables and Word Pictures from the New Testament. As part of the blog tour celebrating the release of Parables, Cheri answered a few questions about her writing and her faith.
What passion drove you as you wrote your new book?
I LOVE the Word and I love storytelling and I want others to fall in love not only with the Word but also with the concept that they can become a living parable, a living story pointing others toward the Ultimate Living Parable––Jesus Christ.
What surprised or otherwise impacted you as you wrote your book?
There’s not a consensus on how many parables are in the Bible or even what defines a parable.
What do you hope readers will gain from your book(s)?
That the parables are not isolated stories only used for sermon illustrations, but when read together they give us a picture of how we are to live as kingdom people. Through the parables we learn how to become living parables in a world desperate to “see” God.
It has been said that Jesus spoke in parables to “confuse and confound” and you say you have a “key” to making these less confusing and confounding to modern-day readers. What is this key?
It wasn’t until I studied the parables as a whole that the whole message they convey became clear, so the key is a comprehensive look at the New Testament parables. This is what the study brings to the reader.
Storytelling is a big part of our culture. Everywhere you turn there is a new story; how can we use these parables to reach our neighbors and friends with their story-telling power?
For me, this is what studying the parables is all about. It is about shaping our lives after Jesus that when other “read our lives” they see Him. How we treat others, how we respond to sorrow and obstacles tells a story. When asked how and why we are able to be at peace, or turn the other cheek, we don’t need a canned presentation. We simply share our story of how God’s story has changed us.
The study concludes with a look at the Parable of all parables. Tell us about this because this is the heart of your study.
I remember the moment when in preparation for writing this study I received the revelation that Jesus not only taught parables, but He was a parable––a living parable. In fact, He was the Ultimate Living Parable who lived His life as an example of what a life shaped by the truths taught in the parables should look like. Likewise, you and I have been invited to live parable-shaped lives so we, too, might become a living parable in a world begging to see God.
What life experience, education, or training helped you become an author?
I am a writers’ conference fan, having attended and taught at more than 40 over the last ten years. I wouldn’t be where I am today as a writer without them. I also received a Masters in Theological Studies from Asbury Seminary, where I learned the Inductive Bible study method I used in writing the parables Bible study.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
My husband and I love to travel, to see nature and all the beautiful places God’s created for us to enjoy. National Parks are our favorite destinations. In June we will travel to Yellowstone.
Click on this link to order Parables and Word Pictures from the New Testament. You can also enter a drawing for one of three gift baskets Cheri is giving away as part of her blog tour. Here’s what’s in the baskets:
- Parables and Word Pictures from the New Testament (workbook Bible study) by Cheri Cowell
- Women of the Bible: Book One (workbook Bible study) by Barber, Rasnake, and Shepherd
- Mocha on the Mount (Coffee Cup Bible study) by Sandra Glahn
- Direction: Discernment for the Decisions of Your Life by Cheri Cowell
- Direction Bible study workbook by Cheri Cowell
- God: Knowing Him By His Names by Bill Bright
- See For Yourself: Daily Devotionals (ebook DVD) by Cheri Cowell
- Bible tabs
- Bookmark
- Bible highlighter
- Hunter Green gift basket
Quite the motherlode, huh? To enter the give away, leave a comment below. Comments received by me and all the other blog facilitators will be passed on to Cheri who will chose the winners. The promotion runs from June 1 through July 6, so comment away!
