Straight From The Hart

  ARE YOU REALLY WHAT YOU EAT? September is National Food Safety Month. It was created in 1994 to heighten the awareness about the importance of food safety education. But since 1994, the issue of our food safety has been expanded to include much more than handling, preparation and storage. Now we find that politics has been introduced into the equation with Congress having to write legislation and provide regulations, especially with regard to how our food is labeled and shipped before it ever reaches the supermarket and ultimately our table. As recently as January of this year, CNN had an article on their website about the issue of foreign food imports which have exploded in recent years. Accoring to the USDA, those imports totalled $119 billion in 2014 which is the most recent information we have. While the U.S. has had several instances of food grown or processed domestically becoming contaminated with ecoli, or listeria or a host of other dangerous bacteria, even more troubli

  In the final moments of the horrible tragedy on September 11, 2001, the North Tower began to collapse. As it fell, it sent debris and wreckage through the air toward a plot of land at the border of Ground Zero. It was unlike the other properties surrounding Ground Zero in that it wasn’t covered with concrete, steel or asphalt, but with soil and grass. The falling debris struck a tree and in the days that followed, as they began to clear the wreckage, workers noticed the fallen tree - a sycamore. Entwined in its roots was a brick. The tree became one of the focal points of interest and attention, and was transformed into a symbol by all who saw it. Eventually, the tree was taken from the place of its fall and put on public display as a symbol of what had happened that day the towers fell. Its root system was carefully removed and transferred to another site. A bronze sculpture by Steve Tobin called The Trinity Root was installed September 2005 in the south courtyard of Trinity

  The baby panda born a week ago in the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington D.C. died on Monday of this week, and the entire nation seems to be mourning its death. CBS called the news of the panda’s death “devastating”. Fox News reported that condolences were pouring in from all over the world. Also on Monday, approximately 3,288 human infants died in the United States, murdered in the very place where they should have been the most safe – their mother’s womb. Now don’t get me wrong. I love animals as much as anyone else, but where are our priorities? Every day over 3000 babies are aborted in our country. That comes out to one baby every 26 seconds, or nine every 4 minutes, or 137 an hour. Do the math. That is 1.2 million every year. So 54.5 million babies have been killed since the Roe v. Wade court decision in 1973. Those numbers are just the surgical and medical abortions, they do not include the chemical abortions done by abortifacients (drugs that induce or cause abortions). I

 RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM COLUMNIST SCHOOL RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A SATURDAY MORNING I heard somewhere, maybe in columnist school, that once in a while we need to just let go of the heaviness and scolding, and share those random thoughts we all occasionally have, and which will not fit in any other column. This last week in September seems to be a good time to do that. In other words, I don’t really have a topic to write about this week! We drove over to the Country Store at Leadmine recently. I love that place. We go to replenish our stock of the best beet pickles in the world, done as only the Amish can do. Milan likes to peruse their inventory of suspenders and Aladdin lamp parts. But I also get to indulge in a jar or two of spiced peaches to bring home as a special treat. We called them pickled peaches back when my grandmother made them, but they are definitely not pickled in the sense of the word we would normally think about. Anyone who has never eaten one of these golden glisteni

  Holy Groans Joan's note:  This just tore at my heart this morning when it appeared in my mailbox.  Even though I don't minister in a foreign land like this, and even though the church I pastor is small, I still hear too many "holy groans" from people on the fringe of my pastoral ministry who need  help, help beyond what I am able to give from the limited resources available to me, and my heart breaks every day because of that.  My Bible reading this morning came from Matt 25 which SO ties in with this.  I feel so helpless and burdened but then I realize God hears also MY holy groans of overwhelming needs of those in my pastoral care, and I'm so thankful for the Saviour who is ever interceding for me and all these others.   Holy Groans As I write this, I am waiting for a bus on a busy corner in an extremely poor community in Central America, in which I lived for a year and have been visiting now for nine years.  Most of the time, the tragedy of this place fades i

  SEPTEMBER IN THE OZARKS It was George Eliot who wrote “... if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive Septembers”. Actually, he wrote about seeking successive autumns but I’m sure if he had given it more thought he would have said September. I love poetry. I love reading it aloud to myself and anybody else who will listen. (It’s amazing how few people will!) I love memorizing poetry. I still remember October’s Bright Blue Weather from grade school. “When comrades seek sweet country haunts...and count like misers, hour by hour, October’s bright blue weather.” I only wish I had thought of those lines before Helen Hunt Jackson wrote them. September poems are hard to find so I wrote one myself this week and it is printed elsewhere on this page. September is an incredible month. Sandwiched in between August (my birth month so therefore special to me) and October, about which many poems have been written, it is a bridge, a transition time. Victoria Ericks

  If you value your free and open Internet, then I urge you to read this column and take appropriate action with regard to contacting your representatives in Congress. I don’t usually begin my columns with a warning, but in this case it is justified, because in less than ten days from today, our president will be fulfilling and finalizing a promise he made early on in his presidency to turn over the control of the Internet as we know it to a multinational corporation which includes the countries of Russia, China, and Iran, and which do not have a First Amendment right to free speech. If you do not trust these countries to always provide free and unrestricted access to your use of the internet, including your confidential information, and your expression of freedom of speech, then you have one week to contact your senator and representative and as many other members of Congress as you can, to express your opposition. The Internet was started by the United States, in particular the Depa

  September 20, 2019    ·  Here's the modern, updated, version: (author unknown) The ant works hard In the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant Is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant In his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.' ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film