Beech Tree News Network

A couple of weeks ago, we got a new Beagle puppy.  My granddaughter, Sabria, named her Millie, after the character on Umizoomi.  Millie is going to be an outside dog.  That’s what I keep telling my family—I can’t take the heartbreak of another inside pet, losing our little Lexie just about killed me.  The outside-dog stipulation has only partially held.  Millie has wormed her way into the sunroom, because according to Sabria, “Millie is just a tiny little baby.”  How do you argue with that?

 Much of what we purchase has an “expiration date” somewhere on the item, or its package. For example, food products often come with an “expiration date” somewhere on them. Medicines sometimes have “expiration dates” on them as well. Folks with contact lenses may have noticed that their contacts have an “expiration date” somewhere on the box. Certainly, there are many other products with such dates attached to them.

I recently began a two-week lecture series at  Butler County Middle School in hopes of educating STLP students more in-depth on specific multimedia and share some of my experience in journalism with them.

Fantasy Frenzy

Butler County Schools are in session again, and my grandchildren are back into a routine. I’m sure the students and teachers are hoping for a good year.

Someone said we have two lives: the one we learn with, and, the one we live with afterward.  That’s true, to a certain extent.  We still learn some things “in the life afterward.”
I suppose all of us at times say to ourselves or to our family members maybe, “Oh my.  Why didn’t I know that?” or, “after all these years, why in the name of common sense did that not dawn on me?”

At the height of the conflict in Afghanistan, my nephew, Adam, was fighting insurgents along the Afghan/Pakistan border with the rest of the guys in the 10th Mountain division of the U.S. army.  They saw combat on a daily basis.  He made it back home—not all of them did—and went to work rebuilding his life.  He enrolled at the University of Louisville as an engineering major.  He met a girl—an occupational therapist—and they married last August.  My dad was at the wedding.  It would be the last time I would see Dad alive.  He was gone a little over a month later. 

The gospel of Christ is something that deserves our respect. Paul said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). Jesus Himself spent three years preaching the gospel to a lost and dying world (Matt. 4:23). Why preach the gospel of Christ today?

We’ve come a long way since 1982.  That covers a lot of territory.  In this case, however, I’m talking about how we listen to music.  1982 was when the Compact Disc was first available for sale.  CD-R (data storage), CD-RW (re-writable), Video Compact Disc(VCD), and others have been available since that year.

The Naming of America...

We typically use the word America as an alternate name for the United States. However, this word was used to name our country long before the United States was founded in 1776. So where did the name America come from?