Missing Her . . .

The house is quiet. Just me and Ben, the dog. You'd think Ben would make enough noise that the house would have it's normal sounds, but it's just not right. She's in a hotel room for the weekend. Her once a month routine that I'll never get used to. I miss the scruff of her foot on the floor. The sound of her breathing. The fall of foot on the stairs. I miss her being here. And I postpone climbing the stairs to climb into our bed, where I'll miss her warmth. It's as if part of me didn't make it home from work. Ben even senses it. He looks at me from time to time as if to say, well, where is she? Let's go get her. Sunday won't be soon enough . . .

The Price of a War

We hear daily the cost of fighting a war in Iraq. Estimates are in the billions, sometimes even in the trillions. Who knows what the war will eventually cost us in dollars and in lives. What many don't realize is that the cost in lives isn't always those of the men and women who are in harms way. Some of the lives belong to the underprivileged in our urban neighbors. A program called YouthBuild, started in 1994, provides construction training and education to help high school dropouts obtain their GED and learn a trade while giving back to their communities. The people enrolled in the program renovate and rebuild houses in their own neighborhoods. For the fourth year, the program is marked to receive only $50 million in funding. 23% less than in 2004. And is causing many of the programs to close their doors. Read the YouthBuild story in the St. Louis Dispatch.

Learning from the youth . . . .

All of us have faced some kind of negative reaction to who we are or what we believe at some time in our lives. It takes a lot to stand up to that and be who we are in the face of ridicule. Teenagers and their friends across the country in small towns and big cities are standing up for themselves. Read this story about a Gay Straight Alliance in small St. Charles, MO.

Would You?

The picture says it all. Would you stop loving him? Could you?

The Coal Cars

I was sitting at a train crossing today watching a freight train go by. All the cars were those open coal cars where you can see the coal mounded over the top. Watching them go by and listening to the sound of the wheels clacking on the tracks made me realize how close we are to our ancestors. As different as our world is today from 200 years ago, so many things haven't really changed. 200 years ago they used coal in their fireplaces. A hundred years later, they used coal to power the engines pulling the trains. Today, we use coal to make power. So, in a round about way, we are still using coal to heat our houses!