The last traditional holiday of the summer is upon us, and many families are planning the season’s final warm weather trip this weekend. “Bon voyage and happy trails” if you are among those heading out on such travels.
I have a friend that is dying and we talk on the phone almost every week. I will ask, “How are you doing?” My friend replies with, “Oh, not very good but praise the Lord.” I know a lot of people say things like this but my friend means it. I’m not sure I know a more sincere Christ-follower.
Just over halfway through the final of the Spingold Knockout Teams, the Pierre Zimmermann team led Paul Street’s by 76 international match points to 38. Board 32 started a Street comeback.
Boom. And just like that, the 105-degree afternoons and the 80-degree mornings were gone.
Thankfully, Salman Rushdie survived the vicious knife attack in New York. The severely wounded author faces long recuperation and may lose an eye.
There is at least one new vaccine that will soon be available: Novavax. I am very hopeful about this, and I advise that it be considered by anyone who needs a COVID vaccine for any reason. I say this because it is entirely different from the vaccines that have been previously available for COVID. Until now the COVID vaccines available in the U.S. have been based on a strategy of co-opting the molecular machinery of the cells of the person receiving the vaccine, to make spike protein which then acts as the immunogenic stimulus for their body to create antibodies. Moderna and Pfizer use messenger RNA (mRNA), and the Jansen/Johnson & Johnson vaccines use DNA to create this spike protein, or a portion of that protein.
I’m hungry for the way it used to be. I look around and find it harder and harder to tolerate rude behavior, disrespect, contempt, and insolence. What was it that Captain Woodrow Call said in Lonesome Dove, “I hate rudeness in a man, just won’t tolerate it.” I’m old school. I’m traditional. I hate it when phones and gadgets are more important than people and we text versus meeting and having a discussion. What happened to respect and courtesy and a loving regard for someone’s else feelings? It’s called empathy, by the way.
Last month’s unexpected Senate deal on a $369-billion climate spending package is bound to ease pressure on President Biden. Days earlier, when it looked like opposition from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III had killed Biden’s climate agenda, the president vowed to take “strong executive action” if the Senate would not act.
Perhaps the only thing worse than reading those pessimistic stories in the newspaper is waiting for the newspaper to be delivered each day. The ditty written long ago is more accurate today than when pen met parchment. The exact wording may not be one hundred percent accurate, but here’s how I remember its four lines: “How much I have seen and how much I have read, of the struggles of man to get ahead. But me, I‘m busy – both body and mind – in the struggle to keep from getting behind.”