On the shore of the San Francisco Bay. Me on the left, Deanna with Leo, grandsons David, Griff and Josh, Miriam on the right.
David's wife Mandy took the picture.
Thanks Mandy.

Thanks


It was a good day to be thankful.

We ate well, had good company, and ate some more. Good cooks. Good food. Five kinds of pie, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, collard greens vegetarian steak, some turkey for Curtis, you know, all of the regular stuff.

There were 8 of us for dinner and all of this in a tiny house.

Afterwards we went for a walk along the shore of the bay. It was cool and the wind was blowing and it was good.

Indeed, it was good.

Downtown Lovelock! Two thousand people, a few more men than women, I read.

lovelock

Once not long after my mother and my step father were married dad came through this town and sent mom a post card (he was not a romantic person and this was a bit out of character).

The post card had a picture of something in the town and the message: “Lots of the first part to you.”

Lovelock Nevada, population 2006.

This is a little town, but it is the count seat (Nevada has few towns and quite large counties). Lovelock has it’s own hospital, mostly because it is a hundred miles any direction to a larger town. The town was named after George Lovelock who donated the land.

For us, it has almost exactly half way to Deanna’s house. Sometimes we drive from our house to Dea’s in one day, it is only an 11 hour drive, but any more, I try to break it into two sessions. I like to be pretty sharp when go into California.

Reno is a 93 miles west of here. Not far out of Reno is the California state line, and then over the historic Donor Pass. It is a beautiful drive, but the road tends to be a bit narrow, there is a LOT of truck traffic and the road needs to be upgraded. But it is finite! Not really white knuckle driving but time to concentrate.

Once over the pass it is a good road (with increasing traffic) through Sacramento, the state capital on to Oakland and then over the Bay bridge to San Francisco. There is a bit of a trick turn in SF, and if I get in the wrong lane it takes half an hour to get back on the right road!

We should be at Deanna’s by early afternoon, missing the real traffic snarls.

I bring gifts (I know this is not Christmas). Home made pumpkin pies, fresh bread and a whole cooler full of “Grandpa’s Great Grape Juice.” Dea’s boys ask about that one.

We make the trip down every couple of years. It is a long way, but we always enjoy our visit.

I lost most of my picture collection a while back.
Time to take some more, lots more!

being useful

Yesterday I helped to help a lady move.

The move was in the same retirement building, but on a different floor with a bit more space for her.

The engineer in charge had it all figured out: box the contents of a book case (there were lots of them), move the book case to it’s new place and then put the same books on the same shelves, in a different room.

Had he been working alone he could have pulled it off. But there were a lot of helpers, maybe a dozen or so and it got a bit scrambled.

The lady has a lot of books (literally thousands) and she is not ready to give up on them now. They are her friends, as she put it.

We all grumbled good naturedly as we worked, going up and down the elevator with boxes and boxes and hand carts and hand trucks full of stuff.

I suggested to one of the girls that she guess at how many people hours were involved in this project, multiply times $10 and see how spendy this move was. We laughed together!

Still, I am glad to help people who need help. Moving is arduous any day.

Some years ago a new pastor arrived in our town. He built a new house for himself and is family. The church group rallied around with untold hours of help on that house. I set the kitchen cabinets for him and put the counter tops on.

I don’t object or feel bad about what was done then, or what we did yesterday. And as long as I have strength, I’ll keep helping people when I can.

I am retired, I have time and a bit of strength left. Helping is the least I can do.

This is a painting my daughter Deanna did of herself as a child. It is from a photograph I made. She is a talented lady and typography is one of her skills. The text font is her invention.

grace

Grace: Getting what we really don’t deserve.

Some time ago an online audio book company asked if I would like to download a contemporary book. The book looked interesting, so I took them up on their offer.

The book was “Sin Boldly.” by Cathleen Falsani. The title comes from a quote from Martin Luther, the great reformer from a long time ago. Luther did not mean that you could sin boldly without any retribution.

But without grace, religion will suffocate us.

Justice is getting what we deserve, grace is not.

When I deal with God I like, even expect a great outpouring of grace. When I am dealing with others, well not so much.

In my country the deciders came up with the idea of a new 45 million dollar jail to be built a half dozen miles from the court house. The jail is full they said, to do JUSTICE to wayward citizens we have to build a new bigger one.

Others say the jail is not nearly full and we put too many people in jail who would be better punished in other ways and that jail site is a long way from the court system. The doubters won this time.

A nearby county had a vote on a jail bond 8 times before it finally passed, and out deciders said they would try us again in May.

Does grace fit into any of this? We sure would not want those “criminals” to think they could find “grace” in the “justice” system, would we.

But God? A little more please.