Insights From The Rocking Chair

It's Time Disclaimer: I don't care if you are Republican or Democrat.     I have grown weary of the political  grandstanding about this or that. All they want is their face on the news channels. If true, and I believe it is, the waste and giving away tax payer money to this pet project or overseas to another countries war effort. That money is gone or should I say laundered to the pockets of the politicians. Lobbyist should be banned forever. The interest of the people should be above the corporations. This is not new, of course, but now is the time for change.       My wife and I are retired and live 80% off Social Security, and the thought of and the thought of those elected to represent us have their hands in the till depleting the funds  that should be coming to all retirees infuriates me. We were forced to live without those dollars in our lifetime and now they have been wasted on who knows what.      Once in awhile, some token sena...

TRAFFICKING (BUZZ WORD?)      Trafficking is a new word but an old problem. One old word, SLAVERY, comes to the forefront of my mind. We also used to call them pimps. The traffickers are of no ethnic background, but come in all races and social statuses. It has become an industry that abuses the youngest and weakest of humanity, our children.     Mississippi, the state I live in, has just spent the last two weeks rounding up said traffickers and rescuing 29 individuals. 72 arrest were made. It covered the entire state and involved several of Mississippi AG's departments as well as the feds and multiple police agencies around the state. Jackson  Jambalaya   has a very good article explaining all the details. Including the agencies involved.      I, like you, only know what I read in the news stories. I don't have my blinders on, however, but am very aware of this sickness and plague that has encompassed the entire world. Keep your ...

What has happened to humanity?     The continual showing of videos of massive fights in restaurants and on the streets is disturbing. Because of the cameras out and recording I believe that could all be staged. Some are down right brutal. Then the lewd acts of twerking and mock sexual acts. The lack of a moral compass is evident. Where does that moral compass come from?     As a society, we have rejected the teachings and warnings of the Bible prophets and the Disciples. Their words come from God. Those words cut us to the quick. They make us feel convicted and ashamed, as they should. How else would we be humbled enough to be out of ourselves. The riots, looting,  fighting, and killing are all godless acts. Where will it stop? I know when but a lot of you won't like the answer. So, if you  would want to know more about my opinion then leave me a comment and will be glad to respond

Grieving      It is so hard to loose the ones you love. Parents and children are the hardest. In the last post I told that in the last 2 years I have lost both parents and a son. For me, our son is the hardest. Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents, but they were up in age and time waits for none of us. My son, however was not. He was only 47 when a very painful disease of pancreatic cancer took him in 18 days. No surgery or chemo could save him, in fact, it would have done more harm and caused more pain at the stage he was in.      Jay was special needs, but somewhat  higher functioning. He loved life. He loved his friends until his time was up. God and only God appoints our living and our dying. Jay was a Christian, he understood his need as well as he could and wanted to be so bad. He prayed to accept Christ and was baptized. Loosing him has rocked our world as it has many who have lost. Everyday I read of some child that is murdered in their home ...

Maybe I should start again      It has been 13 years since my last entry. A lot has happened during this time. I retired from 2 occupations, my mom passed in 2023, my 47 year old son in 2024, and my dad in 2025 and my wife and I celebrated our 50th anniversary. In 2023 had my 50 year class reunion.  The world of politics has been upside down.      My inspiration to start again came from going through Mom and Dad's files and found where she had printed some of my blogs. So this is a short one but soon I will speak out again for Christ and call out evil. Sam

While listening to a radio program yesterday this radio broadcast from Paul Harvey in April of 1965. was played. Go to the blog if you can't see the video here.

Occasionally we get to step back in time. No, not literally, but almost. With this brain that God created, we can imagine and relive many experiences from times past. Sometimes all we need is a little jogging of the memory. To see a face, hear a voice, shake a hand, or hug a neck is all it could take and yesterday I got to do all of those at the Kosciusko Mega Class Reunion, 1965-1975. Seeing the faces of so many classmates from my graduating class as well as those from a couple years before and after was F..U..N! The memories were sweet and I was reminded of things that even I didn't remember. The committees of each class did a great job of putting our senior portraits on our name tags so we could remember the younger us. Boy did that help, because so many of us have really gotten older and look less like we did. A few really haven't changed that much. I was reminded how time has just flown by. It has been 39 YEARS since I have seen most of my classmates. Because ...

I am not very good at writing a movie review so I hope that I don't remove the chance of your going to see it. If you can drive to a theater to see it then do. It is not in all theaters at this time because like many independent movies with religious overtones and especially those that bleed deep into the world of abortion, it needs your dollars to be more available to watch. It is a family movie. There are no curse words. No violent scenes. There are no graphic reproductions of an aborted baby. This movie is not an in your face anti-abortion movie but the message is there. It gently walks back through a young ladies life who at 19 has just discovered that she is adopted. She is hurt deeply by this discovery and determines her life had been a lie. Her father, played by John Schneider, is very controlling and you wonder why. After choosing differently than her father wanted, she sets out on the journey to discovery who she is. She finds herself in trouble with the law a couple o...

  Dear Grandson,  I hope your mom and dad will read this to you. From these words, I hope you will be able to see what my America was like. I deeply regret the way She has changed. Today it has become painfully clear that when I am gone this America will not be the same America that your papa grew up in. I remember quite clearly my time at your age. I was pretty carefree much like you. I enjoyed exploring and learning new things. I know you have lots of friends but I am not sure you have that best friend yet. I did. His name was Pat. Your papa did everything he could with him. We were inseparable. Where you saw one the other was close by. We spent the night at each others house. We slept in a tent  in the yard. We played baseball and football. We built a fort in our backyard. We did so much I can hardly remember them all. Our favorite thing was going to the movies. We lived in town and were only about 8 blocks from the movie theater. So, Pat and I would walk all the...

Hey you behind the counter! You, yes you in the kitchen. And you, the one driving your car(you shouldn't be reading this if you are driving). You in the desk, are you listening? You in the church pew, are you paying attention? Are you? Really? Where are you right now? Are you comfortable? If you are, you are not paying attention. A battle is raging and we are just doing what we always do, nothing. You are most likely sitting in your comfortable home in you comfortable chair like nothing is happening and you would not be alone. But folks, our lives are crumbling around us and we are just watching in a daze and we are doing nothing. Our country's fundamental roots are being yanked right out of the dirt and what are we doing? I know allot of us complain, but that is about it. In November we will either re-elect this current administration who has proven again and again that they want the US to crumble and become something very different than we are or we can try to change t...

I don't about you, but here in Mississippi we are just about waterlogged. It was reported that we have had 3 times more rain this February than last. I feel it, literally. A lot now but it will be scarce soon enough. Have you complained? I have. There are things I would like to do on Saturday besides being inside. I am sure there is some advantage to that. As I am typing (is that what I am doing even though I don't have a typewriter) the rain is falling yet again. But it is OK since I most likely wouldn't be rambling on the blog if it wasn't. We have been well since my last blog at Thanksgiving (to long in between). Shirley and I have been working on our weight and general health. She is looking great and I am so proud of her. She has worked hard and it has paid off in big dividends. I started Weight Watchers last fall and I am making good progress. I have met my first loss goal. I don't have time to work out as much as I like (should). My like about working out...

If you are on Facebook, you may have noticed some of your friends doing a 30 days of Thanksgiving countdown. Quite simply, you give one thing per day that you are thankful for. This not a bad idea because we so often forget to thank God for the blessings we have. And blessed we are. I know that many folk are going through some of the roughest times in their lives at this time. I have two friends that lost their husbands, in their 50's, this year and I have ached for them. This time of year seems to make it more difficult to deal with that loss. I don't know about you, but, I find it hard sometimes to think about what I could be thankful for. We have a tradition at my mother-in-laws as we sit at the table, we each give thanks for something before the blessing and the eventual destruction of the bounty in front of us. The difficulty of thankfulness shows at that time. Everyone of us has had the situation of just saying, "I am thankful for my family". There is nothing ...

Home at last! Yes he is. His physical body is not yet sitting in his physical house but he is on Mississippi soil and Sonia is spending time with him as he and his fellow soldiers are processing out. It has been a long year. We thank our great on wonderful God for all he has supplied during this last year. First and foremost his safety and the safety of his unit. Although the news doesn't report much from there anymore, his deployment was not uneventful, but all are safe and returning. Thank you 1-185th Aviation Battalion for your service to your country. Because of your efforts we are safer.

Well, we are almost there! SNL will be on Mississippi soil in a day or two. I cannot begin to tell you how excited, elated, overjoyed, and as my daughter put it "getting butterflies" we are to have him almost here. This little blog post is to have you to continue to pray for him, and the men he has served with this last year. Some are coming home to families falling apart and some to spouses diagnosed with life challenging diseases. All of them will have to re-integrate into society again. Their families will have to adjust along side of them as well, when husband and daddy returns. Although I am primarily concerned with him and his group, the war in Iraq is winding down and many will be coming home to the same situations. Multiple deployments have taken a toll on the family structure that our great nation is built around and as that crumbles so does the very being of who we are. Specifically pray for patience (on everyone's part), for peace in their spirits, and fo...

  I have been reading lately on worship and the relevance of our churches. This is not deep but I just thought I would re-post. I have found that the older I get the more reflective I become. I am not quite sure if that is normal, but that is me nonetheless. This morning I woke up thinking about some of the places I have had the privilege to live. Until I married, all them but one were in the country ( outside city limits for you city folk). Maybe some of you have heard your parents or at least your grandparents talk about the simpler way of life or the good old days. Growing up in the country is just that type of living. In those days there were many things you didn't have in your community. You didn't have drug problems unless of course you count smoking rabbit tobacco as a drug. It didn't alter you mind but it would burn your insides because it wasn't a processed product but right off the stalk. We didn't roll in paper but made our own corncob pipes from, yo...

Intolerant, an adjective, to be unable or unwilling to endure. The first time I remember hearing the word was in the verb form, tolerate. I was in the sixth grade. My “homeroom” teacher was the principle of the elementary school. He would always say “I will not tolerate…..”, or “your… will not be tolerated, that would be some misbehavior on someone’s part. Out came the dictionary so that I would know what in the world he was talking about.That was a big word then. Today, the word has become a brand to describe everyone who disagrees with your particular social or political agenda. It is used to beat you down and make you cower as soon as the word is tossed into the air. You are to tremble in fear if you are labeled as intolerant. It is used to degrade your opinion or knowledge and is an effort to make them irrelevant. As a Christian, I have learned that we should be intolerant of sin. I have also learned that sin wants to be tolerated. Truth shows sin as it is. Sin seeks to...

Today my oldest grandson registered for the first grade. This is a huge deal. Kindergarten was big but this is really big. I remember my first day, uh hum, 50 years ago. It was at Main Street Elementary school in Yazoo City Mississippi. I don't remember my teachers name because we moved during the Christmas break to a new town. What I do remember about that first semester, was my attempted escape from the school. I don't remember the circumstances but I remember getting to the outside door before I was captured and returned to my cell.... classroom. We moved to Clarksdale, MS where I again enrolled in my first day in the first grade. My teacher there was Mrs. Jones. She was a great teacher and I can remember her well. Many years later I met her daughter who was attending Mississippi College. It was in Mrs. Jones class that I met a boy that joined up a day after me. We instantly became inseparable friends for the next three years. That is when we moved again. I wish I coul...

For some today is just another day to celebrate a holiday. For others, it is remembering those family members who went to other shores to secure the freedoms we for now, still hold. For yet still others it is a day of praying that our loved ones in foreign lands taking the fight to those who wish to impose their will on us will remain safe from harm. On this day, we spout our platitudes on freedom and what it means, but yet many have taken those freedoms for granted for so long they mean nothing to them. It will be easy for them to fall for the trappings or appearances of something that "could" be better. Oh, wait, this country just did that. We liked the words of "Hope and Change" but didn't really look at what that might mean. What it has meant, at least to this Southern Boy, is the eroding of our basic freedoms. All the quips and slogans that have been spoken and posted on Facebook sound good and may make some feel better, but the reality is most have not...

Day 4 our last day in NYC started somewhat lazily. I am not ashamed to say that we were tired. We had covered miles and miles of asphalt, but it was a good tired because we were having the time of our life. Our first stop of course involved food. We ate a good breakfast at the little cafe we found a couple of days before then we went down to time square to stand in line to get discounted tickets to a Broadway show,"Jersey Boys". More about that later. After buying the tickets, we caught the subway down to Canal (aka China Town). We spent a couple of hours bargain hunting. It was fun "Jewing" down the prices on some items that we brought back. This is a real NYC Chinese fish market Then on to "Little Italy". Italian resturants on both sides of the street for about 3 blocks. These were real Italian eateries. Linen table cloths, the works. Then up to Spring street where we could get a real Italian pizza. They were right. Lombardy's was a quite the...

Our day started with sleeping late. We headed out to the NBC studios to do the tour only to find out they were sold out until 6:00pm. On the way we ran into our grandson Cayden's favorite characters. We headed down to 42nd and 7th avenue to catch the buss tour to Brooklyn. The line was so long we opted to walk the 5 blocks down to pier 83 to take the 3 hour tour. I know, I thought of the theme song for Gilligan's Island. It was relaxing trip around the entire island. Our tour guide was great! He later told us that he was once a professor of speech and acting at one of the universities there. While working the ship for a summer job, the company learned what he did and hired him as a tour guide.  After the tour we made it back up to Hotel (10 blocks) on foot. While crossing broad way we ran into a street vendors festival. Then we made it to our tour of the NBC studios and saw the sets of Jimmy Fallon, which is the same set as Johnny Carson when he was in NY. We also saw th...