Friday Tidings

Advanced math was my personal nightmare. My teacher was as frustrated with me as I was with advanced math. After weeks of floundering, we tried an experiment: Independent Study was relatively new back in the dark ages before personal computers. I was handed an Algebra course in five thick spiral notebooks and told to report to the library instead of a classroom.  The program was neatly designed to assist hopeless math students like myself—taking me step by step through hundreds of complicated problems. I started freshman year and ended my senior year in calculus. Every time I got a wrong answer, I got the bold-faced suggestion— Think Again .    I couldn’t go on until I got it right.   I saw Think Again so many times during my four years of math, but it didn’t mean quit; it meant go back and figure out the right answer. America has a math problem: It took 230 years to accumulate 8.7 TRILLION in debt. Then in 8 years, our debt do...

I sat with my friend in the crowded coffee shop. We were in the back where we could observe all the other conversations, smiles, laughter, and busyness.  But as I sat there, I wondered how to answer her question: Should you ever lie to someone you love? Talk about a loaded question. I had two words: Be honest. Truth is the most valuable asset you’ll ever have together. While love is critical, lying is a form of betrayal.  I’d rather be married to a messy truth teller than a clean liar. Why do partners lie? Perhaps to spare the hurt that comes from the truth.  But without honesty healing never comes. Lying only leads to more distrust—and to eventual disillusionment—if someone lies about one thing, then why not something else too? She sighed deeply, as she battled the emotional turmoil within.  Looking into her empty coffee cup, she must have felt just as drained. I want...

David’s mother often repeated the stories about his German grandparents. To escape the aftermath of Seven Years War, Czarina Catherine II invited Germans to travel 2000 miles and farm the fertile slopes along Russia’s Volga River.  His grandparents took the invitation and then worked the ground tirelessly—David’s parents were both born there and married at 17.  The crops yielded mostly misery as marauders frequently absconded with the harvest. Then the political climate worsened under Bolshevik and Communist rule. The family fled Russia with a single trunk carrying their most valuable possessions—farm implements.  In England, they boarded a ship bound for America. The migrant family built a rustic home in the west—where David was born in 1904. Their homesteaded plot of fallow ground became abundant wheat land. By 1917, David handled more than most young teens. After hi...