Straight From The Hart

My column from today's Lebanon Daily Record: Medical Kidnappings on the Increase Arianna and Dominick, 9 month old twins, should have been enjoying all the sights and sounds of their first Christmas at home with their parents, Cassaundra and Warnell, but they were not allowed to do so. Five months ago, the Child Protective Services of Illinois removed them from the family home and put them in foster care. They are now in their fourth foster home in five months, and although the parents are supposed to be able to see them for a weekly two-hour visit, that visit was cancelled because the foster parents had taken them out of state for Christmas. Eight year old Jaxon Adams was removed from his parents’ custody by CPS working with Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City upon the insistence of a nurse practitioner working with Beacon Clinic at Children’s Mercy. That nurse told him if she had her way, he would “never see his mother or father again”. Four month old Kathryn Hughes...

Christmas is over.  The stockings once hung by the chimney with care have been emptied of their goodies and are folded and ready to be put away until next year.  The lights that twinkled so brightly in past weeks have lost their glow and have been wound neatly around one of those light reels that those of you who are super organized buy and use, or thrown into a shoebox by the rest of us too tired to deal with them now. The ornaments have been carefully removed from the tree branches and placed back in their designated boxes.  The smaller children who once nestled so snug in their beds are playing with toy trucks or the fashion doll of the year, and older kids are decking out their tablets and smart phones and other electronic gadgets in the new colorful “skins” so prized by teenagers today. Leftovers from the dinner of Christmas past are chilling in the refrigerator awaiting a resurrection in days to come in casseroles, soups, and sandwiches. Trees and garlands...

Larry Winfrey has given me permission to share this testimony.   Grab a box of Kleenex and maybe a sweater for the cold chills you will get in the middle of it. "During my recent medical crisis, I was unconscious for two days. The following is what I experienced during that time. If you have the time and the inclination, I would be interested in your thought. I am pasting what I have sent to others who have inquired. Thank you! Thank you for expressing interest in hearing what happened to me during the two days of unconsciousness, it has had a profound effect upon me. Whether real or imagined, or you believe it or not makes no difference, it will all depend on your relationship with God. Nor will it affect my appreciation for you. I could not breathe! I remember thinking I was dead and that I was not ready to die. I thought of my family. I did not see any bright light or passed loved ones. I did not see any angels enveloped in a holy penumbra. What I saw was Sata...

Lois and I posted a memorial picture and poem about Kay in today's LDR in case you get a chance to see it. I had to tweak it a little bit and shortened it a lot to make it fill the newspaper spot, but here is the poem in its entirety: It seems like only yesterday, That day you went away. But 50 years have passed since then And we’ve missed you every day. Your pretty smile with the bluest eyes We never will forget, We know God had a plan and so We trust His wisdom, yet The memories come and linger on, Like a slide show in my mind. Though you were with us only 16 years. The video frames unwind…. The games we played on Wood Street Hitting hedge apples with a stick, Lighting firecrackers under a tin can And running away so quick. Practicing our songs around the old piano Sibling harmony so sweet, So we would have a “special” to share each Sunday In the church on Taylor Street.. The night your boyfriend smashed an egg Between his palms, but then It broke although he said it ...

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 fr...

Wow!  Did you feel that earthquake Tuesday night?  Well, okay, so it wasn’t really an earthquake.  It was just the country moving to the right.  For me, it was the World Series, the Superbowl and March Madness all rolled up into one.  I am not a sports fan and not even sure what those words are I just wrote, but I think I”m beginning to understand all those Facebook messages and Tweets that clutter up my computer during major sports events. I was very excited as so many conservatives begin to show up on the winning board.  I use the word “conservative” on purpose.  I”ve given up on Democrats and Republicans because those words are pretty much meaningless any more.  They used to be apt descriptions of political philosophies but nowadays you can’t always tell one from the other.   But a conservative is a conservative regardless of any other label.  Unfortunately liberals tend to be the same way.   But reasonable and think...