As I’m typing this column we are posting about the storm and deciding on whether or not to send people home early and then delaying our start time tomorrow. As I came down the stairs at my office and looked around, I thought out loud that if a tornado hit our building, we would have papers all over Navarre. Gail chimed in and said, well, we say we have Navarre covered…we literally would.
I can remember shooting baskets for hours in the humid summer months and even, at times, the brutally cold winter months on the basketball court in the driveway back home.
You are talking to someone here who used to chip ice off that old court just so my friends and I could play, and once, we even walked in a snowstorm down to the community center to play ball.
My attitude toward New Years Eve has been a mixed bag. As a kid, it was the one day of the year that I was allowed to stay up late, but I never could stay awake. In college, New Years Eve always promised a raucous party, one that I would never be able to remember the next day. When I joined a band, New Years Eve became the night I made “big” money doing something I loved.
Happy 2024! We are looking forward to the new year. We have two additional team members joining us within the first eight days of the new year, and we interviewed a very good candidate for Crestview today. One of our new team members will be “newsworthy” because of her history with Santa Rosa Press Gazette. You can “read all about it” next week. Can you tell I’m excited about having more help? The week between Christmas and New Year’s we have been getting computers and offices ready for our new team, clearing out a storage unit – one of three. Yes, we are the culprits keeping all the storage units in business.
I just returned from and enjoyable trip to Italy. I was struck by the lack of homeless people and beggars as compared to our country. I did encounter a few homeless people but not like it is here at home. The opposite used to be true.
We have been taught that clean water, fresh water is a valuable and limited resource. We use it in our everyday lives to drink, shower, brush our teeth, cook, clean, do laundry, run the dishwasher, wash the cars – and it all adds up. Our lifestyles can produce a lot of water waste, and the world is not producing new water sources. What we have is what we have.
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except (what) they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
It is December, and our neighborhoods have exploded with strings of sparkling lights spilling off roofs and hugging hedges. The colder, crisper nights, like the pathetic fallacy of a Shakespearean play, have lent a modicum of credibility to the artificial icicles dripping off the eaves. Chubby inflatable snowmen, Santas, and cartoon characters sway gently in the chilly breeze in improvised choreography to some unheard night song. Nativity scenes softly lit offer a quiet counterpoint to the eclectic spectacle, reminding those who dare to ponder that there is a Christ whose quiet incarnation in Bethlehem brought hope to the world.
I recently heard a sermon from my home church, First Baptist Orlando, that 100% inspired this column. I love Christmas for many reasons, but first and foremost because we are celebrating and recognizing the significance of the birth of Jesus. How does the world celebrate Christmas? By giving gifts and acts of kindness to one another to demonstrate our love for others.
