WIXY's Gone Bananas

This week started out on a very good note. At church our pastor had preached on Genesis 15 where Abram was promised a blessing from God.  Abram was instructed to set out a sacrifice, but had to chase away buzzards which gathered around the sacrifice. We felt real good and blessed as we left church. We also claimed the promise that there were better days ahead. Then the buzzards started coming. First on the way home from church Sunday we get a call from our daughter. She had hurt her back and couldn't get up off the couch. I had to go get her kids and bring them to my house. On the way there, getting on the interstate, my car spun out and I "kissed" the guard rail. I straightened out the car, then pulled over to check to see if there was any damage. No visible damage, so I moved on and got the grandkids. Kids back at my house with no further incident. One buzzard chased away. Rufus in happier times. Monday while at work I get this text from my wife along with...

1971 Highland High School football team. I am in the middle of the second to last row. The other day I had a message on my Facebook wall. The post was from a high school friend, John, who was tagged in a photo I posted of the 1971 Highland football team and John was one of the captains of the team. John wanted to send it to one of his high school friends, Bill, who was also on the team. John and Bill graduated 2 years ahead of me. I graduated with Bill's brother, Mark. Anyway some of us folks in our mid to late fifties haven't grasped the concept of attaching photos to our emails and John needed my assistance. So John wrote a message on my wall, giving me Bill's email address. So I wrote Bill an email, explaining why I was sending the photo. Here was Bill's reply: "Cliff, Thank you very much for the email and photo.  I will call John and thank him as well.  Also, I read some of your articles on some seek first and I was really excited to see that God has b...

It's a rarity nowadays for me to write posts on successive days. But  I was asked to write my thoughts on an article written in 1937 by Napoleon Hill. Cliff, of Views From Sandhausen fame, posted his views on his sit e. There are many people who feel like prisoners in their daily situations. Because of these feelings, they only want to do the minimum of what's required of them, all the while wondering why others seem to get all the breaks, maybe wishing to make the sojourn into the land of plenty. Russell Conwell's book, Acres of Diamonds tells of a man in Africa who wished to find his fortune in diamonds. He sold his farm and searched the African continent for the elusive jewels. When he ran out of money, he decided to take his life, despondent about his inability to find diamonds. Meanwhile, the person who bought his land discovered diamonds lining his creek bed. This discovery turned out to be one of the largest diamond mines in Africa. Th...

Okay, I shall admit that I'm a bit prejudiced when it comes to this book. I'm prejudiced because one of the authors has a really cool name. And I also had the privilege of meeting the authors on a couple of occasions. Views From Sandhausen, Experiences from a Foreign Service Assignment in Germany is a book written by Cliff and Lynn Feightner. It is a series of emails sent to friends and relatives during a three year period while Cliff was assigned by his Fortune 100 company to head some projects in Germany. Very little is said about the job itself, most of these letters dealt with what the Feightners went through as they were making the adjustment to life in a foreign country at a time when it wasn't popular to be an American in Europe. When it comes to creature comforts which we take for granted here in the USA, Cliff and Lynn  found that even to simple phone service and internet took months and several trips to get things right. Care packages from home went through...

 Let's go back to a time where things were a little less stressful in my life... It was 1965, and my family was living in Breiningsville, Pennsylvania . My dad had been transferred there from his job in Cleveland. We lived there a total of 14 months as my dad also lost his job at that time. Anyway, I was in the third grade at Fogelsville Elementary school. It was the last year for the building we were going to school in, as the finishing touches were put on the new building. The one I attended was located across the street from the dynamite factory and we would hear testing every now and then. It was also the school year I decided that I hated school. The third grade was the first year that I would have to do homework. I hated homework then, I hated it all the way through the 12th grade. 46 years later, I wish I would have learned to like it or at least tolerate it. Cliff Note: To the teachers who read this blog, I apologize. I never have let the things I needed...