Straight From The Hart

  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

  My column in today's newspaper. Huma Abedin has been the most prominent name on cable news since last Friday when she became embroiled in a major news story involving Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the FBI, but do you know who she really is? You probably know her as Clinton’s “traveling chief of staff”, and senior adviser. She was a deputy chief of staff when Clinton was secretary of state. She is now the vice-chair of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She is a practicing Muslim. Let’s just get that out of the way first. As recently as last December she proclaimed herself to be a “proud Muslim” when she spoke out against Donald Trump’s statements about banning Muslims. My curiosity led me to research why she doesn’t wear the hijab. Apparently she feels it would be “off- putting” to voters in a highly contested presidential campaign. I also discovered that Sharia law has a term which basically means “flexibility” to us and means that Muslims can change their manner of

  4 years ago Active Joan Hart    ·  Shared with Public This is my column today. Warning: It is political satire and if that offends you please scroll on past. I'm not in the mood for arguments today. My facebook pages are for my opinions. If you have a differing opinion, use your own page!! Just sayin'. *************************************** We are a nation obsessed with watching or reading the news. That’s not surprising because the word ”news” implies that we are learning something we didn’t know before. But nowadays when we listen to the news most of us just end up shaking our heads in bewilderment or rolling our eyes in astonishment. Let me share with you some questions I have been wondering about AFTER listening to the news. Does it seem to you that people like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff have reached a level of arrogance that we have never seen before? How else can you explain that Schiff had the pomposity to do a parody of the President with regard to a p