Straight From The Hart

By   CHRISTOPHER DE VINCK Jan. 7, 2015 6:55 p.m. ET 39 COMMENTS The new year is my 63rd, and with age I have come to understand that no matter how hard I try to hold on to the past, the images fade and will, eventually, disappear. When I was a boy my Belgian grandmother visited our home in Allendale, N.J., nearly every summer. She brought Belgian chocolates, her felt hat and thick-heeled shoes. We played cards, sang French songs and sat in the yard together. She came to my college graduation and later pushed my son in a carriage. Thirty years ago my parents and I helped her into a wheelchair and kissed her goodbye at Newark airport. The thoughtful airline worker who took hold of the chair kindly turned it around and pulled my grandmother backward toward two wide doors. The doors opened automatically. My grandmother sat in the wheelchair with her felt hat and she waved goodbye. I never saw her again. Her worn heart gave out and she died that winter. When my daughter ...

Computers that started up on their own in the wee hours of the morning.  The sounds of microprocessors interrupting your sleep from a laptop which was shut down earlier in the evening.  A home phone that connects somewhere else when you call it from work but no one is there.  The trouble light on your alarm system  that chirps in the middle of the night but there’s no identifiable cause.  A television set that mysteriously begins to mute and the frames freeze and when your provider technician does trouble-shooting on it, he finds nothing wrong. These are only a few of the red flags that began to alert former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson back in 2011 that someone was watching her. This is an ongoing investigation with Attkisson even as I write today. She sued the Department of Justice this week on allegations that the Obama Administration through the DOJ had hacked into her computers when she was reporting on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and Obamaca...

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 ...