New Years Eve

We are off to Metairie, La to spend New Years Eve at Tammy's parents. Every year for well over 20 years Stan & Gayle have hosted an open house inviting family, friends, neighbors and on a few occassions total strangers. The night is nothing fancy, just food & fellowship culminating with a tremendous amout of fireworks courtesy of Stan and anyone willing to help. This year looks to be a bit different however. With so many blue roofs due to hurricane Katrina the local authorities are concerned that fireworks will spark fires. Should be an interesting evening.

May God bless you and your family during 2006.

2 Days and counting.....

As the year 2005 draws to a close I am starting to reflect on the events of the past 12 months and the start of a New Year as a chance to make some course adjustments in my life. I am always intrigued by the psychology of a New Year; that feeling of new, a chance for a "fresh start", a time for resolutions. I believe this line of thinking is totally reasonable given a cyclical approach to time based on astronomical measurements. e.g. 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 365 days in a year.... The start of a new calendar year is a pretty unique event. I have only lived through 42 of them.

You cannot live in the past nor can you live in the future. All you really have is right now and right now just passed...

They were not expecting it.......

A year ago the world watched the reports of a tsunami which had struck Indonesia. We saw the story unfold as initial reporting gave way to initial relief efforts. The scale of the devastation was slow in revealing itself but in the end over 200,000 people lost their lives and over 2 million were left homeless. I doubt if any of the 200,000 who lost their lives expected to die Dec 26th 2005 but they did nonetheless. A sober reminder to each of us.

"For man also does not know his time; as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them." Ecclesiastes 9:12

What Child is this?

And when Jesus had been born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men arrived from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.....Matthew 2:2

....."and you , Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, in no wayare you least among the governors of Judah, for out of you shall come out One ruling, who shall shepherd My people Israel."....Matthew 2:6

May God bless you and your family during this most Holy season.


www.dictionary.com
Christmas (n), a Christian feast commemorating the birth of Christ.
from Old English "cristes messe", Christ's festival.

Holiday (n), A religious feast day; a holy day.
from Old English "holy day".

New Orleans Bound

We left Friday afternoon around 3:00pm and headed for Metairie to spend Christmas with Tammy's family. I had not been back in the New Orleans area since pre-Katrina and I was amazed at how dark(lightless) parts of New Orleans still are. Pre-Katrina when you would drive through New Orleans East at night you were surrounded by the glow of lights from homes, bussinesses and the streets. I think I counted about a dozen individual locations that had one or two generator powered lights glowing as we drove by on I-10. Crossing the industrial canal Gentilly was even darker than NO East.

C.S.Lewis

I am glad there is a surge of interest in the writings of C.S Lewis. The movie, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, is helping the current generation of kids get aquainted with one of my favorite authors and series of books. I also find it pretty interesting that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were both members of the Inklings, a group of writers who met weekly to critize each others works during the 1930's & 40's. I wonder what they would think of their books being on the big screen?

Opportunity Knocked

Well, I have already lined up my first change for 2006. My job. After 10 years spent working at Eglin AFB for the 96 Communications Group in the network administration section I am off to Air Force Reasearch Labs - Munitions Directorate to start a new chapter in my career. I am excited about going to work for "the Lab" and look forward to getting away from a customer focused/operationally oriented mission to a reasearch oriented one.

A couple weeks ago I received a call out of the blue with an offer to go to work in "the Lab". It took about a week of prayer, meditation and thought before I conceeded to my initial inclination to accept the offer. Shortly after I informed my current and gaining supervisors of my decision to accept I felt a comforting peace about my choice.

Perspective

What if I told you there was an industry in the United States which officially reported 6,000 workers killed in work related accidents and that unofficially the number was most likely higher. I believe that most Americans would be outraged and would look to the government to investigate/correct or individual Americans would take up the cause in protest seeking an end to unsafe practices. But alas I am not talking about an America industry.

I was reading a few news articles this morning on the BBC's web site and stumbled across a story about Chinese miners trapped after a cave in. The last sentences really gave me pause to stop and think.

"China has the worst mine safety record in the world.

Chinese officials say some 6,000 miners died last year, but non-government groups groups say the true figure is far higher.

This year, 3,000 deaths have been reported in the country's mines."

We Americans are still love our cheap goods "Made in China."but you really have to ask yourself how cheap cheap really is.