Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

    I reviewed the book on Amazon, and you can read and vote 'helpful' on the review by clicking HERE. This isn't a repeat of the review; I just wanted to add some memories that came to the surface as I was reading the book. I DO, however, close with ONE MORE comment on an excellent bit I found in "Walking On The Sea Of Clouds." I was born in 1953, so I was 4 years old at the time of the Sputnik launch. My chief recollection of that time was likely prompted by hearing of Nikita Khrushchev boast  "America sleeps under a Soviet moon." It scared me goofy. I didn't WANT to sleep under a Soviet moon; I dimly recall weeping in  my mother's arms as she assured me that the moon wouldn't get me. I doubt that I really believed her; it takes a LOT to convince a four-year-old that the bogeyman he can see in the night sky is just a big ball of rock. Patient repetition did the trick, though; mothers are remarkably good at that. At any rate, my fears shift...

    I'm reading the remarkable "Walking on the Sea of Clouds" by Gray Rinehart at the moment (review likely posts later today) and his brilliance in character insights has me thinking. I believe the dictum is "write what you know," which is why Jack London could write about San Francisco and Alaska, and Mark Twain could write about the Mississippi and mining camps. Those are things they did. BUT: what about people who write about characters who are deeply disturbed? It's something to consider, isn't it? Peace be on your household.

        I just re-read my review of "Invasion, Book 1:Resistance," which you can find here ; and I'm thinking: WOW, was I ever a tough grader! I gave that book 4 stars, SOLELY because it ended on such a cliff-hanger. I believe I'm going to have to amend that review, now, and clarify that it was BECAUSE IT WAS SUCH A COMPELLING STORY!!!! and had a cliff-hanger ending. The second volume wasn't available at that time, so it was really just frustration that I couldn't go further that's reflected in the loss of a star; It wasn't that I didn't like it; it's that I liked it too much. Well, Holmes has atoned for that with this book. Not only has he written the much desired sequel, but his prologue does an excellent job of refreshing my memory without boring me to tears. I read the first book in August, to get the review out before the Dragon Awards were voted, and somehow (it was personal stuff) I missed the release of this in November. So, the Prolog...

Disclaimer: I've never lived any further north than North Carolina. The brief time I lived in Miami, Florida, was in 1959, when it was still mostly in the South. But, I WAS in the Army, and say what you will about the Big Green Machine, it has put more boys and girls from the South in close proximity to boys and girls from the North than Amtrak and the interstate highway system combined. And it was in the Army, from the lips of a lad from one of the boroughs of New York, that I first heard of  'a coffee.' Now, I had grown up around coffee. Next to sweet tea, coffee is THE thing that was served most often as a beverage in Southern homes in the 1950's & 1960's. Maybe in palaces, Coke was served, but for those of us just running around bare-footed, a Coke was a dessert, not a drink. I was flabbergasted the first time I heard of someone drinking a Coke in the morning. As a teen, I'd drop in to the neighborhood gathering house (they had teenage girls and Steppenw...

    It's been 27 years (December 31, 1991) since the very last act of the former Soviet Union: the Soviet Ambassador to the UN delivered a letter to the UN Secretary-General announcing that Russia was the successor state to the USSR. That was merely turning the lights off and locking the door, however;  the USSR had been collapsing for the past several years, with August 21, 1991 marking the last formal resistance to handing over power to a non-Communist state. For those who came to adulthood in the post-1991 world, it's difficult to comprehend just what a significant role the Cold War played in the lives of the people born in the 10 years following the end of WWII. We had regular duck-and-cover drills in the classroom, and learned evacuation routes from school to home in case of a nuclear war. Millions of service members served in Europe (I was one of them) to act as a speed bump on the day when the Soviet tanks came rolling across the Fulda Gap, with all our efforts designed ...

I read Peter Grant's comments this morning on Mad Genius Club. and that sparked this post. A long time ago (1977 - 1986) I made my living recruiting students for admission to college. Accidentally, almost, I learned that what we call the 'liberal arts' used to be called the 'liberating arts;' they were programs of study that would provide you with a profession that would liberate you from life behind the plow. There were four of these liberating arts: doctor; lawyer; preacher; teacher. That's all the economy at the time could support. It took everybody else who wasn't one of these to make sure that there was enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and places to live. Then developments in agriculture, energy production, transportation, and a few other areas meant that it took fewer people to provide the necessary means to live, and more wealth was generated, and society became able to support people with degrees in psychology and music and philosophy. New profe...

There is a Larry Niven short story, not in the Known Space timeline, that contains the line: "make it didn't happen." The protagonist is one of the first astronauts on the Moon, and he discovers an ancient alien base. He manages to get inside it, and discovers incomprehensible machinery. It's clear that this wasn't built by man, which means that it came from a race that had solved the problem of interstellar travel. Storyline follows, but in the end, he discovers that the aliens used time-travel as a part of their exploration of the stars. And he goes a little nuts. Flashback to his childhood: he and his brother were playing with a Flexi-Flyer, a board with wheels and a steering yoke that you rode down a hill, just like a sled on snow. His brother, maybe really too young to do it, takes his ride, and crashes at the end. (That happened a LOT, actually.) However, instead of a case of road rash, his brother gets jabbed under the ribs by the rubber-coated handlebar, a...

    It's not REALLY necessary to re-ground me, I think. I hope I don't have an over-inflated sense of self-worth. I know I do a good job with words. I'd like to think that I keep that in perspective; the numbers of page views this blog gets shows me that while I do have some fans of my writing, there's no danger of overexposure. People tend to like my book reviews. I have been a counselor for 35 years now, dating from the day I earned my M.Ed., and I think I know how to talk, and give comfort or encouragement with my words. So, today, my older sister called to give me some of the funeral arrangements for Chuck, the husband of our baby sister Wendy. And she very kindly let me know that there were to be no speeches at the funeral, at Wendy's request. Okay, that solves the problem of what I was going to say. Just in case Carol reads this, let me point out that wasn't the ONLY thing she told me; she did provide very helpful information, and we provided mutual suppor...

My church tradition does not include the veneration of the saints; in fact, according to some of the things I've read over the years, it has been regarded as idolatry, and preached against as a sin. I'm sure that at one time in my hot-tempered youth, I was adamantly against such a thing as asking a saint to pray for me. I was adamantly against a lot of things in those days, as young people with hot blood often are.  I believed then, as I do now, that I had direct access to God, and that I did not need any intermediary to plead my case before Him. More specifically, I believed that I had direct access to God the Father, and that any intercession on my behalf was done by Jesus, God the Son. And I hope I may receive your pardon if, at that time, I did not fully understand the complexities of the doctrine of the Trinity. Ain't real sure I comprehend it now, to be honest with you. I just know it as a probably-unknowable concept. Today, I have a fairly systematic theology, but I ...