Straight From The Hart

  It was November of 1863 and the Civil War was raging across the country.  Charles Appleton Longfellow had joined the Union Army in March of that year, much against his father’s wishes.  He was fighting in the Battle of New Hope Church in Virginia during the Mine Run campaign on the day he was severely injured to the extent that he could no longer fight and had been discharged and sent home. Charles’ father was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a noted poet and educator who eventually taught at Bowdoin College and then Harvard.  Henry was a fervent abolitionist, but he doted on his son and wished to protect him from harm.  Perhaps one reason he did not want to see him join the army was because just two years earlier, a few months after the war started, his beloved wife Fanny had suffered fatal burns in a fire in their home. It happened in July of  1861 and her young daughters were complaining about their heavy curly hair making them so hot, so Fanny had consented to cut off some of their be

  As a retired pastor, I remember well watching from the pulpit the playful interaction between spouses when one would “elbow” the other if I said something in the sermon that one spouse wanted the other to listen to.  We call that a “nudge.”  Those of you with household pets also know the meaning of the word nudge when the dog comes to your bedside too early in the morning, and with a gentle push against your arm reminds you to get up and take him out, or the cat jumps up on the bed and nudges your face in a not so gentle reminder that  it’s time for her breakfast.   When is a nudge not quite so playful or gentle?  How about when it comes from your president in the form of an executive order in an effort to get you to change your behavior to conform to his agenda and his political ideology?   President Obama signed such an executive order on Tuesday of this week.  He’s been talking about issuing this type of regulation since 2013, but the concept goes back to 2009 when he appointed Ha

  AND THEN THE RAINS CAME   For several days we’ve watched with joy the colors of the Fall; The reds, the golds, the bronzes, and we have loved them all; So vivid, they took our breath away, beauty beyond compare; Each oak and maple a worship scene, each fire in the bush a prayer. Then came the November rains.   The leaves let go as the storms blew in, not able to sustain Their grip on the branch which had held them fast, but that was before the rain. Unlike the showers of spring and summer which cause the leaves to grow; The cold November rains of fall with frosty breath do blow;   It isn’t just the leaves of trees which dread the cold cold rains; God’s people live and laugh and love, have losses as well as gains; We must prepare to keep holding on when the storms of life blow through. November rains will come.   But if we’ve built an ark of safety as directed by our Lord If we have nurtured our faith and trust by reading in His Word If we, like trees, are rooted deep, in the soil of

  Just two days ago, the free world remembered and celebrated that night the Berlin wall came down on November 9, 1989.   I remember sitting in my living room and watching, thinking it was a joke or some kind of hoax.  When I realized what was happening I began crying tears of joy as I watched the people celebrate. I was  writing opinion columns for the Springfield News-Leader at that time so I was acquainted with the events surrounding the wall and the political unrest and especially the deaths of those who had tried to scale the wall without success. My mind went back immediately to June 12, 1987 when once again I sat transfixed before the television screen to watch President Reagan’s motorcade take him to the historic Brandenburg Gate where tens of thousands of people awaited.  He later wrote in his diary there were “people stretching as far as I could see”. In his speech that day he said, “Standing (here) before the Brandenburg gate (today), every man is a German, separated from hi

T.S. Eliot, writing in The Waste Land, penned the words, “April is the cruelest month.”  In the years since then, there have been many paraphrases and most of them have identified  November as “the cruelest month”.  In a way I agree, but not completely. I have found over the years that November, more than any other month, is a mixture of laughter and tears, joy and sadness, bleakness and sunshine, and yes even new growth mixed in with the decay. The first time I realized the specialness of the eleventh month of the year was in 1963 when Milan and I chose the 16th day for our wedding. But it was only one year and one week later, in November 1964, that I realized how cruel and cold November could be when my youngest sister, Kay Rowden, died in a car crash out on East Highway 32, a road long known for its own brand of cruelty, with the curves and washboard hills taking their toll on many a car over the years.  Kay was 16, and a junior at LHS.  Her best friend, Beverly Cole, survived the w

     ·  Shared with Your friends My column from yesterday's LDR. WHERE IS OUR EBOLA CZAR? Has anyone seen our Ebola Czar? No, not Ron Klain. (Although no one has seen him yet either as I write this on Thursday afternoon. But more about that later.) But I’m talking about the one we have had since 2009. Her name is Dr. Nicole Lurie. She is an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and her job is “to lead the nation in preventing, responding to and recovering from the adverse health effects of public health emergencies and disasters, ranging from hurricanes to bioterrorism.” Her job description is to help the country prepare for emergencies including the responsibility of developing “the countermeasures - the medicines or vaccines that people might need to use in a public health emergency”. She has been referred to as the “highest ranking federal official in charge of preparing the nation to face such health crises as earthquakes, hurrica