As a side note, last Friday was the five-year anniversary of this blog. I have written 261 weekly gratitude blogs. This is roughly equal to 130,000 words. I have more in me but perhaps not weekly. Thinking that at the end of the calendar year, I may break from weekly writing on gratitude and revisit from time to time   One of the things I have done with this page is to find history that resonates with me and reflect on it. I have learned a lot in that way. In preparing this p

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.” ― L.R. Knost   This is a reprint from 2025 about a pretty significant week for me. The COVID Isolation had lifted a bit and I was able to spend time with people I respected. On that week five years ago, I was a

I grew up in a steel town, Bethlehem PA. My dad worked for “The Company” aka “the Steel” for 43 years. The company, of course, was Bethlehem Steel. Up until the mid-1990’s it would have been hard to separate the town from the company. Everyone was in some way connected to what at one point in American history was the second-largest steel producer in the United States. Bethlehem Steel reached its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the company employed around 300,000

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?” ― Rachel Carson   This gratitude Friday I am writing about Raptors. When I say this, most people think I am talking about dinosaurs. A raptor is actually a bird of prey . Most people are thinking velociraptor . Related, although distant cousins , far removed. Bird watching is one of the few things I can do that stop the chatter in my head and holds