John’s thoughts, rants, and crazy ideas
It’s hard to believe it was thirty-five years ago today that Suzanne and I were married which joined our two families together. This journey has had way more than its fair share of ups and downs, but how did we get here? After my daughter’s death, my wife Cindy developed cancer and she too died. This left me in Cissna Park with two sons, working in my new second profession, farming with my in-laws. With few friends in the area,…
In college, I minored in Political Science, hard to believe that was 50 years ago. I have always enjoyed discussing current politics and how our government works (or doesn’t). Lately though, with all that is going on, the extreme divisions in our country, the inability for people to even discuss different points of view, and the turmoil overseas, it’s hard trying to keep up. That same problem exists even in my own household. No, not turmoil or inability to communicate,…
Back when Suszanne owned the Du-All building in Cissna Park, we were landlords. We had three apartments above the Quilt Shop that had tenants most of the time. Some tenants were needy, some were easy to get along with, some were problematic, and some were just what a landlord wants, paid on time, and never heard from. We didn’t mind being landlords as it added cash flow to the business and utilized the property we had. This year, we (actually,…
Last evening, three women shared their health experiences in a community forum. The focus was on how they felt God had intervened in their care and helped them medically, physically, and mentally through these trying times. Suzanne was one of the presenters. Nervous that attendees would not be able to understand her, Her presentation gave her the chance to explain what she went through in her words. So today, it’s her turn. She wrote out her talk in case no…
I don’t know about where you live but here on our farm, it’s past being dry and moving quickly into a desert category. Watering the garden and flowers has become a full-time job. As a farmer, we usually talk about the inches of rain, even the tenths of an inch, but this year we brag about the hundredths of an inch we got. Showers seem to pop up all around us, in fact, someone three miles down the road got…
It’s been a lot of years since my first Communion, sixty-plus is a pretty good guess. Growing up in the Catholic Church, your First Communion is a pretty big deal. For me, it was our whole second-grade class that marched in a procession from the school to the church, sat in the front of the church for High Mass, and then left with all your family that attended. Back at the house, there was a reception and a meal with…
We hear about this every Christmas, porch pirates. They follow UPS or FedEx trucks around and steal delivered items off the porches of unsuspecting people. Most of us can’t even imagine what drives these people to be so brazen with no conscience to steal like that in broad daylight. But what happens when your package isn’t there and there are no porch pirates? That’s the dilemma I have been dealing with this past week. A package we were expecting was…
Did you feel it the other day? There was a Paradigm Shift in the universe, well at least in my universe. Let me share when it happened. It was 12:04 pm on Friday, April 14th, 2023 and I was sitting in our kitchen. It was a nice spring day and I had been out working in the garden where I was finishing up building a raised strawberry bed. I came in, washed my hands, grabbed a glass of lemonade, and…
Growing up, the week leading to Easter was such a fun time. Mom would boil a dozen or more eggs and let me color them. We would line up five or six bowls with Paas egg dye, bend that little wire holder so as to not get any of the dye on my fingers, and see if I could two-tone an egg without overlapping the middle. On Easter morning, I would find my Easter basket (I still have it) on…
Since we are in the middle of March Madness, I thought I’d talk a little bit about Sports Fanatics. You know the person, the one that watches their team or any team play every game, listens to it on the radio or smartphone. The one that has to wear the correct sports gear and reads all the sports commentary they can find online. They also watch sports commentary shows and follow as many individual team players as they can find…