Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

Recently, my beloved, darling precious daughter, Bess, shared a story of a horrible time in her life, in order to express how much she appreciated the life she has now. Several years ago, she was living a rough life in a dangerous environment with an unpredictable person. After a long time struggling, she decided she had to change, and it wasn't going to be possible where she was. So she got in her car, and left. She was worried. She wasn't sure if she would be followed. If my memory is correct (and it might not be, because the story terrified me), at one point, she didn't even know where she was. But she knew enough to say to herself: "if I can just get to my Papa's house, I will be safe." And she did get to her Papa's house, and she was safe. And she made changes, and better choices, and today, she is living with a husband who loves her, and two little sons who love her, and has a fantastic church home where they all love each other. Her life is much bet...

Although most of my time on the computer is spent reading books and writing reviews,  I do other things occaisionally. For example, this summer, I found this show on Netflix, called "Last Chance U." My firstborn son recommended it to me a couple of months ago. Seems there's this little junior college in Scooba, Mississippi that scoops up football players who have gotten in difficulties, great or small,  at big colleges, and stuffs them into a hard-nosed redemptive program. They are tough; they've got an academic counselor who stays on top of their grades and attendance, and she works with the coaches. Evidently, they've had some real success in getting some of these young men to turn around. And, in the process, they've won several national championships. At the end of one of the segments, they show a scene from a local church. A woman does an interpretive dance to Kirk Franklin's "More Than I Can Bear." It's a beautiful scene, and it's a...

    You can read my Amazon review here , and also at the end of this blog. However, I'd truly like you to consider giving this one some splash, since it's an excellent book from a much under-appreciated author, You can do that by writing a review on Amazon, and by voting 'helpful' on my Amazon review. I obtained a review copy of the book from the author. Kudos to the excellent cover art by Cedar Sanderson on this edition; it's a much better representation of the story than earlier versions. I just checked: I've been writing Amazon book reviews for over three years, total of 472 reviews (not all of those are book reviews, though). Even so, there is one aspect to the process that still seems to be beyond me: I always fail to look at the book description to see how many pages I've committed to. It's a hold-over from the decades I spent reading dead-tree books. Those, I learned to judge by heft at a very early age. From my very first days, when a thick book ...

    Warning: This is exclusively a book review! None of the touchy-feely stuff here! The slightly shorter Amazon review may be found here. Today, I'm adding the supplementary blog content at the end of the Amazon review, which follows: Jessica Francis simply will not accept that she is overmatched. Although her choices haven't been perfect, it's the actions of others that keep dumping adversity on her, and she seems to have been born without the ability to quit. She's a former mercenary. While she was good at what she did, her incompetent, manipulative husband managed to wreck the company, killing off friends and comrades-in-arms while doing so. She gets a chance to become the first Human Peacemaker, thus becoming part of the thin team that provides what little galactic security there is. Since Humans are a newcomer to the Galactic Union, they encounter all of the standard prejudice of the old-timers, some of whom have the desire and ability to eliminate the species. H...

The ONLY legitimate reason for civilization is to take care of our kids.  The side benefits of advanced technology are pleasant. I'm very glad I don't have to spend my entire day trying to hit a squirrel in the head with a rock, or digging up roots so I can have something to eat.  But my personal comfort is, at best, secondary to the primary mission of taking care of kids, which also means preparing them for the day when they will take up the mission, and allow me to croak without feeling guilty. And that means education. Admittedly, I am not an impartial observer. Not only am I a parent and grandparent, the bulk of my career was as an educator, first in public and private college administration, then providing direct services to public middle school students. It's one of our family traditions; in addition to being a representative of  the third generation of four generations of US Army veterans, I am also a representative of the third generation of four generations of ...