July 2008 #1

BELATED “MUSINGS – I usually get these out each week but it has been nearly two weeks since I have written. I have not been feeling well and going to my internist for over twenty years he has taken and EKG and had me wear a monitor for a couple of weeks because of irregular heart beats. He has now sent me to a cardiologist and I spent a day getting a couple “mugga tests” and a chemical stress test. He suggested a catherization which I have rejected, at least until I have completed other testing to properly satisfy my mind that it is necessary and not just another dangerous routine that has become a major money maker for hospitals and doctors. I am still due to get an echocardiogram next the 10th. Adding to this on Monday three weeks ago I woke up with vertigo and the recommended medication has only added to my discomforted with drowsiness and sleeping without correcting the problem. I am being referred to another doctor on the 14th, a long time to continue with this aggravating spinning problem. I took Betty to the oncologist for another C-scan and bone-scan that we will get a report on at her next treatment and chemo treatment this Friday.. Our lives have become filled with doctor’s appointments that have been the case for several years now. Getting old is not for weaklings as many of you already know.

POLITICS BECOMES AN INCREASING CONCERN – Obama’s polished rhetoric and good looks are drawing multitudes to his promises of “change” (almost in a messianic setting, or should I use another term?) While promising multiplied billions of dollars in additional taxes that people don’t seem to realize or recognize. At the same time I seriously question McCain’s ability to make the case for conservatism with his passivity. Hopefully he will choose a Vice President that will stir him to truly enjoin the political battle. Add to the mix the Supreme Court making new laws regarding “habeas corpus” for wartime terrorist, something that has never been done in the entire history of our nations war experience. The Court did this in the face of contrary regulations that both sides of the aisle of Congress were agreed upon. I fear for our Constitutional Government that has stood the test of time that was based upon our founding fathers spiritual moorings.

A BIBLICAL SPIRITUAL CONSIDERATION – I was rereading Psalm 76 recently and was impressed once again with God’s power and how he will eventually judge and break the wicked. We become fearful of the injustices of the world around us and the potential of the breakdown of our own national moorings by the craziness of politicians more interested in their own agendas than of the needs of those whom they represent. We hear the reports of the world’s condition and the building economic breakdowns while wondering how Christians and common people are going to be able to survive. Then we read of God, “He broke the arrows of the bow, the shield and sword of battle, (vs. 3); “At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse were cast into a dead sleep. You, Yourself, are to be feared; and who may stand in your presence when once you are angry You caused judgment to be heard from heaven,” etc. (vss. 6-8): ”He shall cut off the spirit of princes; He is awesome to the kings of the earth.” (vs. 12) Nothing goes unseen; nothing is hidden from our God and the things He is allowing is leading to an end exactly as he has prophetically declared it. Keep the faith and don’t let your hearts falter!

INDEPENDENCE DAY – Today is the 4th of July and my thoughts go back to my boyhood in Baker, Oregon, now called Baker City as it probably was in still earlier days. The 4th was always rodeo time and the crowds came to our town in Eastern Oregon. The men wore their cowboy boots and hats. Their silk shirts were bright red, white of blue and many of the women dressed similarly. All the kids had their firecrackers to blow up tin cans and jars. To the south of town was a cliff that had a big fireworks display at dark and the crowds gathered in the fields below to see the bright fireworks and images of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Those were exciting times and I wonder if they still have their rodeo and fireworks display on the cliff of the 4th of July. As time change I hope that our nation never loses it’s strong patriotism that seems to me to be eroding away.

PLACES I’VE LIVED – I raised the question awhile back, wondering how many different houses I’ve lived in over the years. – I used to be able to point to the house in Baker where I was delivered at home but there is a big blank of information where I lived as an infant and toddler after that. I have a picture of being held by my father and my mother standing beside us but I have been told little of those early years before they were divorced. I remember living with my mother in a San Francisco apartment as a young boy and later in a house where we lived with my first stepfather who was in the Coast Guard. My grandmother visited and took me to a park so I’d be out of the way while he as at home. This only gives me memory of three houses I lived in up to that time. Later I lived in a home for children where many of the children slept of cots in a large room. There was a playground outside where I fell off a slide when my grandparents came to visit me. The orphanage or children’s home, use to march us to a day school during the day. My grandparents eventually took me to their home in Carmel, California where my grandfather managed a Sprouse Reitz Variety store. My great grandmother took care of me in the daytime since my grandmother worked at the store as well. They eventually bought their own small variety store in Gold Beach, Oregon and I live there with them until they started another small variety store in Brookings, Oregon for my mother to have an income. I then lived with her in the back of the store. This was where my mother met her third husband and I was sent to live with my father and stepmother in Baker Oregon. I remember living in two different homes there with them and for a time with an uncle and aunt who thought they could better handle me than my stepmother. This lists the first 9 places I can recall living in up to the age of 9 or 10, there may have been more. There are many more places ahead. This is all information mainly for my own children’s information.