I never knew how much family can mean, until I lost part of mine. My father died when I was 2, and my oldest sister died when I was 12. She was taken suddenly, and rather violently, I never got a chance to know my Dad but I was real close to my sister.

In the 3rd grade I could never read the blackboard because looking at the board always made my eyes hurt. I remember sitting in the back, over on the right hand side. And one day there was this particularly difficult question. It went something like this “Richard, what is the sum of these two numbers?” I didn't know this at the time but it was 40+35. I learned afterward. If anybody here has ever taken a test you will know that with multiple choice you at least had a chance. You had a 1 out of 2, or 1 out of 3 chance of getting it right. But what could I do with that encouraging look 3rd grade teachers give bright but unfocused students? Today there is a saying that goes like this...it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, then to speak, and remove all doubt. I didn't know this saying at the time but I was employing that tactic. I was just too scared to say anything.



I was HELD BACK, or as some called it..I Flunking Out. When this happened, I didn't even know what flunking was, and here I had gone and done it. That turned out to OK, because that’s what led my parents to the eye Doctor. And they found out I had really bad eyesight. They took me to the optometrist and had me look thru all those lenses, and find out which ones were going to work for me. I'm leaving out a lot of the good parts, otherwise we would never get out of here. but when I got my glasses, (anybody remember those big black framed ones?) On the way home I remember hanging out the back-seat window and staring at the trees and the grass and the sky and anything else I could look at. It's like I could SEE now, and that was the beginning of the world opening up for me.

But seeing the world was only half the solution, being able to understand it was the other half. And that's were my sister Kathy came in. She gave up her nights and weekends to sit beside me on the couch and take my hand in her's and move my finger across the page as she read with me and for me on the bigger words. So when I close my eyes and SEE Kathy sitting beside me on the couch, it reminds me life can be short. So we do all the good we can, to all the people we can. When I was at school, when the other kids went to recess, I went to the resource room and got out books and cassette tapes and a tape machine, and put the headphones on and listened to the narrator read the story while I followed along in the book. It felt like cheating, but I had a lot of ground to make up. Here I was in the 3rd grade (for the SECOND time) and I was not going to do this again.

That year my sister Kathy started me on a journey that isn't over, not by a long shot. I still read. I read for fun, I read to learn. I found out that like my sister I have a knack for teaching. Now when I teach, or when I share a viewpoint, somewhere in the back of my mind, it's as if I'm sharing space with Kathy. And so when I teach, the knowledge isn't GONE from my head. It doesn't drain out just because someone else has it now. I'm not diminished by what I give away. It's like I'm a candle, and I light other candles, and when I do the whole room becomes brighter.

Bill Maher and his mouth

If Bill Maher had actually called Michelle Obama the "C" word, he’d be out of a job in a heartbeat. Double standards like this is why nobody takes conservative Christians seriously. Just because some people find ol' Bill funny, does not mean he gets a pass from the rest of us. But as long as people laugh....Bill Maher will still get paid. Mr. Maher is supposed to be a comedian, and telling a comic what he can or can't say is just about impossible. We need to be able to draw the line between comedy and political commentary. But while Bill is being "funny" slipping politics in, is suspect to say the least. Just as when he is being "political" sliding into funny mode just don't cut it, not with language like that.

What year is it anyway?

We have the Ethiopian calendar. The Bahá'í calendar. The Jewish calendar, the Chinese calendar, the Japanese calendar, the Gregorian calendar, and the Julian calendar, not to be confused with a Julian date.

Ethiopian calendar: The current year according to the Ethiopian calendar is 2003, which began on September 11, 2010 AD of the Gregorian calendar. It has six epagomenal days and so the following year (2004) will begin on September 12, 2011.

Bahá’í calendar: The start of the Bahá'í year is fixed to March 21st in the Gregorian calendar. Leap years thus follow the same pattern as Gregorian leap years. The Bahá'í year 1 began in 1844, marking the start of Babism.

Jewish calendar: Starts with the day when Adam and Eve were created (the Sixth Day of Creation). We are now in the eighth century of the sixth millennium (for example, the year 2010 corresponds to the years 5770-5771).

Chinese Calendar: Feb. 10, 2010 is 4708, The year of the Tiger.

Japanese Calendar: the year 2010 corresponds to Heisei 22. It is the year of the Tiger.

Gregorian Calendar: Dionysius Exiguus
In 525 A.D. a Sythian monk in Rome, Dionysius Exiguus (Dionysius the Little), was preparing new tables for determining the date of Easter and he decided to abandon the pagan calendar in use at the time, that was based on the first year of the reign of Emperor Diocletian (29 Aug., 284). Instead he began a calendar based on his calculated year of the birth of Jesus Christ. Among the biblical data Dionysius had to work with was the following:

Luke 3:1 - Jesus was baptized in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius
Luke 3:23 says Jesus was about 30 years old at the start of his ministry, His baptism.*

Using this and other data available to him, he calculated the probable year of Jesus birth as occurring in the 753rd since the founding of the Roman empire, which he redesignated the year 1. This method of dating the year was not generally accepted for hundreds of years, but has been nearly universally adopted today.

* It can be demonstrated from the 70 week prophecy of Daniel 9 that the baptism of Jesus occurred in 27 A.D., which would place His birth about or before 3 B.C.