Beech Tree News Network

Sunday night November 18 was the 2012 American Music Awards. A performance by Usher kicked off what I assumed to be a bunch of songs I didn’t know or would speed through.  One interesting fact, this was the 40th Anniversary of the awards show created by the late Dick Clark. 

The word “retirement” has such a pleasant sound to it, don’t you think? I looked forward to it for more than three decades. Since my retirement, one of the first questions that people whom I haven’t seen in a while ask me is: “What are you doing now?” I always wonder how to respond. Are they asking me about employment or leisure activities?

This is a true story that happened about 5 years ago.  I share it with you because, well for one thing, it’s one of my favorite stories about my in-laws and secondly, when Michael and I decided to adopt, I worried that his family, because they are another culture, would not be open to accepting our children as “one of their own”.  Why I had these fears is beyond me because they have always welcomed me, funny accent and all, with arms wide open and true to form, they have done the same with our boys. 

Even in the old days teachers had “busy work”. I spect some of you knew that. Besides helping little Cecil “know his beans”, (beans were used as an arithmetic teaching tool: “Here are 4 beans- take away 2; How many are left?”) one function of the educational bureaucracy was to write out by little Cecil’s name in the roll book how he got to school each day in the first place.

Dear Editor,

“If you can keep your head when all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”  That’s the first line from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, and it has become my personal mantra.  I think because lately, I seem to find myself in the sort of situations that warrant repetition of that line.  It’s probably because of the toehold that fear has gained in the collective psyche.  It’s understandable in the face of the barely-existent job market, congressional bickering, and fiscal cliff. 

Within the pages of the New Testament, we find Jesus asking folks the question: “Have you not read?” This question was asked by the Lord on three separate occasions in the New Testament. On all three occasions, He asked this question in response to the Pharisees and Sadducees when they tried to trap Him in His words (Matt. 12:3, 5, 19:4, 22:31; Mk. 12:10, 26; Lk. 6:3).
 

This past weekend, I was thinking about how far we’ve come pertaining to how we listen to music.  I probably bought my first cassette in about 1985.  I didn’t get into cd’s until sometime in the mid-90’s.  The iPod came later for me.  Just when did all these forms of entertainment originate?

As we approach the biggest shopping season of the year, many of you have your shopping lists ready. Some of you may already be wrapping gifts to place under the tree, and others haven’t yet thought about this whole process.

Funny how we tag people with nick-names, I suppose folks of other languages do that too. Back in my hometown (Greenville, KY) we had a kooky character named Julian Fred, whose forte was handing out nick names. He called himself “Julian the Jew” that’s ‘cause he was. He’d say things like: “I’ve got to get on my Hebrew outfit and go with Momma to a Jew shindig they’re having.” His dad, Sidney Fred, ran a clothing store. Julian, doing a dad imitation would say stuff like “When Papa tries a coat on somebody, he’ll tell them: ‘chust a fit, vish yarn momma could see it’.”