Writing to the Unknown Friend

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

Overcomers

2009-10-19T19:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Mike and I went downtown to cheer a friend of ours on in the Denver Marathon. We saw him at mile 18, mile 20 and at the finish line. It hasn't struck me until today how much of an accomplishment this really was. I've never run a mile in a my life unless you count an elliptical machine running. I'm a walker and a hiker, not a runner. Mike said yesterday that when he runs less than a mile on pavement, his ankles and knees start killing him. Granted, both of us could probably run a marathon if 1) we really wanted to and 2) if we trained. But from our vantage point today, running 26.2 miles is quite a feat.

Our friend finished in just over four hours -- about 10 minutes over his goal. He took the missed goal in stride, though, admitting that he hadn't trained as much as he wanted to or needed to. He has the Ironman triathlon in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, to look forward to and train for next June. My younger brother and uncle just did the Ironman Wisconsin in September, so I know what our friend is about to endure.

After the marathon, our friend said he started to struggle at about the half-way mark. As his legs burned and he willed himself to keep going, he told us he praised God for the pain, praised God that he even had the legs to run the race. Several fellow marathoners along the way -- one blind, one in a wheelchair -- served as inspiration for him to keep going.

I saw this article (linked below) today about a man who was paralyzed, learned to walk and eventually run to compete in yesterday's race. All we need is stories like this to remind us that we are capable of far more than we imagine. The battle to overcome is in our minds, not in our limitations.

Denver man overcomes paralysis to complete Denver Marathon - The Denver Post

Shared via AddThis

2009-10-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

This image by cartoonist Drew Litton captures exactly how I and a lot of Colorado Rockies fans feel about our team today. They lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Phillies Monday night. The Phillies will go on to play the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. We Rockies fans are left to reminisce about the year and look forward to next spring.

It was a disappointing finish because the Rockies this year were a better team than maybe they've ever been, winning 92 games in the regular season. The last time they went to the playoffs in 2007, they went all the way to the World Series. But that doesn't happen every time. In '07, the Rockies were the hottest team in baseball in September and October, even though they fell to the Red Sox in the actual World Series. The Rockies ran over the Phillies and the Diamondbacks in the divisional and championship series, making it look easy.

I had to remind myself last night as I watched the Rockies lose that baseball playoffs are tough, and the better team really does usually end up winning those series. Compare that to the football playoffs, which often involve teams that have no business being there. And if football teams had to play one another multiple times in the playoffs as in baseball, the result would likely be different.

Baseball is not football, however. The sheer length of the baseball season makes it mirror life in so many significant ways -- the anticipation of a new season, pressing through losses, injuries and other hard times, the excitement of a winning streak, the disappointment of a losing streak. A team that wins only half of its games is considered pretty decent -- imagine that! But take your own life over the course of six months -- how many of us have about as many good days as bad in that length of time? And then when the playoffs come, and we fans get to see the best baseball of the entire season, there are more ups and downs. How many times have the Los Angeles Angels, for example, gone to the post-season in recent years and not made it to the World Series? How many decent teams are still waiting to get into the playoffs at all?

Speaking of the Angels, I'll be rooting for them to go to the World Series and win this year -- mostly because they aren't the Yankees or the Dodgers (I can't bring myself to root for either of them). And the Phillies won last year. Besides, friends of ours in California are HUGE Angels fans . . . and if our team is already knocked out of the playoffs, we'll join our good friends in rooting on their team.

Finally, this is from my husband Mike. It's a little commentary he wrote about the Rockies:

TOO OFTEN IN PRO SPORTS, THE OUTCOME IS THE ONLY FOCUS. THE RESULT IS TOO OFTEN ALL THAT IS CELEBRATED OR CRITICIZED.

CLEARLY THE ENDING OF THE SEASON - AND HOW IT HAPPENED - IS NOT WHAT THE ROCKIES OR THEIR FANS WANTED.

HOW THE ROCKIES HANDLED THEMSELVES IN DEFEAT IS MORE THAN ADMIRABLE...HOW THEY HANDLED THEMSELVES IN MOMENTS OF TRIUMPH THROUGHOUT THE SEASON IS EQUALLY IMPRESSIVE.

THE 2009 ROCKIES GAVE US A SUMMER TO REMEMBER AND ALSO WHAT EVERY BASEBALL FAN YEARNS FOR...DRAMA IN AUTUMN.

FOR ALL THOSE THINGS I SALUTE AND THANK THEM.

Memories of Disney

2009-08-19T19:06:00.001-07:00

Do you remember the first time you went to Disneyland? If you were a kid at the time, you probably remember it as being larger than life . . . the big castle in the middle of the park, the rides that made you feel like you were in another world, characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, no longer in a cartoon but right there, alive and in person, walking around and posing for photos.

Mike and I had a chance to return to Disneyland in July for the first time in about 20 years for both of us. I have to credit our fantastic experience to good friends we visited before we went, who gave us two-day passes and mapped out everything we needed to do and see before we got there . . . everything down to indulging in the HUGE piece of chocolate cake at the Golden Horseshoe Saloon in Frontierland.

The first thing that struck me was that everything at Disney is so much smaller than I remembered it . . . the castle in the middle is actually pretty small, the rides are still fun but not quite as scary, and the park itself is contained in a much smaller space than I thought it was.

Here are some other impressions . . .

. . . My favorite attractions were in California Adventure, the park next to Disneyland -- the Toy Story ride, Screamin' California, Soarin' and the Aladdin show. The Aladdin show alone was worth the trip. It's a shortened version (45 minutes) of the Broadway show. Very well done with a genie who, no kidding, outdoes Robin Williams' humor in the movie.

. . . Many of the oldies at Disneyland are still the goodies. Pirates of the Caribbean, for one, is still pretty cool. I remember being freaked out by this ride as a kid. When I was little, I hated anything remotely dark or scary. The ride now has Captain Jack Sparrow (a very realistic image of Johnny Depp) in several places along the way. I think this one will remain one of my favorite rides at Disney. An oldie that is NOT a goodie, though, is the Jungle Cruise. I have fond memories of that when I was a kid, and those fond memories will stay in my "kid" brain. The Jungle Cruise experience as a grown-up wasn't quite the same.

. . . Space Mountain is also still quite the thrilling ride. It's hard to believe this ride is so old. It opened in the 60s and has since gone through several updates. It remains the most unique roller coaster I've ever been on.

. . . Fantasyland (it was called Storybookland when I was little) transported me back to my childhood, with Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, Peter Pan, Small World and more. We didn't go on any rides in this part of the park (the lines were amazingly long with no Fast Pass option--see below). But we walked around, took lots of photos and recalled a lot of memories from when we were kids.

. . . Some of the newer and most popular rides weren't as big of a deal as I thought they would be. The special effects that went into the Indiana Jones ride are amazing, but the ride itself was too short, really jerky (it mimicks an off-road jeep ride) and left me feeling like, "That was it?" I was glad we did this one early in the morning and only waited about 15 minutes.

. . . Disney has really done its guests a huge favor with the Fast Passes. These free passes reserve you a time to get in line and cut down on the wait time by a lot in some cases, especially with the popular rides like Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, etc.

. . . There is something to be said for just strolling around, people-watching and otherwise just taking it all in. Disney is an amazing place. When you leave, you really feel like you've spent the entire day transported to another world. That was Walt Disney's purpose in creating the park. He called it the "happiest place on earth" and wanted it to be a place where children and parents would enjoy being together.

I have to say our trip turned us into even bigger Disney fans. We've loved Disney movies for years. We went a little crazy and bought too many Disney stuffed animals while were at Disneyland. (We have plans to put up a shelf to display them all.) Now we are talking about going to Disneyworld, where there are even more theme parks to enjoy. We'll get there, I'm sure.

Why teach journalism if newspapers are dying?

2009-03-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

I found this (cut and pasted below) on salon.com today. This is a question I've pondered myself as a journalism instructor -- and my students have been asking themselves why they're studying journalism in this present age of layoffs and media outlets shutting their doors.

This question became more relevant for all of us in Denver a couple of weeks ago when the almost 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News closed. I have several friends who worked there, and many of my students looked to the News for internships and dreamed of working there full time someday. Seeing it close makes them fearful their investment in a journalism education has quickly become foolish and irrelevant.

How do I answer those fears? I tell them that the market for news and for solid reporting is not dead. The old business model that many news outlets have operated under is certainly in question . . . but the need for news will never go away. Would we tell young business school students that going into banking is worthless because of what's happened to banks as of late? That would be ridiculous. Or would we tell people skilled in making cars that the need for cars is dead because of what GM is going through?

This economic crisis is challenging everyone. Every industry is having to take a hard look at itself and how it has operated. Frankly, newspapers have been ailing for a lot longer than a lot of people realize, way longer than this economic crisis has lasted. Newspapers have needed to respond to the challenge of the Internet for years -- and some have responded and responded well. But now many are being forced to figure out how they're going to change to meet the needs of a new world.

Some have closed, like the Rocky Mountain News. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is converting to an online-only format next week. Bigger dailies are feeling the most pressure to change and change quickly. I believe we'll see more and more newspapers doing some drastic things in the coming months.

But I tell my students not to give up on journalism. I actually think it's an exciting time to be entering the field. Scary, yes. Jobs are hard to get, and those who get them must be sharper and better than their peers. But the possibilities of what journalism will become are still wide open, and people like my students get to be part of creating something new. Their generation will be on the cutting edge of what journalism will be in five, 10, 15 years.

Case in point: Yesterday, a little more than two weeks after the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors, several former Rocky staffers and a few entrepreneurs announced the creation of In Denver Times, an online-only news source. Will it work? A lot of people have their doubts. The founders are looking to raise something like $3 million in capital by April 23 through people pledging to pay $60 a year to subscribe to the online publication. In today's economic climate, will people really pay that much for news, when other news sites on the Internet are "free?" It may not pan out, but this is the direction that news is heading. It will take some trial and error before someone figures out how to make this online-only thing work -- and make it profitable.

But I believe it will happen, and all of a sudden people will begin to see the possibilities . . . and journalists will realize that their job and their passion is not tied to a particular medium. It's about gathering information and telling stories. That's what this field is all about.

Here's the article from salon.com:

Why teach journalism if newspapers are dying?
I feel guilty training kids in a trade for which the market is disappearing.
By Cary Tennis (www.salon.com)

March 17, 2009 | Dear Cary,

I am a college journalism professor. When I got into this field a half dozen or so years ago, after 17 years as a journalist, I was excited to enlighten young minds and inspire them. And I have, and hope I still do.

The problem is this: I feel like I'm teaching them something that will be as useful as Sanskrit when they graduate. I am trying to get them involved in learning the latest technology as well as teaching them important writing and life skills, so they will be employable. But every morning I read stories about how huge, venerable newspapers will likely be shuttered by the end of the year, and it absolutely freaks me out.

What the heck am I doing? I feel like I'm a participant in the theater of the absurd.

I feel horribly guilty, wondering what will become of them. I'm already hearing from former students how they've been laid off and are aimlessly trying to pursue anything to survive.

I know it's tough all over, but how can I get past the guilt and continue feeling good about what I do? I still firmly believe there will be journalism -- it has to survive -- but what about all these poor kids who are caught in this awful transitional period?

Feeling Existential

Dear Existential,

Journalists find things out and tell people about it.

If you are teaching your students how to do that, you are not only doing your job, you are giving them the gift of a lifetime.

It is not your job to guarantee them stable employment.

I'm not even sure that stable employment is good for young journalists.

Journalists exercise power. Ideally, they exercise that power on behalf of the powerless. If they know nothing about what it is like to be powerless themselves, they may come to exercise their considerable power on behalf of the already powerful.

As to the conventions of story form and lingo that are often taught in journalism school, and as to the many artifacts and customs that make up our lore, we are tradespeople and we are proud of what we know how to do. We like our tools and our lingo. But we must be smart and nimble, and if we remain sentimentally attached to the artifacts of our trade in the face of massive technological change, then we are no better than GM.

So I do not think it is such a terrible thing that your journalism students are entering an uncertain world. It's the kind of world that is ripe for enterprising journalists. It is the kind of world that needs to be reported on and explained.

Where information is kept hasn't changed all that much. The information is still in people's heads and in official records. How to get it remains much the same.

Leave it to your students to create new modes for the buying and selling of this information. Their generation will do this. I feel confident about that.

Teach them how to find out what is true and what is hidden, and how to say it so others can understand what it means and why it is important. Then you will have done your job and given them the gift of a lifetime.

Window to another world

2009-03-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had the joy of opening my students' eyes to a new world -- for the second time this semester. We took a "field trip" to the Colorado State Capitol to see a legislative hearing and talk to a lobbyist. We're going back on Wednesday for a legislative tour. Then we'll go back again next week for a meeting with the speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives.

I teach college students who have been exposed to a lot of political ideas, but their knowledge of how politics actually happen is limited to sound bites on TV. By and large, they're more in tune with what's going on nationally, and they have little clue that what happens at the state and local levels actually has more of an impact on their daily lives than anything in Washington. They are all journalism students, and part of my job is to introduce them to the "real stuff" they'll be covering as journalists.

The course I'm teaching is called Contemporary Issues. The course description is vague, and it's been passed around a lot from instructor to instructor through the years. I wanted to teach it, in part, for the challenge of taking something undefined and not only giving it legs to stand on, but making it cool and memorable. I chose to look in-depth at two topics: Religion and politics. Why those two? Because they evoke passion, commitment and controversy. And if journalists don't know how to cover these, they don't know how to cover anything.

For the first part of the semester, we looked at issues of faith and spirituality. I have some expertise in this area because I covered faith issues for seven years. I brought in guest speakers who had some sort of faith story to tell -- a Vietnamese Catholic priest who escaped from Vietnam in the early 1980s, a friend whose brother died in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. citizens until 9/11 (the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland), a representative from a church on campus that feeds the homeless on a daily basis, a woman involved in a fatal shooting at a church.

Too often the media cover faith and religion only during a crisis. (Case in point: How many of us knew much about Islam before 9/11?) I brought these people into my class to show my students that faith happens every day, not just during "big" events. Many of my students have little if no faith background at all, and they were amazed at the stories they heard. They had emotional connections to the guest speakers' stories. Their eyes were opened to things they'd never considered before -- certainly things they're usually not asked to think about for a college class.

Their eyes were opened again yesterday for our first trip to the Colorado State Capitol, which is mere blocks from our campus. I learned from asking them to look up some information related to politics and government that their knowledge of the political process goes about as deep as their knowledge of faith and religion. I'm no expert, either, but I was surprised to find out that I need to go back and cover things they should have learned in middle school social studies -- things like what's in the U.S. Constitution, why there are only two senators from each state and what legislators actually do.

My students aren't alone, however. Much of the adult population in the United States has little knowledge of appreciation of the political process in this country. I know the reasons are varied, and much of it boils down to a distrust in government. It's understandable. So we tune out, criticize, draw sweeping conclusions and forfeit our right to be involved. We depend on political ads to make decisions about what and who we vote for . . . or we don't vote at all because we've decided the system is "screwed up" and our vote doesn't matter anyway.

But our perceptions aren't always right, and frankly, I think we give up too easily. We've become what I call "opinionators," willing to spout off our complaints and what we think, only to those who don't have any part in changing anything. Instead of becoming part of the process, we embrace negativity and pessimism and feel justified in it.

Yesterday I and my students attended a legislative hearing for a bill that involved the college where I teach. The hearing wasn't long, and nothing surprising happened during it. What did surprise me, though, was to find out that average, everyday citizens rarely show up or speak at hearings like that, even though they have every right to. Since I nor my students have ever attended a hearing at the State Capitol, we had no idea that our presence there was . . . unique. The lobbyist we talked to later said, "Did you see the legislators' eyes light up when they realized you were there? They're not used to seeing citizens. Usually people don't care. Government happens because of those who show up."

And who shows up? The reporters are there to cover what happens. The lobbyists are there to defend their clients' interests.

And that's about it.

I'd venture to guess most people don't even know that anyone has the right to attend a legislative hearing -- or a court hearing for that matter. That's what it means to have an open government -- you can show up and be heard and have more of an influence than you think you'll ever have, not just for yourself, but for your neighbor and your community. Yes, you elect people to represent you, but there's also a place for you. It's what our forefathers and mothers more than 200 years ago sacrificed to give us. And many of us, sadly, are too self-involved to care.

I walked away yesterday with a meaningful reminder that we live in a great country. Our political system has its problems. I've complained about it like all of us have. But I shudder to think of what it would be like to live in a system where decisions are made behind closed doors, where there is no consideration for the well-being of the people, where average, everyday citizens cannot just "show up," listen in and speak.

My students weren't the only ones whose eyes were opened yesterday. Mine were, too.

The year in photos

2009-01-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I thought I'd share some photos from 2008 -- they are ones Mike and I took at various places throughout the year.

Hope you have a wonderful 2009.

Hanging Lake, near Glenwood Springs, CO -- August

Fall in Colorado -- September and October (Left: Abandoned cabin near Telluride. Next two photos: A woman and her dog relaxing at the Maroon Bells; Anne on Kebler Pass, near Crested Butte, CO.

Nature photographers line up to capture the Maroon Bells outside Aspen on a beautiful fall morning.
New York City -- July (Left: Statue of Liberty. Below: A dad and his daughter enjoy a moment outside the carousel at Central Park)

Going to see The Lion King on Broadway
Fife and drum corps at Williamsburg, VA. in May
The Washington Monument -- view from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. -- May
Under a a BIG magnolia tree in Winston Salem, NC -- May
With George (Washington) at a Washington Nationals game in May
A Vietnam veteran finds a friend's name at the Vietnam Memorial -- Washington, D.C. in May
Bailey's Chapel -- outside Winston-Salem, NC in May
Kayaking on Grand Lake, CO in July
Grand Lake, CO
At frozen Boulder Falls outside Boulder in March
View from the top of Copper Mountain Ski Area in January

Ringing in the New Year

2008-12-29T10:42:00.001-08:00

I think most of us hope the coming year is better than 2008, for a variety of reasons. Many have had a rough year in more ways than one. I Googled "prayer for the new year" today and came up with the following thoughts (below) from www.appleseed.org.

The reality is that more rough times may be ahead, but one thing I've always liked about the new year is the opportunity to reflect on what I've taken away from the past 12 months and to look ahead to new things to come.

Some things I've taken from the past year include a deeper appreciation for time spent with family and friends. I don't know who came up with the idea that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to time. I've learned this year that quantity counts. One other thing I've learned this year, through of a series of difficult situations with students and classes, is that it's more important to me that I do what's right than to be liked. Let's just say I wouldn't get the award for most popular professor of the year. But I realized doing what's right is all worth it when you see the fruit of it.

No matter what comes, we always have reason to hope, not a worldly hope in material things or outward appearances, but a spiritual hope in what God will do in us through -- and sometimes despite -- outward circumstances.

May God fill you will that hope this week as we ring in 2009.

Recipe for a Happy New Year (Anonymous)

Take twelve fine, full-grown months; see that these are thoroughly free from old memories of bitterness, rancor and hate, cleanse them completely from every clinging spite; pick off all specks of pettiness and littleness; in short, see that these months are freed from all the past—have them fresh and clean as when they first came from the great storehouse of Time. Cut these months into thirty or thirty-one equal parts. Do not attempt to make up the whole batch at one time (so many persons spoil the entire lot this way) but prepare one day at a time.

Into each day put equal parts of faith, patience, courage, work (some people omit this ingredient and so spoil the flavor of the rest), hope, fidelity, liberality, kindness, rest (leaving this out is like leaving the oil out of the salad dressing— don’t do it), prayer, meditation, and one well-selected resolution. Put in about one teaspoonful of good spirits, a dash of fun, a pinch of folly, a sprinkling of play, and a heaping cupful of good humor.

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I Am the New Year (Bible Illustrator)

I am the new year. I am an unspoiled page in your book of time.

I am your next chance at the art of living. I am your opportunity to practice what you have learned about life during the last twelve months.

All that you sought and didn’t find is hidden in me, waiting for you to search it but with more determination.

All the good that you tried for and didn’t achieve is mine to grant when you have fewer conflicting desires.

All that you dreamed but didn’t dare to do, all that you hoped but did not will, all the faith that you claimed but did not have—these slumber lightly, waiting to be awakened by the touch of a strong purpose.

I am your opportunity to renew your allegiance to Him who said, "Behold, I make all things new."

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A Year of Time (Steven B. Cloud, Pulpit Helps, Vol. 14, # 2)

Though even thinking on the subject of time may prove discomforting, it is not a bad idea—especially at the beginning of a new year.

As we look into we look at a block of time. We see 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds. And all is a gift from God. We have done nothing to deserve it, earn it, or purchased it. Like the air we breathe, time comes to us as a part of life.

The gift of time is not ours alone. It is given equally to each person. Rich and poor, educated and ignorant, strong and weak—every man, woman and child has the same twenty-four hours every day.

Another important thing about time is that you cannot stop it. There is no way to slow it down, turn it off, or adjust it. Time marches on.

And you cannot bring back time. Once it is gone, it is gone. Yesterday is lost forever. If yesterday is lost, tomorrow is uncertain. We may look ahead at a full year’s block of time, but we really have no guarantee that we will experience any of it.

Obviously, time is one of our most precious possessions. We can waste it. We can worry over it. We can spend it on ourselves. Or, as good stewards, we can invest it in the kingdom of God.

The new year is full of time. As the seconds tick away, will you be tossing time out the window, or will you make every minute count?

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Time for New Beginnings (Taylor Addison, Blue Mountain Arts, 1989)

This is a time for reflection as well as celebration.

As you look back on the past year and all that has taken place in your life,

Remember each experience for the good that has come of it
and for the knowledge you have gained.

Remember the efforts you have made and the goals you have reached.

Remember the love you have shared and the happiness you have brought.

Remember the laughter, the joy, the hard work, and the tears.

And as you reflect on the past year, also be thinking of the new one to come.

Because most importantly, this is a time of new beginnings
and the celebration of life."

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A New Year’s Prayer (Anonymous)

Dear Lord, please give me…
A few friends who understand me and remain my friends;
A work to do which has real value,
without which the world would be the poorer;
A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed;
An understanding heart;
A sense of humor;
Time for quiet, silent meditation;
A feeling of the presence of God;
The patience to wait for the coming of these things,
With the wisdom to recognize them when they come. Amen.

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A New Year (William Arthur Ward)

Another fresh new year is here …
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!

This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest …
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!

I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!

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A New Year’s Prayer

May God make your year a happy one!
Not by shielding you from all sorrows and pain,
But by strengthening you to bear it, as it comes;
Not by making your path easy,
But by making you sturdy to travel any path;
Not by taking hardships from you,
But by taking fear from your heart;
Not by granting you unbroken sunshine,
But by keeping your face bright, even in the shadows;
Not by making your life always pleasant,
But by showing you when people and their causes need you most,
and by making you anxious to be there to help.
God’s love, peace, hope and joy to you for the year ahead.

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A Prayer for the New Year

Come, Holy Spirit,
Spirit of the Risen Christ, be with us today and always.
Be our Light, our Guide, and our Comforter.
Be our Strength, our Courage, and our Sanctifier.
May this new year be a time of deep spiritual growth for us,
A time of welcoming your graces and gifts,
A time for forgiving freely and unconditionally,
A time for growing in virtue and goodness.

Come, Holy Spirit,
Be with us today and always. Amen.

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A Morning Wish (W.R. Hunt)

"The sun is just rising on the morning of another day, the first day of the new year. What can I wish that this day, that this year, may bring to me?

Nothing that shall make the world of others poorer, nothing at the expense of others; but just those few things which in their coming do not stop with me but touch me rather, as they pass and gather strength:

A few friends who understand me, and yet remain my friends.
A work to do which has real value without which the world would feel the poorer.
A return for such work small enough not to tax unduly anyone who pays.
A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed.
An understanding heart.
A sight of the eternal hills and unbelting sea, and of something beautiful the individual hand has made.
A sense of humor and the power to laugh.
A little leisure with nothing to do.
A few moments of quiet, silent meditation. The sense of the presence of God.
And the patience to wait for the coming of these things, with the wisdom to know them when they come."

Guide words: An Anthology of Inspiration and Humor, p. 13

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New Year’s Message

"I asked the New Year for some message sweet,
Some rule of life with which to guide my feet;
I asked, and paused: it answered soft and low,
‘God’s will to know.’

‘Will knowledge then suffice, New Year?’ Aloud I cried.
And, ere the question into silence died,
The answer came, ‘Nay, but remember, too
God’s will to do.’

Once more I asked, ‘Is there no more to tell?’
And once again the answer sweetly fell,
‘Yes! this thing, all other things above:
God’s will to love.’"

Guidewords: An Anthology of Inspiration and Humor

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New Year’s Prayer (Anonymous)

"Heavenly Father, for this coming year
Just one request I bring.

I do not pray for happiness or any earthly thing.
I do not ask to understand the way you lead me;
But this I ask—teach me to do the thing that pleases You.
I want to know Your guiding voice,
To walk with you each day.

Heavenly Father,
Make me swift to hear and ready to obey;
And thus the year I now begin
A happy year will be,

If I am seeking just to do
The thing that pleases You."

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A Prayer for the New Year
Come, Holy Spirit,
Spirit of the Risen Christ,
Be with us today and always.
Be our Light, our Guide,
And our Comforter.
Be our Strength, our Courage,
And our Sanctifier.

May this new year be a time
Of deep spiritual growth for us,
A time of welcoming
Your graces and gifts,
A time for forgiving freely
And unconditionally,
A time for growing
In virtue and goodness.

Come, Holy Spirit,
Be with us today and always.
Amen.

Christmas cartoons and a quiz

2008-12-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

I thought these cartoons and Christmas carol quiz were kind of fun, certainly something you could share with friends and family around the holiday party or dinner table this holiday season. Thought I'd share them with you.

Enjoy,
Anne

What are the names of these famous (and not so famous) Christmas carols? (The first one has been done for you as an example.)

1. Quadruped with crimson proboscis - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

2. 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. without noise

3. Miniscule hamlet in the far east

4. Ancient benevolent despot

5. Adorn the vestibule

6. Exuberance directed to the planet

7. Listen, aerial spirits harmonizing

8. Monarchial trio

9. Yonder in the haystack

10. Assemble, everyone who believes

11. Hallowed post meridian

12. Fantasies of a colorless December 25th

13. Tin tintinnabulums

14. A dozen 24-hour Yule periods

15. Befell during the transparent bewitching hour

16. Homo sapien of crystallized vapor

17. I merely desire a pair of incisors

18. I spied my maternal parent osculating a fat man in red

19. Perambulating through a December solstice fantasy

20. Aloft on the acme of the abode

21. Slumber in ethereal quiet.

22. Hey there! The announcing celestial beings carol.

23. O greetings of ease and happiness.

24. On commencement of Yuletide my honey bestowed upon me.

25. Decorate the passage with branches of evergreen sprigs.

26. Once upon a misty night prior to Christ's birthday.

27. Ooh, celestial body of marvel, celestial body of strength.

28. With a vegetable stem smoker and clothes fastening snout.

29. It's a fluff-ball sphere in the cold season.

30. Come on, come on, come on, get moving.

31. O scared darkness, the asterisks are brilliantly shimmering.

32. It's fixin' to appear extremely similar to December 25th.

33. Small children with their optical aids entirely illuminated.

34. Loyal buddies that are important to ourselves collect closely to ourselves again.

35. Boppin' while circling the tannenbaum...

36. Royalty of royalties always and always...

37. O approach, y'all devoted happy and victorious...

38. Urban walkways, congested walkways, trimmed in a festive manner...

39. Ah! The atmospheric condition beyond is terrific...

40. Percussion instruments jingle, are you harking...

41. Remarked the evening breeze to the tiny sheep...

42. Wishing your dates be gleeful and intelligent...

43. Harmony on the planet, kindness to Homo sapiens...

44. Hop in the sack, hide your noggin, since the fat man comes this evening...

45. Ourselves bid yourselves a joyous Noel and a cheerful neoteric 365 days...

Holiday yummies

2008-12-10T11:29:00.001-08:00

I've been collecting holiday recipes for a project I'm putting together this holiday season. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with you here. These come from a variety of sources -- the Hershey's and Nestle Web sites, a cookbook my church put together several years ago, a crockpot cookbook and the Kraft Food Web site.

Happy holiday eating!

Savory Parmesan Bites
1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
1 cup KRAFT Grated Parmesan Cheese, divided
2 cans (8 oz. each) refrigerated crescent dinner rolls
1 cup chopped red peppers
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
HEAT oven to 350°F. Beat cream cheese and 3/4 cup Parmesan with mixer until well blended.
SEPARATE crescent rolls into 8 rectangles; press perforations together to seal. Spread each with 3 Tbsp. cream cheese mixture. Top with peppers and parsley. Fold 1 long side of each dough rectangle over filling to center; fold again to enclose filling. Cut each into 4 squares. Place, seam-sides down, on baking sheet. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan.
BAKE 13 to 15 min. or until golden brown.

Chicken Tortilla Soup
A great casual holiday meal.

4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 can (4 ounces) chopped mild green chiles, drained
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 yellow onion, diced
2 cans (15 ounces each) diced tomatoes, undrained
½ to 1 cup chicken broth
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons fresh, chopped cilantro
4 corn tortillas, sliced into ¼ inch strips
½ cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese to top soup
Put chicken thighs in bottom of crockpot
Combine chiles, garlic, onion, tomatoes,
½ cup broth and cumin in small bowl. Pour mixture over chicken.
Cover, cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3 hours until chicken is tender. Remove chicken; use two forks to shred the meat and return to crockpot. Adjust seasonings and add more broth if necessary.
Just before serving, add tortillas and cilantro to crockpot. Stir to blend.

Overnight Egg Bake
Mike's and my favorite brunch main dish -- perfect for Christmas morning.

3 (12 oz.) cups shredded cheddar
2 (12 oz.) cups shredded mozzarella
6 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped
1/3 cup sliced green onions
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 oz. cooked turkey sausage, cooked
½ cup flour
1 ¾ cup milk
2 tablespoons snipped parsley
8 eggs, beaten

In large bowl, lightly toss cheeses together. Sprinkle half of cheese mixture in ungreased 13-by-9 baking dish. In medium skillet, cook mushrooms, bell peppers and onion in olive oil until vegetables are tender. Arrange vegetables over cheese. Arrange sausage over vegetables. Sprinkle remaining cheese over sausage. (Tip: To make ahead, prepare to this point; cover and refrigerate overnight.)
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. In large bowl using wire wisk, blend flour, milk, parsley and eggs. Pour over layers in baking dish. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until mixture is set and top is lightly browned. Let stand about 10 minutes before serving.

Candy Cane Blossoms
These are the cookies pictured above.

• 48 HERSHEY'S KISSES Brand Candy Cane Mint Candies
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons milk
• Red or green sugar crystals, granulated sugar or powdered sugar
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Remove wrappers from candies.

2. Beat butter, granulated sugar, egg and vanilla in large bowl until well blended. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; add alternately with milk to butter mixture, beating until well blended.

3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in red sugar, granulated sugar, powdered sugar or a combination of any of the sugars. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned and cookie is set. Remove from oven; cool 2 to 3 minutes. Press a candy piece into center of each cookie. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. About 4 dozen cookies.

Rich Raspberry Swirl Brownies
I started making these several years ago. Very rich, so cut them into small pieces. They are soooo good!

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup baking cocoa
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs, divided
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup seedless red raspberry jam
• 1 2/3 cups (10-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® SWIRLED™ Semi-Sweet & Premier White Morsels, divided
Directions:
PREHEAT oven to 350° F. Grease 9-inch-square baking pan.

COMBINE cocoa, flour and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Spread 1 cup batter into prepared baking pan. Sprinkle pecans over batter. Stir jam until smooth. Drizzle over pecans. Beat remaining batter and egg in same large bowl until light in color. Stir in 1 cup Swirled Morsels. Spread evenly over raspberry jam. Top with remaining Swirled Morsels.

BAKE for 30 to 33 minutes or until center is set.

Rich Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars
Another holiday favorite. Can you tell I like rich desserts? Another treat to cut into small pieces.

2 1/3 cups flour
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
¾ cup butter or margarine
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 cups (12 oz. package) semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
1 cup chopped nuts
1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk
1¾ cup (10 oz package) English toffee bits, divided

Heat oven to 350. Grease 9x13-inch baking pan. Stir together flour and brown sugar in large bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives until mixture resembles course crumbs. Add egg; mix well. Stir in half of chocolate chips and all of nuts. Reserve 1½ cups of mixture. Press remaining crumb mixture onto bottom of pan.
Bake 10 minutes. Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over hot crust. Top with half of toffee bits. Sprinkle reserved crumb mixture and remaining chocolate chips over top.
Bake 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Sprinkle with remaining toffee bits. Cool completely. Cut into bars.

A sign that you're under stress

2008-11-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

Want a good chuckle? A family member sent this to me by e-mail. I had to share it here since we're about to enter a season typically characterized by stress.

The picture here has two identical dolphins in it. It was used in a case study on stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital.

Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical, a person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins. The more differences a person finds between the dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing. Look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences, you may want to take a vacation.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Road tripping

2008-10-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

I never blogged about our weekend/day trips to see the fall colors in the high country, so here's the tale of our adventures and a few pictures for you to enjoy.

A few months back, we planned a two-day trip to the Aspen area in late September, around the time we thought the colors would be at their peak. Well, we were a few days too early. The warm fall days slowed down the changing of the leaves this year. We enjoyed those two days but decided the following Saturday (Sept. 27) to do a power road trip in a day.

We left at 3:30 a.m., drove four hours to the Maroon Bells -- probably THE most photographed site in Colorado -- and spent the morning there taking pictures and hiking. Then we headed south on Highway 133 over McClure Pass, then over Kebler Pass to Crested Butte. It sprinkled/drizzled much of the way over Kebler, but we still had a great time. The colors were amazing -- we highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great place to see fall in Colorado. It's a dirt road but totally accessible by a passenger car.

We pulled into Crested Butte around 5 p.m., grabbed some coffee for the road and then headed home through Gunnison on Highway 50 and Fairplay & Bailey by way of U.S. 285. What a day! In all we were gone 19 hours. But seeing the fall colors at their peak in some of Colorado's most spectacular places was worth it.

The following weekend (Oct. 3 & 4), we decided to do another road trip of all road trips -- hey, you have to do these kinds of things while you have the time and opportunity, right? We drove Friday afternoon five hours to Montrose in western Colorado. The next morning we went to the Dallas Divide, another well-known place to take photos in Colorado. We had never been there before, but we know now where we're going back next fall. We drove into Telluride, probably the most out-of-the-way of Colorado's ski resorts. We went back to Montrose via Last Dollar Road, which is really a four-wheel drive road but we did it in our Nissan Sentra -- yes, it can be done if you drive slowly. This road has some beautiful aspen forests and spectacular vistas of the San Juans. We headed back home via Olathe, Delta, then again over Highway 133 and McClure Pass. The pass was ablaze with color that day, but we couldn't see much out the car windows because it was a downpour.

Needless to say, last weekend we did absolutely nothing. After so much road tripping, it was nice to sit around.

The fall colors in the mountains are done now. It has since snowed, and now it's that quiet, kind of lifeless season between the glory of fall and the activity of the winter ski season. The first of the ski areas opened today, believe it or not, but the season won't be in full swing until late November. It's fall in Denver now, and we're scouting out places this weekend to take more pictures.

Then we're off on another crazy road trip - a trek across Kansas to our final destination of Columbia, Missouri. The Colorado Buffaloes are playing the Mizzou Tigers at Missouri's homecoming on Oct. 25. We're going to the game and will spend the weekend in my old stomping grounds -- Mizzou is my alma mater. (With the Missouri football team at No. 11 in the polls, this is payback for my college years, when Colorado had the good football team and Missouri was terrible.)

And undoubtedly we'll see another part of the country ablaze with fall colors along the way.

At the Maroon Bells near Aspen

The Dallas Divide -- the gateway to the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado
The town of Telluride
One of my favorite shots of the Maroon Bells
Maroon Creek

Talking politics

2008-10-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

I thought this article in today's Rocky Mountain News was great.

For the newspaper feature writing class I'm teaching this semester, it's an excellent example of how to take a topic that real people can relate to -- talking politics with others in a heated political campaign -- and turn it into a story.

I'm not sure I'll even try the tips the story suggests, and there are several reasons for that. Mostly I'm just tired of the political campaign season and its emotionalism. The mute button on the remote control has become my saving grace -- I just can't take another political ad. I skip most of the political stories online and in the newspaper. I already know who I'm voting for and what I'm voting for/against in terms of ballot issues, and nothing anyone says -- even a discussion, heated or not, with friends or colleagues -- is going to change my mind.

In the classroom, I keep my mouth shut (for the most part) regarding politics. I feel like I'm outnumbered about 25,000 to one on campus -- you can guess my political affiliation from that statement. My family is definitely divided on politics. The good news is my husband and I see the same way on most everything, so at least there's peace at home. The bad thing is we have such similar temperaments, and this political season has just made us mad. We've both had to avoid all things politics lately.

There's a group of senior citizens at a local Starbucks I frequent who show up about the same time every day and talk -- you guessed it -- politics. They've been doing this for several years, and I find it entertaining to listen to them. The Republicans seem outnumbered by the Democrats in the group, but it's rather heartening to me that they're all still friends. I never hear any shouting come from their corner of the coffee shop. Perhaps we all have something to learn from them.

Media overload

2008-10-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure about you, but I've been overwhelmed with the last few weeks of media coverage of the country's financial woes.

Between the recent events in Congress and the upcoming presidential election, I've hit what I call "media overload" -- and I keep telling myself I ought to go on a media fast. Yes, fast from all the "talking heads" for a period of time, clear my head of the preponderance of opinions. My husband and I have done this sort of fasting before -- once on accident while we were on vacation at a hotel where there were no TVs in the rooms, and once on purpose because we needed to clear some space in our heads. It's amazing how worry, anger and strife dissipated during those fasts.

I'm not sure I'll actually follow through on this desire to give up the media for a while. It is, after all, election season, and even if I tried to fast from it all, I still can't get away from the advertising on fliers and bumper stickers, can't escape the discussions and opinions I hear walking the halls where I teach, etc. Even trying to mind my own business and drink a cup of coffee at Starbucks, I inevitably overhear someone pontificating about these issues. It's also awfully hard to fast from the media when you're in it and teaching it to other people -- particularly in the middle of a presidential campaign like this one.

This evening I read a story about the financial situation that was a bit of a breath of fresh air, which is the next best thing to the fast I probably won't do. I wanted to pass along the link. It's the only thing I've read in the past two weeks that looks at the issue from a spiritual perspective. I don't know about you, but I need that perspective today.

Click here to read the story

Who's responsible for the mess?

2008-09-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting editorial from Investor's Business Daily about the source of our country's financial crisis. A lot of words have been exchanged this week in the political realm about who's responsible.

The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank, looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick, padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.

Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.

In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.

But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved from bankruptcy by Bank of America.

At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income households.

The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact, the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great Society and New Deal in size and scope.

There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons. And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the road.

But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-meaning, if misguided, acts.

Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.

While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.

Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's fingerprints all over it.

How much do you know about your country?

2008-09-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

A friend recently sent me the following from msnbc.com:

Could you pass the latest citizenship test?

In October 2008 a new version of the U.S. citizenship test will be taken by all applicants. Could you pass it? The questions are usually selected from a list of 100 samples that prospective citizens can look at ahead of the interview. Some are easy, some are not. We have picked some of the more difficult ones.

NOTES: Candidates are not given multiple choices in the naturalization interview. The following questions have been adapted from the immigration service’s sample questions.

1. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

George Washington

Thomas Jefferson

James Madison

John Hancock

2. When was the Constitution written?

1774

1776

1787

1865

3. What are the first words of the Constitution?

When, in the course of human events

In order to form a more perfect Union

To whom it may concern

We the People

4. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?

The Preamble

The Bill of Rights

The Statute of Liberty

Declaration of Independence

5. Which of the following is NOT a right outlined in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence?

Life

Liberty

Right to bear arms

Pursuit of Happiness

6. Which one of these is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment? Freedom of the press

Right to trial by jury

Right to bear arms

Right to happiness

7. How many amendments does the Constitution have?

10

17

23

27

8. Why does the United States flag have 13 stripes?

One for each state in the Union

The number of seats in the Cabinet

They represent the 13 original colonies

One for each article of the Constitution

9. Which of these was NOT among the original states?

New Hampshire

New York

Delaware

Maine

10. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?

Louisiana

Vermont

Alaska

Maine

11. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. Which of the following is NOT a federal power?

To declare war

To print money

To declare treaties

To provide education

12. Which of the following is NOT one of the three branches of the government?

Federal

Judicial

Executive

Legislative

13. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?

100

365

435

646

14. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?

2

4

6

8

15. In what month do we vote for President?

January

February

September

November

16. If both the President and Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?

Secretary of State

Secretary of Defense

The Speaker of the House

President Pro Tempore of the Senate

17. Who was president during World War I?

Theodore Roosevelt

Warren G. Harding

Franklin Roosevelt

Woodrow Wilson

18. How many justices are there on the U.S. Supreme Court?

3

5

7

9

19. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States?

John Paul Stevens

John G. Roberts, Jr

Antonin Scalia

Samuel Alito

20. What did Susan B. Anthony do?

Hid John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln

Designed and made the original U.S. flag

Designed the original U.S. currency

Fought for women’s rights

Click here to actually take the quiz and see how you score. (By the way, I took it and got one wrong.)

Whose You Are

2008-09-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to share a little portion of a Bible study on King David that Mike and I just started last week. It's called Annointed, Transformed, Redeemed, and it's based on an event called "Deeper Still" that Priscilla Shirer, Beth Moore and Kay Arthur hosted in Nashville.

Technically it's a women's study -- kudos to my husband for his willingness to do a study written for women -- but it's appropriate for anyone. We wanted to do a study on David, and this is only of the only ones we found out there. Besides, I figure anything involving these three dynamic women is worth doing. If you've ever done any of their studies, you know what I'm talking about.

We really enjoyed the following part from the first session, taught by Priscilla Shirer. We have the audio version of it, but I can't upload it to this blog. So the written version will have to do.

May it be thought-provoking and encouraging to you today.

WHOSE YOU ARE
By Priscilla Shirer

I will say this until the day that I die:

He is the First and the Last,
The Beginning and the End,
He’s the Keeper of creation and
The Creator of all.
He’s the Architect of the universe and
The Manager of all time.

He always was, always is, always will be
Unmoved, unchanged, undefeated and never undone.

He was bruised but brought healing.
He was pierced but eased pain.
He was persecuted but brought freedom.
He was dead and brings life.
He is risen to bring power and
He reigns to bring peace.

The world can’t understand Him,
Armies can’t defeat Him,
Schools can’t explain Him and
Leaders, they can’t ignore Him.

Herod couldn’t kill Him,
Nero couldn’t crush Him,
The new age cannot replace Him and
Oprah cannot explain Him away.

You remind yourself that
He is light,
He is love,
He is longevity and
He is the Lord.

He is goodness and kindness and faithfulness and He is God.
He is holy and righteous and powerful and pure.

His Ways are right,
His Word eternal,
His Will unchanging and
His Mind is on us.

He’s our Savior,
Our Guide,
Our Peace,
Our Joy,
Our Comfort,
Our Lord and
He rules our lives.

I serve Him because
His bond is love,
His yoke is easy,
His burden is light and
His goal for us is abundant life.

I follow Him because
He’s the Wisdom of the wise,
The Power of the powerful,
The Ancient of Days,
The Ruler of rulers,
The Leader of all leaders.

His goal is a relationship with me.

He’ll never leave you,
Never forsake you,
Never mislead you,
Never forget you,
Never overlook you and
Never cancel your appointment in His appointment book.
Never.

When you fall, He’ll lift you up.
When you fail, He’ll forgive you.
When you’re weak, He’s strong.
When you’re lost, He’s your way.
When you’re afraid, He’s your courage.
When you stumble, He will steady you.
When you’re hurt, He’s going to heal you.
When you’re broken, He will mend you.
When you’re blind, He will lead you.
When you’re hungry, He will feed you.
When you face trials, He’s with you.

When I face persecution, He shields me.
When I face problems, He will comfort me.
When I face loss, He will provide for me and
When we face death, He will carry us all home to meet Him.

He is everything
For everybody,
Everywhere,
Every time
And in every way.

He is your God and that is who you belong to.

From baseball to drugs back to baseball: Josh Hamilton's story

2008-07-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

If you have any interest in this week's Major League Baseball All-Star Game in New York, then you know about Josh Hamilton, a player for the Texas Rangers who wowed everyone Monday night in the event's home run derby.

It's an event where big home-run hitters in all of Major League baseball try to get as many home runs as they can in three rounds of competition. Hamilton hit a record-breaking 28 homers in the first round. Crack after crack of the bat, Hamilton and the crowd watched, amazed, as the balls flew into the crowd, many of them into the upper decks of the stadium -- those are some home runs! Hamilton said before the event he wanted to hit one out of the ballpark. He didn't. He didn't even end up winning the competition, but all the sports talk today is about his first round with 28 homers.

Last night's derby isn't what makes him so amazing, though. It's his story -- from No. 1 draft pick in 1999 to drug addict back to baseball again. This morning I watched an old story on ESPN about Hamilton. It made no mention of how he made his amazing comeback to baseball. A colleague of Mike's sent him this story, linked below, which alludes to the how and why. This ESPN.com article is Hamilton's story in his own words, written last year. I thought you'd like to read it. It's kind of long, but it's well worth the read.

A week in the Big Apple

2008-07-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

New York skyline from Ellis Island

Restaurant in Little Italy

At a Yankees game. This is the last year of the old Yankees Stadium, constructed in 1923. The new stadium is under construction right across the street.

South Street Seaport

Part of the reality of New York -- piles of garbage bags along the streets. There aren't too many places to put garbage ready for pickup in crowded Manhattan, so you end up navigating around it wherever you walk.

With our friend Donn (longtime friend of Mike's dad) in Brooklyn

Central Park

At Times Square. The entire area is the very picture of consumerism. The constant stream of people is unbelievable.

Statue of Liberty

The best part of New York -- pizza shops and hot dog stands everywhere!

Central Park again

Monument Park at Yankees Stadium, a shrine to all the famous Yankees players. We arrived at the stadium two and a half hours early and stood in line for an hour to see this place. I have a growing appreciation for baseball, but I thought it was a little over the top, especially the handful of people I saw kissing plaques to players like Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.

Trinity Church spire in the middle of Wall Street area. Ground Zero isn't far from here. We couldn't see much (it's all under construction), but being where the Twin Towers fell was meaningful. Especially touching was St. Paul's Chapel, a church across the street from Ground Zero that became an impromptu place of volunteer ministry as people combed through the wreckage of the towers for several months following 9/11.

It's been WAY too long since I've posted here. It has been a busy couple of months -- I taught a class in June, did a big writing project that I just finished today, and my husband Mike and I spent last week in New York City visiting a friend and seeing the sights. I've posted some photos from our trip.

We did a lot in five days in NYC. We walked around Wall Street and Ground Zero, the South Street Seaport, went to a Yankees game, walked through Central Park and down Fifth Avenue, did a short tour of Greenwich Village, Soho and Little Italy. We spent a day visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and saw "The Lion King" on Broadway. Finally we had lunch at Tavern on the Green, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and did a short walking tour of the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. Can you tell we did a lot of walking?

Things we love about New York: The subway (public transportation is so convenient there); pizza and deli sandwich shops on every corner; the distinctiveness of the neighborhoods, culturally, architecturally and otherwise; the peace and quiet of Central Park in the middle of the big city, unless you happen to go on a day when a Bon Jovi concert is going on there, like we did on Saturday; and the "busyness" of everything in New York. Nowhere else in the world are so many things happening at once. The sheer number of people on Manhattan (not even counting all the summer tourists) is staggering.

The crowds, the heat & humidity and the pace of the city wore on us after several days. We were glad to return home to our quiet little lives in Denver. That's another thing we love about going on any vacation, whether to New York City or somewhere else: We love going away, but being in another place somehow makes us more thankful for the home we have.

Tornadoes hit home

2008-05-27T16:35:00.000-07:00

We were on vacation in Washington D.C. last week when we found out about the tornadoes that struck the Greeley, Colo. area, where Mike and I lived for many years. The tornadoes didn't make news in D.C. -- I just happened to be browsing the Internet one day, logged on to a Denver TV station's Web site and saw photos of the tornado damage.

The tornadoes hit a 35-mile region last Thursday. Amazingly, only one person was killed. The hardest hit was Windsor, a charming little town between Greeley and Fort Collins. One tornado came within two blocks of our former pastor's house. One of my good friends was at work when the tornado struck her building in Windsor. There was no basement, so she and her co-workers went inside a first-floor bathroom. She and another one of colleagues prayed aloud the entire time. "Were you afraid?" I asked her. "No, I wasn't afraid," she said. "I just felt this incredible peace."

She told me it didn't look or sound like what tornadoes are supposed to be like -- or at least what other people have described them to be. Photos reveal a low, big black cloud, but no funnel. My friend said she and her colleagues watched the storm for quite a while before it became apparent that a tornado was headed straight toward them. There was no sound of a freight train. My friend said it was eerily silent, then suddenly everyone's ears started popping because of the air pressure. When they ventured outside a few moments later, they saw cars in the parking lot with their windows literally sucked out of them. And across the street buildings that had been standing a few minutes before looked like piles of sticks. Click here to see aerial footage of the tornado damage.

Since the Weld County tornadoes, even worse storms have hit Iowa and Minnesota. I'm watching a news story about the damage there as I write this, and I'm amazed at what I see. One town was obliterated, entire neighborhoods now just mountains of stuff.

It's hard to put storms like these in perspective unless it directly affects you. Still, the fact that the tornadoes in Weld County hit so close to home for us -- we know so many people in the area -- makes me realize how fragile our lives really are. The tornadoes will undoubtedly draw the Northern Colorado community closer together. I've always thought people in the Greeley area are the salt of the earth, and what's happened will make them even more so.

One Windsor tornado victim was quoted in a news story today as saying, "I have my old life, and I have my new life" -- meaning her life before the tornado, and her life after. All of it certainly makes the worries of everyday life (rising gas prices, work stress, family woes, etc.) seem more trivial -- and more bearable.

My favorite time of year

2008-05-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

Spring is my favorite time of year. I had fun taking these pictures this week of the blooming fruit trees in our neighborhood. (Spring is about two weeks late this year -- I have been waiting for these pink and white blooms to appear since early April, and they just started this week.) You'd never know it was spring today because of the snowshowers that blanketed the ground with another round of winter this morning.

I'm not sure when spring became my favorite season. When I was a kid, it was winter, mostly because I grew up skiing, ice skating, sledding and doing other winter things. I think my four years in college in Missouri woke me up to the wonder of spring. There it lasts a lot longer, and the blooming of the season is much more diverse -- with dogwoods and redbuds, real April showers (not snow) and blooming flowers that last. In Denver spring seems to take so long to start, then winter comes back, then spring returns for a short while before, all of a sudden, it's summertime.

Hope you're enjoying the newness of the season wherever you are.

Today Show comes to Colorado

2008-04-18T21:01:00.001-07:00

My friend Linda and I on the slopes.

Linda gets into her monoski

Volunteers unload all the goodies (ski equipment) from the Today Show truck.

Today Show weatherman Al Roker interviews Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler.
The crowd gathers with signs to welcome the Today Show crew.
A truck dumps more snow onto the Today Show "set" at Eldora Ski Area near Boulder, CO.
The Today Show crew sets up equipment (i.e. lots of lights)before airing live -- 7:15 a.m. Eastern, 5:15 a.m. Mountain -- on Tuesday, April 15.

Before the weekend I wanted to post some photos of what I was doing EARLY Tuesday morning.

A friend of mine involved in a disabled ski program at Eldora Ski Area outside Boulder invited to drive up at 4:30 a.m. to be at the ski area for a live feed of the Today Show. The NBC morning show was there as part of weatherman Al Roker's "Lend a Hand" charity program. The program donated a bunch of snowboards, skis, parkas, etc. to the disabled ski program, which is the only all-volunteer ski program of its kind in Colorado.

I'd never been to a Today Show taping. It was cold, windy, dark and definitely early (it was a live feed for the eastern time zone audience), but I estimated about 250 people showed up. Some people painted signs and held them up, as is typical for a Today Show audience. Most just stood around trying to get a glimpse of Al Roker and Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler when he showed up. Why Cutler was there, no one really knew. He's not involved in the disabled ski program, but he sure did plug his own charity on camera.

One funny thing that proves everything is staged for TV: Before the taping began, the Today Show people had extra snow transfered by truck into the staging area . . . I guess so that whever Al Roker was standing, it would look like winter. You see, in spite of the cold on Tuesday morning, it is springtime in the Rockies, and much of the snow at the base of ski areas has melted. In fact, most Colorado ski areas, including Eldora, had closed for the season the weekend before the Today Show came.

And for the camera, of course, there was the staged unloading of all the ski equipment from the "Lend a Hand" truck. People from REI and Office Depot were there up in front, their company logos prominently displayed on hats and T-shirts. The ironic thing is that in a conversation with a ski program volunteer later in the day, I learned that the volunteers have been going around to area businesses for years trying to drum up donations of equipment for skiing, office stuff, etc. Few were that interested until the Today Show announced it was coming and offered them an opportunity to be the heroes on national TV.

Another ironic thing was that they also got a donation of a car. I had to laugh when one of the volunteers looked at the Subaru Outback and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, "What do we need a car for?" I think they'd rather have more ski equipment so disabled people can learn to ski.

The best part was after the show, Eldora opened two of its lifts to the disabled ski program. (I'm not a part of it, but I'm thinking about volunteering next year.) It felt way too early to be skiing -- by the time the Today Show people started packing up to leave, it was only about 7:30 a.m. But I got in a few runs with some new friends who, despite their disabilities, smile all the time, have postive attitudes and share a passion for skiing.

Whew!

2008-04-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a crazy last couple of weeks.

I'm kind of bleary-eyed because I just finished a huge editing project. I helped my friend Lisa Gibson through the first edit of a book she wrote. Her brother was killed on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a terrorist bombing that was eventually linked to a Libyan intelligence agent. That agent was eventually convicted, although the country of Libya never officially admitted any wrongdoing. The December 1988 bombing was the worst terrorist attack against Americans until Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorism became a household word. Lisa went through 15 years of healing and a couple of years ago started a foundation aimed at building bridges with the leaders of developing countries. The first country she's helping is Libya, which has had a strained relationship (that puts it lightly) with the United States since the Lockerbie bombing.

Lisa has an amazing story of forgiveness and what it looks like to love your enemies. It was a pleasure to be a part of the editing process of her book. She hasn't found a publisher yet -- part of the reason for an initial edit is to make the book as presentable as possible before giving it to a publisher. But she has quite a few publishers interested in looking at it. She has an important voice in the debate about terrorism and how to respond to it. She was 18 when her brother died, and much of her life has been centered on the healing process and now reconciliation with those who caused so much pain.

For me now it's on to other writing and editing projects. I've got just a few assignments on my plate right now. I'm excited about the opportunity this summer to spend some concentrated time sowing into my writing business. Since I started teaching college journalism classes three years ago, I've taught every summer as well. Although teaching gets easier as you go, it still takes up a huge chunk of time with all the preparation and grading involved. Therefore I haven't spent the time needed to really invest in building up contacts and clients in the writing world, although I've been able to do a lot through word of mouth. Can you believe I've been working as a freelancer for four years without business cards? I have a business name and a logo design but no cards. That's another thing on the to-do list for the summer.

On a roller-coaster ride

2008-03-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

If you've ever read or even thumbed through the book of Daniel, you know it's rich with history, drama and some downright confusing, albeit intriguing, stuff. I first studied this Old Testament book of the Bible in the fall of 2006. This spring I'm doing the same study again -- Beth Moore's study, "Daniel: Lives of Integrity, Words of Prophecy" -- with a fantastic group of women at my church.

As we moved from the chapter 6 (the famous "Daniel in the lion's den" chapter) to chapter 7 last night, we all concluded we're embarking on a roller-coaster ride. Since I've done the study before, I know it's an accurate description. We'd better hang on and enjoy the ride.

The first half of Daniel centers around Daniel living in the decadent culture of Babylon, which has a lot of similarities to our American culture -- a society focused on self-indulgence, pleasure, youth, beauty and an "all-about-me" attitude. In fact, the Beth Moore version of the study draws such a parallel between Babylon and the society in which we live, it's impossible not to be challenged by it. Living biblically truly goes against the grain of our culture, and the disturbing part is most Christians have allowed the culture to have more of an influence on us rather than us having a greater influence on it.

The second half of Daniel centers around biblical prophecy -- i.e. dreams and visions Daniel has about historical empires (prophecy we can now look back at as history) and the still-to-come return of Christ. This is rich stuff -- challenging, mind-boggling, confusing at times, but so fascinating. It's a roller-coaster ride to say the least.

The most important thing I learned from studying this part of Daniel a couple of years ago is that you can't read the book of Revelation without understanding Daniel, and you can't read Daniel without Revelation. Amazing, huh? That a man who lived in ancient Babylon and a disciple of Jesus (John, the author of Revelation) who lived centuries later both prophesied about the same events. I've also learned that our tendency as Christians is to want to know the exact times, places, etc. of the return of Christ. The bottom line is that most of those details are a mystery, and we have to live with that "grayness," if you will, as opposed to the black-and-white of knowing for sure. All we know is the big WHAT -- that Christ will return, that He will right every wrong, and we will come face-to-face with Him. The thought of that scares some people, but it excites me.

A woman in our Bible study group said last night that some people approach the return of Christ as if they're throwing up their hands in the air on a roller-coaster ride. Others squeeze their eyes shut, bury their face in the shoulder of the person next to them and wonder why they got on the roller coaster in the first place. On a real roller coaster, I am the latter. On this figurative roller coaster, though, I want to be throwing my hands up in the air in joyful anticipation.

Picture of love

2008-02-27T07:54:00.000-08:00

I'm borrowing today's blog entry from Valorie Burton, a Maryland-based author, speaker and life coach. A friend referred me to her Web site and weekly newsletter. Click here for more information about her.

I thought Burton's take on the "love" chapter in 1 Corinthians 13 was thought-provoking. I realize Valentine's Day was two weeks ago, but I think we could all use a daily dose of inspiration/guidance about love . . . and not just the romantic kind of love. How are you doing at loving the people in your life?

This week, I would like to serve as your loving reminder of what it means to love someone. These are seven straightforward, at times difficult, but always effective strategies for loving others - and experiencing more love in your life. Saint Paul wrote them in the 13th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. We often hear the scripture recited at weddings. This week, meditate on these seven principles. Find news ways to express love on a daily basis and strengthen your daily interaction with others -- whether loved ones or strangers, co-workers or neighbors. The greatest use of your life is to love. When you apply this kind of love to a situation, it never fails:

1. LOVE IS PATIENT.
People won't always do what you want when you want them to. Practice being patient - whether with your children, your significant other or the grocery cashier who takes too long to ring up your order. Everything happens for a reason - and that includes the timing of when things happen. Be patient and learn the lesson that comes in the process of enduring the wait. Sometimes the lesson is simple: Slow down and enjoy life.

2. LOVE IS KIND.
Every single day, choose to be kind. Ask yourself each morning, "How could I be a blessing to someone today?" Whether it is a kind word, a loving gesture or helping someone in need, seek ways to be kind daily. Not only will it be a blessing to those you encounter, but it feels good to your soul.

3. LOVE DOES NOT ENVY.
There will always be someone who appears to have "more" or to be doing better. Make a decision not to be envious of others, but in every circumstance of life to find a reason to be thankful. Jealousy poisons your attitude, builds resentment and can ruin relationships. Rather than envying others, learn from them. Even be inspired by them. And simultaneously, choose to be content with what you have while you journey towards something better.

4. LOVE DOES NOT BOAST AND IS NOT PROUD.
Resist the temptation to boast about yourself, your accomplishments or your loved ones. It often only makes others feel "less than," which of course, is not an expression of love. Practice humility. Allow your accomplishments to speak for themselves. Others often notice your good work and deeds, even without you having to make a big deal of them. In fact, it is far more attractive to simply "be" great than to try to convince others of your greatness.

5. LOVE IS NOT RUDE OR EASILY ANGERED.
We've all had our moments when our behavior has been less than considerate. Next time you feel the urge to be rude, inconsiderate or to jump to conclusions, stop yourself. Take a deep breath and ask, "What would be a more loving response to this situation?" That doesn't mean that you allow others to walk all over you. You can speak the truth to people in a very matter of fact way, without being rude. Be considerate of others feelings and be willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

6. LOVE KEEPS NO RECORD OF WRONGS.
Have you ever known someone who remembered every mistake you ever made or everything you ever did wrong? As you have grown and become a better person, all they can remember is the person you used to be. It is very frustrating and you may even find yourself ready to distance yourself from that person. Learn from the past behavior of others - and protect yourself accordingly, when necessary - but resist the temptation to continually bring up everything someone has done wrong. Love others by encouraging them towards a better future, not defining them by their past.

7. LOVE REJOICES IN THE TRUTH.
So often, it seems we are afraid of the truth. When something is wrong, we pretend everything is OK. Often both parties will pretend even when both parties know there is a problem. One of the most important love skills you can learn is to be honest. Refuse to live lies or to accept lies as truth. Have truthful conversations with yourself and others. It allows you to get to the core of issues faster. It empowers others to trust you. It relieves the stress of tiptoeing around the real issues. Learn to speak the truth in a spirit of love and kindness, and your life will be richer and more fulfilling.

Running away from politics

2008-02-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

I think I've had enough. And it's only February.

I'd already had enough with the bantering going on the last few weeks between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Then today came the New York Times article about John McCain's alleged "romantic" relationship with a female lobbyist -- although the article never provided any evidence that he'd had a romantic relationship with the woman. At least the story provided some discussion in my reporting class this morning over the use of anonymous sources. Anonymous sources should be avoided, I tell my students all the time, for the very reasons today's story highlights. How do we know the story is true if the sources aren't named? How do we know there's any credibility behind the information? Ah, yes, I forgot . . . if it's about a politician, it must be true if there's an anonymous source. Watched "All the President's Men" lately?

I'm not a huge fan or follower of politics, and the last two months have done nothing to change my point of view. This election -- and we haven't even entered the official election season yet -- has already done me in. I'm tired of talking about it with my students. I'm tired of hearing about it on talk radio. I'm tired of the news reports with the latest on the candidate of the day. It's just too much. I started to launch into a spew of negativity about politics this morning when my husband cut me off. "Let's talk about something else," he said. Good idea.

So this blog is where I can get it off my chest once and for all that I'm done! I think I'm going to take a vacation when the Democratic National Convention comes to Denver this August. And declare a media fast for that week. I don't want to be anywhere near it.

Baseball season, anyone? Only 38 more days until opening day. Go Rockies!

Sometimes you just need some good news

2008-02-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes you just need some good news." That's what my husband Mike said this week after we got two pieces of news we'd been hoping for.

First, the insurance check for the water damage in our condo is on the way! The water heater in the unit above us went out in early December and caused quite a bit of damage to our place. We cleaned up, had walls and carpet padding torn out and then embarked on a long season of getting estimates from contractors and WAITING. Looking back on it, we didn't have to wait all that long. Insurance settlements just don't happen quickly. I got a dose of reality and gratitude this week when I talked to a colleague whose house was destroyed in a fire a couple of weeks ago. She and her husband have to live in a double-wide trailer while their house is being repaired for the next nine months. Talk about perspective. Anyway, the news this week means we can move forward on our own repairs and start putting the condo back together. The first stage will happen next week when a contractor comes in to rebuild walls and repaint.

Second, I found out this week something unusual. I've had these really annoying digestive problems for months -- terrible gas & bloating, acid reflux, etc. I went to a gastroenterologist (a good one, as it turns out) last summer and discovered I'm lactose-intolerant, which is actually more common in adults than most people realize. (It means I lack the enzyme in my body to digest the sugar -- lactose -- present in milk and other dairy products.) Anyway, the symptoms started flaring up again around mid-November, but I knew it couldn't be the lactose because I've been on a diary-free diet since June.

I went through more rounds of tests, and it turns out my stomach takes twice as long to empty as a normal person's -- yeah, go figure. Who knew? I certainly didn't. It's unclear what's causing that -- it could be a viral infection that has damaged the nerves of my stomach, thus keeping it from contracting properly. Anyway, I'm on some medication now to speed things up in my tummy, and it's helping!!! Halleluiah! I've never had a chronic health issue that drives me crazy to the point of total frustration. I've known people who live with health issues just as frustrating, and you never really know what they're going through until you experience it yourself.

Those are our two bits of good news this week. And next week at this time, there will be more good news. I'll be done with the Beginning Reporting class that demands pretty much all of my attention for the first five weeks of the semester. It's been a good class, but I'm wiped out, and so are my students. It's like boot camp for wannabe journalists. The students take a daily Associated Press Stylebook quiz (the journalist's bible), have writing assignments everyday (just like the pace of being a real journalist), and get zeros on stories that they turn in late, misspell a name or get a fact wrong (they're always shocked to see that first zero, but it teaches them to pay attention). I think I may have weeded a few students out of the journalism program, but the class has inspired the rest to step up, get serious and keep going. Both of those are good things. Journalism is too demanding and too important a job for the half-hearted, at least the kind of journalism I teach my students to do.

The crowded days of life

2008-02-04T23:40:00.001-08:00

I'm up during the wee hours of the morning today, trying to get tired enough to go back to sleep. I had a minor medical procedure done today (nothing serious, as it turns out), for which I was under a sort of half-asleep/half-awake anesthesia. The effect of the medication was I was exhausted by 6:30 p.m., but then I was awake again at 11 p.m. This quiet hour of the morning is the best time to think and process, I've found. Problem is, I'm not up very much this late or early, however you see it, so the best time to think and process gets slept away most days.

I have even less time to think and process lately because my life has kicked into fifth gear. I'm in the middle of teaching an intense, five-week version of a basic reporting class, and I'm teaching another, much slower-paced class that's easier to teach but seems somewhat like a nuisance while I'm so immersed in the other class. Right before the semester started I took on a writing project that has turned into a bigger thing than I anticipated. Last week I started helping lead a Bible study at church.

All of this stuff is good, although it takes its toll quickly. After only a couple of weeks at this pace, I long to slow down, take time to have a cup of coffee or tea without having to grade any assignments, look out the window and watch the snow fall (something it's been doing quite a lot in Denver this winter) and otherwise just take a deep breath.

The thing I dislike about being so maxed out is how quickly the time passes, and how disconnected I feel from anything but just muddling through the day before me. The goal becomes survival, and without much "margin" time between classes, appointments, deadlines, etc., I have a hard time enjoying things. This weekend I was reminded that during busy times like this, I tend to feel the most disconnected from God. I tend to think that my relationship with God is dependent on how much time I give him, and I beat myself up when I don't spend the time I think I should with him, should being the operative word here.

Don't get me wrong, time is important in all relationships. But all of us have good friends with whom no matter how much time passes since we've talked or seen one another, when you finally connect again, it's as if no time has passed at all. I want to experience God like that. I think I do sometimes. I need to allow myself that freedom more often -- to come to him with the mundane, everyday stuff, not just the big stuff, and let him into even the craziest of days. Then when all I have time to do is say, "Hi, God," it's enough and we're connected. As good as it is to slow down, pull back from things and reestablish some balance in our lives, during some seasons life is just busy, and we have to figure out a way to connect with God in the midst of it.

One of my favorite devotional books is "God Calling." Here's what it says about experiencing God in the busy days:

"Be calm. Never Fear. You have much to learn. Go on until you can take the most crowded day with a song. "Sing unto the Lord." The finest accompaniment to a song of praise to Me is a very crowded day. Let love be the motif running through all . . . Do not get worried. I am your helper. "Underneath are the everlastings arms." You cannot get below that. Rest in them, as a tired child rests." -- God Calling (January 21 entry)

Fasting from television

2008-01-18T13:58:00.000-08:00

Have you ever fasted from watching television? Mike and I have been doing that this week. We actually fasted from TV last summer after we got back from a vacation to the mountains where we stayed in a bed & breakfast with no television in the room. We got back and realized we didn't miss the TV, so we kept it off for a few weeks.

This fast has been more purposeful and a little bit harder -- one, because it's the middle of winter and there's not much to do, particularly in the evening hours between dusk and bedtime, and two, because it's something we've purposed to do. The last TV fast seemed more accidental.

We're fasting for a couple of different reasons:

1) We think it's good to do some kind of fast periodically (not just during Lent when most people think of fasting), whether from food or television or drinking soda or whatever. Sometimes we're so focused on "feeding our flesh," if you will, that we don't realize we don't actually NEED this stuff like we think we do.

2) Fasting clears our heads and helps us focus on what's most important, particularly listening to the voice of God. It's amazing how many voices vie for our attention in our media-driven culture.

The quiet of no television has been wonderful. It's hard to get used to at first -- so often I turn on the TV for noise -- but after a while it's a welcome change. Mike and I have been reading more. In fact, we've both almost finished a book each in a few days. Meals seem less hurried and more intentional. I feel less hurried and more relaxed. We didn't rule out the Internet or radio for this fast, so we're still getting our news and some entertainment. (I actually prefer to get my news from the newspaper or Internet anyway. To me it's like eating a well-cooked meal at home that you can digest more easily. Television news is like fast food -- quick, not much worth chewing on, and it leaves you hungry for something more.)

The most interesting thing I've noticed this week has been the absence of advertising from my life. Sure, I still hear ads on the radio or see them in the newspaper or on the Internet, but they're not the same as television advertising. The consumerism on TV seems intrusive now that I've been away from it for a while, but then again no one is holding a gun to my head forcing me to watch TV. I've never really understood why people complain so much about what's on TV, yet they won't turn it off, as if they have no choice about it. There is an OFF button.

The most amazing thing of the past few days is feeling more in tune to God's voice. No television gives me time to think more, time to pray more, time to process more. When that instinct kicks in to reach for the remote control (and believe me, that instinct has kicked in several times a day), I pause and think, "Nope, I'm not going to turn that TV on." It makes me think about why we decided to turn off the TV in the first place. It seems painful for a while -- after all, fasting of any kind is not supposed to be painless -- but then I just put it out of my mind and set myself to doing other things.

I'm not sure how long our fast will last. We didn't put a time limit on it. But the more time we go without TV, the easier it gets. And the more we realize there's not much worth watching anyway. It's more habit than anything else.

Ahhhh. . . . that peace and quiet, the absence of the noise and talking heads of our culture, sure sound wonderful.

The freedom of a "bluebird" day

2008-01-15T17:27:00.000-08:00

Today was a perfect "bluebird" day in the mountains, as skiers and snowboarders like to call the clear-blue-sky days we often get here in Colorado. This was my second day skiing this season -- I went to Copper Mountain last Thursday and Winter Park today. Both days were great, and the best part is I'm not nearly as sore as I usually am after my first couple of days skiing each season. I credit the weight training I added to my workouts last summer -- nothing fancy, but the twice-a-week sessions working out my arms and legs do have some benefit.

At the encouragement of my husband, I got smarter about skiing last year and bought a season pass. Daily lift tickets at most Colorado resorts are now more than $80. (When I first started skiing at age 9, an adult daily lift ticket was about $25. Amazing.) So why not shell out a few hundred dollars before the season ever starts and go as many times as you want? Some people don't see the benefit to this for the ski resorts. Why even offer season passes when you could force people to pay $80 at the ticket window each day? Because ski resorts are not making their money off lift tickets, despite the ever-rising prices. The money is all in real estate (i.e. lodging), and the more times they can get people up to ski, the more likely it is they'll stay the night . . . and of course bring their friends/family and spend other money as well.

Anyway, a season pass is a great benefit for the skier. I'm not sure why I never considered it before. I blame my former inability to manage money very well, and therefore the mentality I'd never be able to afford a season pass. The season pass enables me to ski any day I choose, and if the weather turns out to be horrible, oh well. I can come back another day. I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to get all my money's worth out of an $80 lift ticket. I can show up at mid-day and ski a few hours.

Today I skied nearly a full day. My husband doesn't ski. He wants to learn, but wintertime is crazy with his basketball play-by-play schedule. I have only a few friends who ski. I grew up skiing with my brothers and dad. My brothers moved to the Midwest, and my dad's hip bothers him now, so I mostly ski alone. I actually don't mind it, although some people look at me like I'm crazy to drive two hours to the mountains alone, followed by a day of skiing all by myself.

To be honest, I prefer the alone days. When you've skied most of your life, it isn't that difficult or weird. I feel so comfortable skiing, it's almost like coming home. And a day alone on the slopes is much safer than hiking alone. There are so many people around you, and half the time you end up riding the lift with someone else and striking up a conversation, so you really do share the experience with others.

Besides, I tend to be pretty independent up there. I like to skip lunch -- I find I don't get that hungry skiing, strangely enough -- and I usually ski one run after another without stopping. It's one of the only things I do in which I feel truly free -- free to clear my head of all my worries, free to be just who I am. It's just me and Jesus up there, floating across the snow, breathing in the fresh air, thinking about nothing much in particular except how glorious a Colorado "bluebird" day is.

Ringing in the new year

2007-12-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was a kid, New Year's Eve/Day have been my least favorite holidays. How can the best holiday of the year be followed a week later by the worst?

New Year's Day historically means only one thing to me: An entire day of sitting around watching football, just like Thanksgiving and somewhat like Christmas has become. While the NFL has capitalized on Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year's belongs to the sponsors of college bowl games. The other night I watched part of the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Can you imagine the excitement of the two teams when they found out which bowl game they'd go to? "Whoopee!!! We got invited to the Meineke Care Care Bowl!" I suppose the title of the bowl game doesn't matter -- the teams just want to get to one. (However I won't get started on the fact that half the Division I college football teams go to a bowl game now. The University of Colorado Buffaloes, who finished the season with a 6-6 record, went to the Independence Bowl, which, by the way, they lost Sunday night.)

They still have the old-fashioned bowl games, like the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl etc., but they are known first by their sponsor names, like the FedEx Orange Bowl and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Get your chips and salsa ready for that one. I'm still waiting for the creation of the Oxy Clean Toilet Bowl and the Kellogg's Cereal Bowl. Or how about the Panda Express Rice Bowl?

When I was younger New Year's Eve, at least, was a bigger deal. My parents used to host a party, where they and their friends would gather to eat shrimp. drink and play board games. When I was a teenager, my friends and I attempted a progressive dinner on New Year's Eve, but we didn't get past the appetizers because every restaurant in town was so crowded, we gave up on going to a different place for each course.

This year New Year's Eve and Day will be quiet in our household, as usual. Mike has to be at work at crazy hour both days (4 a.m.), so we're not going to be doing much late-night celebrating on New Year's Eve. Not that we would anyway. The turning of 2007 to 2008 calls for more reflection than celebration for us. I have spent some time the past few days thinking back on 2007, which was a great year in some ways for us but pretty frustrating in other ways. We've had some challenging times and hard lessons to learn about people and about life. This fall it seemed like we had one inconvenience after the other, climaxing with the water heater incident earlier this month. All of these inconveniences are minor as individual incidents, but taken as a whole, they challenge us to stay positive and realize sometimes seasons of life are just tough.

Here are some things about 2007 I'm thankful for:

-- Visiting my alma mater, the University of Missouri-Columbia, in January, after not having been there for more than 10 years.

-- Getting to see Mike's alma mater, the University of California-Berkeley, during a trip to the San Francisco area in March.

-- A great summer. We took several day trips and a couple of weekend trips to places in Colorado we'd never been or hadn't been in a long time. Most memorable was a day hike in August along an old mining road from Crested Butte to Marble.

-- A great Beginning Reporting class in the fall at Metro State College of Denver. Each class I teach is so different because each group of students gives the class as a whole a different personality. My students this fall were a joy to teach because they were eager to learn and highly motivated.

-- The Colorado Rockies' amazing post-season run to the World Series. I got to see the Rox clinch the National League championship in Denver and went to my first World Series game with my dad, brother Jeff and sister-in-law Sue. Mike got to cover the World Series games from Denver and Fenway Park in Boston. Despite the Rockies' loss in the series, "Rocktober" is a month we'll never forget.

-- In September we celebrated my mom and dad's 40th wedding anniversary with a suprise party and went to Mike's brother's wedding in Hawaii. You can't complain about a year too much if it included a trip to Hawaii, right?

As I've gotten older, one thing I do notice about New Year's is that I experience the hope of a new year more than I did when I was younger. I know it's a cliche, but I look forward to a fresh start in 2008. I've had fun this week putting our Christmas decorations away and in the process, cleaning some things out, throwing a lot of stuff away and making things different.

Out with the old and in with the new. I'm ready for it. How about you?

White Christmas

2007-12-25T13:43:00.001-08:00

I woke up around 7:30 this morning, opened the blinds, and what to my wondering eyes would appear . . . SNOW! And lots of it.

I've lived in Colorado most of my life, and this is the first time I can remember it snowing this much on Christmas Day. According to the weather record books, it's snowed in Denver on Christmas Day only 13 times in the past 106 years. This is number 14. The record books also say the most snow that's fallen on Christmas Day was in 1912, when the city got two inches. We're expecting 6-8 inches today.

And by the way, this storm was not forecast. I went to bed last night expecting it to be cold today, but there was only a slight chance of flurries. It's a Christmas surprise for sure.

My husband Mike couldn't really understand why I was so thrilled to see it snowing this morning. He's a California boy, and snow is just snow to him, even on Christmas Day. It's so special to me because I know how rare it is in Denver. Last Christmas we had lots of snow on the ground -- Christmas Day actually fell between two blizzards that dumped a total of about four feet of snow. But no snow actually fell from the sky on Christmas Day. (The photo above was taken from right outside our condo on Dec. 21, 2006, the day after the first blizzard hit.)

And besides, there's nothing better than a snowstorm on a day when you plan to be inside, drink coffee and hot cocoa, open presents and watch movies. We have nowhere to go, so let it snow!

As for the movie today, I think I'm in the mood for "White Christmas."

Trying to find the Christmas spirit

2007-12-12T08:08:00.000-08:00

I started this holiday season with a lot of Christmas spirit . . . I was eager to put up Christmas decorations, make cards, bake cookies and wrap presents. A question posed by the pastor of our church this weekend made me think: What is the "spirit" of Christmas anyway?

An incident at our house last week seemed to zap the spirit right out of me. The water heater in the condo unit above us went out, sending gallons and gallons of water into our walls and carpets. It has been inconvenient, for sure, as we've had to move our furniture out of the living room and office, live pretty much out of our master bedroom, take down Christmas decorations, and live with dehumidifiers and fans drying everything out. Meanwhile, we wait for our neighbor's insurance company to work out the particulars of who is responsible for all of this financially.

At this point, I just want my house back in order, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. It kind of makes Christmas seem like an inconvenience, with all the baking, Christmas-card sending and wrapping yet to do but not much motivation to do it anymore.

Is that the Christmas "spirit" -- the doing, the running around, the spending, the giving of material things, the lights and decorations that get us into the "mood" of the holiday season? Is it the warm feelings, the wishes of peace on earth and good will toward men, as all the Christmas card verses indicate?

Every year I battle the expectations of Christmas versus the Christmas I'd like to find. As a kid it was all about Santa Claus and gifts. As an adult woman, it's about all the things I think I should be doing . . . creating the "perfect" atmosphere that all the female relatives before me set out to create as well.

Our pastor this weekend said something else that made me think: You can't expect to get out of Christmas what Christmas can't give. Can a holiday really bring you peace and joy and love and hope? Why is it that Christmas usually brings stress and depression and anger and disappointment?

I read a series of books this year, the A.D. Chronicles by Bodie and Brock Thoene, that made me rethink Christmas. The books focus on the ministry of Christ, although the fifth and sixth books go back and tell the story of Mary, Joseph and the birth of Jesus. Like the 2006 movie "The Nativity Story," the story reveals just how poor and brave Mary and Joseph were, how lowly the birth of Jesus really was, how anticipated his coming was among the Jews. The nativity scenes in our living rooms and on our lawns don't do it justice. To me, the story reveals how "off" I've really been about Christmas.

It makes makes me think of my favorite Christmas song. Here are the words:

"Welcome To Our World" by Chris Rice

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that you don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world

This week I seek a different spirit . . . the Spirit of Jesus who lives inside me and whispers to me every year to put aside what I think the holiday season is all about and embrace what it really is. Maybe I needed a broken water heater and all of the inconveniences that have followed to stop and listen to His voice.

Wiping out the competition

2007-11-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

I found this story in today's Rocky Mountain News online interesting. The Boulder Valley School District will eliminate valedictorians from high school classes beginning with the class of 2010. At first I thought the story would be about our society's latest attempt to make students feel good about themselves by wiping out the competition, this time the competition for being at the top of one's class. I guess you could see it that way. According to the story students will now be bestowed with honors usually reserved for universities and colleges -- the cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude designations. Those designations don't single out the top individual. Instead, the top 3 percent would be summa cum laude; the top 7 percent magna cum laude, and the top 10 percent cum laude.

Still, I'll bet a lot of students in the school district's most competitive schools will likely graduate with honors. It wouldn't surprise me, given the fact that the average grade is now a B. The students in my college classes complain when they get a C. Hey, a C is an average grade. It means they're performance is in the middle of the pack. It might as well be an F for them. I don't think it's because they're all such high performers either. A few are, but I think most are just used to getting A's on everything. "Hey, I show up to class," they think. "I should get an A."

Don't get me wrong -- I know there are school districts and universities where the competition is fierce. My high school was one of them. We had 11 valedictorians in my class of more than 500. All of those valedictorians got straight A's -- we had to vote on who got to give the speech at graduation. (This was in 1990, before school districts weighted honors classes, pushing the students who excel in those classes above a 4.0 grade-point average.) There were another dozen or two students who had gotten only one or two B's their entire high-school career. In Highlands Ranch, Colo., where I live, the high schools have a good reputation, and many students are your typical over-achievers. In poorer, more urban school districts, the challenge is to get students to graduate. Here, the pressure is great to get the best grades, be involved in all the right activities and get into the best colleges.

It's interesting to me how the pressure diminishes and the achievement holds less meaning for those who get excellent grades in college. I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism with a class of about 200. Only a handful graduated with honors. I was disappointed in high school not to be valedictorian (I was one of those who got one or two B's), but in college I graduated cum laude -- the bottom rung of those three designations of graduating with honors. I was pleased with it, though. I worked my tail off. No employer ever hired me for my college GPA, but I worked hard because I loved to learn and wanted to do my best.

This brings me to another interesting thing: Why is there so much more hoopla associated with graduating from high school than graduating from college? It's never made sense to me why our culture views graduation from high school as the launching pad to the rest of your life, when you really spend the next four to six years still under mom and dad's wings. Why do all the aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins come to the high school graduation, but students (and therefore their families) often skip their college graduation ceremonies, as if it didn't mean anything, when college graduation is actually more meaningful because not everyone achieves it?

Forgive me, I can see I've digressed. I guess this calls for a part II of this blog on another day . . . .

Where were you 10, 20 and 30 years ago?

2007-11-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

I read this on a friend's blog today and, I'll admit it, I stole it from her. She didn't "tag" me with this "meme," and she explains below, but I think the topic is interesting and thought I'd give it a shot to remember back in my own life.

Where were you 10, 20, and 30 years ago?

In the blogging world, when you are ‘tagged’ by a ‘meme’ it means that there is some topic or (usually) a question going around that a blogger writes about and then challenges other bloggers he or she knows to answer as well. Some consider the practice silly or rude for a variety of reasons, and some bloggers refuse to participate. However, if you find the question one of interest you can search by labels, titles, or keywords – or just follow people’s links – to spend hours seeing what others have to say about that topic!

Here goes for my life:

November 1997: I was 25 and had been a reporter at the Greeley Tribune for four months. I was covering night cops (i.e. keeping up with the police beat at night), working from 1 p.m. to 11 or midnight each night. It was a very lonely time in my life. New town, new job, few friends, stressful job. Work was my entire life. I lived in a dumpy duplex apartment near the University of Northern Colorado. I had some interesting neighbors, to say the least, and I remember being a little scared when I came home at night. I tried to make that place my home, but I couldn't wait to move out, which I did the following spring. My job eventually got better, too, and I made some friends. I stayed in Greeley and worked at the Tribune until May 2004.

November 1987: I was 15, a sophomore at Arvada West High School in Arvada, Colo. I had braces and ate a chocolate shake and sour-cream & onion potato chips for lunch each day. (How did I manage to be so skinny back then? Duh . . . I was 15.) My high school at the time was only a three-year high school with 10th, 11th and 12th grades, so the sophomores were the babies of the student body. Even so, that first year of high school was a much better experience for me than my entire three years of junior high. I had a few good friends, and I'm still friends with them today, if you can believe it. I worked really hard to get good grades. Most of my afternoons and weekends were spent doing homework. I knew I wanted to be a writer and thought I'd probably go into journalism. My hardest class that year was biology. The easiest and most fun for me was 10th grade English. I remember my English teacher saying in front of the whole class how good I was at grammar and punctuation. I was mortified -- being smart wasn't "cool" (that didn't happen until college). But it was a foreshadowing of things to come. That understanding of the English language has served me well as a journalist and a journalism teacher who now is a stickler for good grammar.

November 1977: I was 5 years old, living in the home I grew up in in Arvada, Colo. My older brother was 8, and he and the other boys in the neighborhood tortured me mentally. They'd sit around on their bikes in the middle of the street. I'd come along and try to join them with my pink bike with streamers dangling from the handlebars. They'd make fun of me. Somehow, I just didn't get that I didn't belong. I also had an adversarial relationship with my little brother, who was only 1 year old in November 1977. He was too young to truly be my adversary, but I resented having a little brother (I wanted a little sister) and was adjusting to being the middle child, not the youngest anymore. (In case you're wondering, I don't think of my little brother as an enemy anymore. I'm glad I grew up with two brothers.)

Down but not out (yet)

2007-10-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

The first-ever World Series game in Denver was an incredible experience. I'm glad I got to go. The atmosphere was incredible (at least until the 8th inning when the Rockies tanked), and it was meaningful to be there with my dad, brother and sister-in-law. I wasn't very happy about the outcome of the game -- the Rockies lost 10-5. The Red Sox fans gloating among us didn't help. (I guess Bostonians have a lot to be smug about. They're sitting on top of the sports world with the Red Sox on the verge of a World Series win, Boston College at No. 2 in the college football rankings and the New England Patriots at 7-0 this NFL season, albeit they've been caught cheating and got only a slap on the wrist for it. Many even predict the Boston Celtics to win the NBA championship. ) This morning I have come to a very simple, maybe simplistic, conclusion about the Rox vs. Sox: Boston is simply playing better baseball.

Conventional thinking says the Rockies are out of the series entirely, and Boston will likely sweep tonight. I'm expecting that in my head, but my heart hopes the Rockies will win . . . if they can just win one game, not worry about having to win four, then maybe there's hope. Those who over-analyze the game would tell me I'm ridiculous for thinking those things, that I might as well resign myself to the fact that the Rockies have lost the big championship. After all, no team has ever come back from being down three games to none. The chances of the Rockies doing it are slimmer than slim. I know what the world says, but I still have a right to cheer on my team and hope against hope for them.

A listener of KOA radio, on which the Rockies games are broadcast, wrote an e-mail to the station with the following link to an article about the Rockies in the New York Times last week. (Click here to read the story.) The listener also wrote about how the Rockies situation is similar to the story in the movie "Facing the Giants," about a small-town high school football coach who determines that whether his team wins or loses, they're going to praise God. After reading the article in the Times, I can see how that applies to the Rockies . . . win or lose, they're still trying to do the right thing, still trying to go about winning and losing the right way. Win or lose tonight, God notices what they're trying to do . . . and that's really all that matters in the end.

The agony of defeat

2007-10-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

I'm trying really hard today to adjust my attitude after last night's dismal performance by the Colorado Rockies in the World Series.

They lost to the Boston Red Sox a whopping 13-1. I turned off the game in the second or third inning. I couldn't watch the Rockies, the team that has become the epitome of underdogs in the last month, get squashed so badly.

Mike is taking the defeat much more in stride than I am. He's in Boston this week covering the games. He found out Sunday night that the radio station he works for was sending him to be part of the World Series coverage. He told me yesterday that he knew this series would be tough for the Rockies. It's been kind of a tough trip for Mike, too. I won't go into all those details because we'll just sound like whiners . . . and Mike reminds himself that he's thankful just to be there.

One thing I've realized about myself in the last month during the Rockies' amazing run is that I really don't know that much about baseball -- not about the game, necessarily, but about the perseverance needed to be a true fan. I remember what it was like to be a Denver Broncos fan in the late 1980s, when they lost three Super Bowls. I remember feeling so dejected, as if I was the one who had failed so miserably, not a football team. By the time the Broncos went back to the Super Bowl in the late 1990s and won two in a row, I had come to my senses. I wasn't emotionally attached to how a football team performed anymore. I was sure happy when they won, but I wasn't going to put my hope as a human being in a sports team.

Now I might as well be 15 years old again, looking this time to a baseball team to give me hope. I keep telling myself not to give up too easily. I keep telling myself that it's only one game, that in spite of the fact that the Red Sox look unstoppable, the Rockies aren't out of this yet. I remind myself that the Rockies have surprised us all thus far . . . no one thought even six weeks ago that they'd be in Boston playing for a World Series title. Sure, they could lose it and lose badly. All the talking heads in sports have written them off already. They call the National League minor league baseball. I have to admit the Rockies looked like a minor league team last night.

I'm going to get to be at Game 3 on Saturday night in Denver. I'll be there with my dad, my brother Jeff and sister-in-law Sue, who are flying in from Chicago just to see the game. We managed to get tickets, although not through the online sales system that also turned out to be a debacle this week. We got our tickets through Mike's workplace, which had a bunch of season tickets and sold the World Series tickets to employees.

I sure feel blessed to have gotten the tickets -- the chances of getting them were so slim -- and I've resolved to be there cheering on the Rox no matter what, even if they do come home down two games in the series. The Red Sox endured the ridicule a lot longer than the Rockies have. And how about those Cubs? How long has it been since they won a World Series, and yet fans pack Wrigley Field game after game no matter how they play.

I leave this blog today with the following commentary from yesterday's Breakpoint by Chuck Colson, which a friend sent me. It's a good reminder after last night's disappointing loss that the Rockies are doing something more important than winning -- and what they're doing is worth cheering on wholeheartedly. Click here to read about it. For another related story about the character of the Rockies team, click here.

"God calls us to be people of inner substance, not just outward appearance. We are to demonstrate the reality of His presence in us by an attitude of humility." Marilyn Meberg

Making dreams come true

2007-10-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

The fireworks above the scoreboard after the game.

Mike cheering after Matt Holliday's three-run home run in the 4th inning.

The guys sitting in front of us made signs. This one reflected the number of wins the Rockies had until last night's game, followed by how many they'd have to win yet to win the World Series.

UNBELIEVABLE. That's the only word I have for last night's Colorado Rockies game that clinched them a spot in the World Series. They beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-4, sweeping the D-backs in the National League Championship Series. I went to the game with Mike, and it was incredible.

Mike has been to several playoff games already because he's had to report on them for his job. I wanted to be able to experience a game as well, and so when a friend offered to sell us some tickets, we jumped at the chance. Who knows if this will ever happen again? The Rockies are on an incredible winning streak. They've won the last 21 of 22 games, including seven games in the post season. It's a streak that has led them to the first World Series in the teams' 15-year history.

The game itself was electrifying. I've been to a lot of Rockies games before, but none like this one. When the crowd got to its feet and waved those white "Go Rockies" towels around, cheering the team on, the energy was amazing. I have to admit, though, that I wish Rockies fans this excited had been with the team long before this late-season/post-season run. The Rockies have struggled for many years -- the owners and managers have taken a lot of criticism for decisions they've made through the years -- and it was only a few months ago when people thought of the Rockies as the team that would always disappoint them. In May the team's record was a dismal 18-27. When they swept the New York Yankees in June, some people started to come around. But the season still had a long way to go at that point. People really started to catch the fever in late September, but still . . . the World Series? I mentioned to Mike last night that three weeks ago, we were enjoying our vacation in Hawaii. It never crossed my mind -- NEVER -- that we'd be sitting at a National League Championship game three weeks later, and the Rockies would win the series.

I think the thing that has touched me the most about this amazing run to the World Series is what it says about life, particularly life for me and Mike right now. This has been a difficult season for both of us in a variety of ways. We've dealt with some disappointments that make us wonder if we'll ever enter into what we believe God has for us. I'm glad I got to watch last night's game with Mike, because I think it's a foreshadowing of good things to come for us. Because of his role in the Denver media, Mike has followed the Rockies closely for the past five years. Throughout their disappointing seasons, Mike continued to believe in the organization and the course set before them. His colleagues in the media thought him naive. The Rockies going to the World Series means so much to him because Mike knew it would happen. He didn't necessarily think it would happen this year, but he knew the nay-sayers would be silenced eventually.

As we both whooped and hollered watching Matt Holliday hit a three-run home run, the thought struck me that we, too, would see a day like this come in our lives. To the world -- the disappointed fans, the arrogant sports columnists -- the Rockies reaching the World Series seemed like a pipedream that would never happen. But it did -- and it wasn't a fluke. It wasn't just luck. It was the result of some hard decisions -- hard for a time anyway -- that to those not involved seemed like the wrong thing to do. But where are the critics now? They're writing columns about dreams coming true, about how "building from within," as the team's owners decided to do five years ago, actually paid off.

Last night was like God telling me and Mike to stay the course and get ready for a harvest, to put our hope in Him because He won't disappoint us. We don't believe what the world tells us. We believe in our big God who can make even pipedreams come true.

Three levels of Coors Field, with the fans waving the white Rockies towels.

Me cheering the Rockies on.

The guy sitting in front of us made another sign. It said, "Hey Byrnes, How's that wall feel?" This is a reference to Diamondback Eric Byrnes, who made some (pretty dumb) comments the other day, saying the Rockies hadn't outplayed the D-backs in spite of winning two games in Phoenix. The day after his comments, Byrnes hit the outfield wall trying to catch a home run by Matt Holliday. Byrnes, by the way, was also the last D-back out in the 9th inning of the game. (I think it just goes to show that there's payback -- although I'd rather call it humility -- for those who run off at the mouth.)

Towels and brooms (for the "sweep" the Rockies made of the D-backs) were prevalent in the crowd.

Frustration and acceptance

2007-10-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

I love the "aha!" moments in life. I had one today during a conversation with a student in my introduction to journalism class. This student had asked if I'd mentor him a bit through some questions he has about the study of journalism, his career direction, how to get started getting published, etc. Today we met after class at Starbucks, and I shared with him some ideas, thoughts and advice for where he's at in life. Looking back on the conversation, it revealed a lot to me about where I'm at in life as well.

I've struggled off and on the past three years with this combination of teaching and freelance writing. Freelancing is not an easy endeavor. When I first jumped into it, I didn't know how much ambiguity I'd find, how wide open the world of freelance writing really is, and yet how alone you can feel in the midst of it trying to find your way. I was used to working full time in a newsroom, where the camaraderie with other reporters does many things for your mental health: It inspires you to keep pursuing the good stories, and it helps you deal with the things that inevitably come with the job -- office politics, angry readers, sources who don't want to talk, etc.

Freelancing cuts you off from that peer support. I work from home now, with no one to talk to most days except the sources I call on the phone for interviews. In-person interviews are a rarity now because most of the publications I work for are not local, and neither are my sources. You have to be self-motivated and self-directed. No editor is looking over my shoulder making sure the work is getting done. No fellow reporters are sparking a fire of ambition in me to keep doing my best and keep uncovering the interesting people that make reporting a job worth pursuing.

Coupled with the freelancing, I've been teaching for about three years. For several semesters I saw teaching as a bother. Frankly, I had to start teaching in order to supplement the freelancing income. I'd always wanted to try teaching, though, so I was willing to give it a chance. My first few semesters I really grappled with how to handle students who make up every excuse you can think of as to why they can't do the work on time or well enough to get a decent grade. I felt like they thought my job was to give them an A for showing up. My confidence in dealing with students grew with each little incident I had to handle -- like the students who didn't turn in papers on time and were shocked when I said, "Sorry, it's late. I won't accept late papers," or the students whose grandmother died three times during a semester and they couldn't understand why I wouldn't let them make up the work without proof of their excuses (Yes, I require students to give me obituaries if their family members die or police reports if they say they were in a car accident on the way to class.) Over time I realized I had to run my classes the way I wanted to run them. The students weren't going to run me. My life became much more peaceful after that.

Somewhere along this journey, I started to think about my two roles -- as freelance writer and teacher -- differently. Not long ago, I used to cringe when friends would introduce me as a "teacher." I didn't want to be known as one because I saw myself as a journalist who taught (or had to teach as the situation seemed to me.) I'm not sure when or how it happened, but I don't mind being known as a teacher anymore. I have started to see my students differently. Instead of focusing on the students who irritated me with all their excuses, I started to ask God to show me the students I could really invest in and mentor. Amazingly, these students started coming out of the woodwork. They started to approach me for letters of recommendation for internships. They e-mailed me after the classes they were in were long over with questions about their career directions. A few approached me on the first day of class asking me to mentor them. The student I met with today is itching to learn how to recognize what a story is and tell it effectively. He wants to be a journalist now, before he's even finished some of the basic journalism classes. I told him his passion is admirable, and he's got to hold onto that passion and protect it, but he also needs to accept where he's at and let the learning process unfold naturally. It's this weird balance between desire and patience.

As for the freelancing with me . . . that's a whole different story. I still have writing assignments coming in from regular clients, but I know there's more to do than what I've been doing. I know there are stories in me yet to be written -- I have a folder full of ideas I've sat on for several years. Pitching these ideas to magazines still seems like a daunting process, even though I have a much better handle on how that's to be done now than I did a few years back. My student's passion today stirred that ambition in me again to go after the things I know God has for me to do. I looked through some of my old clips (published articles) yesterday and was amazed that all the stories God has enabled me to do in my career. It's simply astounding the hundreds of people I've had the privilege of interviewing and telling their story. I know that work isn't done yet for me. Just thinking about it brings me to tears. Storytelling is such a huge part of what I've been created to do. I'm compelled to do it -- not out of obligation but out of desire.

The "aha" moment came today when I saw that the teaching and the freelancing really do work hand in hand for me. As a former full-time reporter and freelancer, my role as a teacher is much more real and relevant to my students. And I think teaching has made me a better journalist. It has kept my skills fresh because I have to teach what I do and do what I teach. My knowledge of various aspects of journalism has also increased immensely. As a newspaper reporter I knew practically nothing about, for example, what it's like to be a television journalist. I've had to educate myself in order to teach just the basics. I've brought in guest speakers to my classes who know a whole lot more about particular areas of journalism than I do. That's added so much to my understanding of the field.

Just like the student I talked to today, I have to accept where I'm at and let the learning process unfold naturally. There's something so settling about being able to see that.

Ready to golf -- for real, I think

2007-10-09T18:23:00.000-07:00

I've taken four golf lessons so far, and I continue to go to the driving range to practice. I'm at the point where I'd like to try to play . . . not the course pictured here, of course. This is the course in Wailea, Maui -- we actually stayed in a condo right on the course on our trip a couple of weeks ago. Oh, to be able to go back someday and actually play golf in Hawaii . . .

At this point I'd settle for the basic par 3 course down the street from where we live. I was encouraged during my last golf lesson when my instructor told us (me and the two other women taking the class) not to get discouraged when we go out and play golf. "Golf courses were built for professionals," he said. "So don't worry about what the par is on a particular hole. It may be a par 4 or 5, but to you it's going to be a par 8 or 9. That's OK. You're not professionals, so don't expect yourself to play like them right now. So if you get a 7 on a hole, then that's a birdie for you because you're normally a par 8. That's improvement."

I was thinking about that today when I was out at the driving range. The guy next to me was getting upset with himself every time he did something wrong. I've never even played a course yet, but I know golf can be a very discouraging game. Several people told me before I ever took a lesson that golf is great as long as you don't care how you play. I find myself trying too hard sometimes. Instead of allowing my body to turn, and letting the club hit the ball, I feel like I have a baseball bat in my hands and I've got to hit the darn ball if it kills me. I'm working on allowing myself to take a moment, relax, take a deep breath, close my eyes and remember how it feels when the swing is right . . . and voila! I can hardly believe the difference it makes in my next swing.

"Slow down," my instructor told us on our first day. "If you remember nothing else, remember S L O W. You're not going to get anywhere if you go out there and start whacking balls." It takes focus, and that's a great challenge to me. I'm a naturally high-strung, intense person -- not a good combination, I know, for the game of golf. There are spiritual and mental lessons to be learned through golf. Now if only I could apply them to other areas of my life . . .

I do think golf can be discouraging when we don't play very often but expect ourselves to play at the level of the professionals who play every day. Think of that -- Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Annika Sorenstam (and the list goes on) play golf every day. We'd all get pretty good at golf if we played every day and got paid for it. I liken it to a moment a few weeks ago when I was helping student of mine write the first sentence of a news story. She was stuck. I knew where the story needed to go without even thinking about it. I took over the keyboard at the computer and whipped out a sentence in five seconds. "Wow," she said. "That's why you're the teacher." I recognized this teachable moment for her and the other students listening to our conversation. "It's not magic," I told her. "It comes from writing hundreds and hundreds of stories over the course of years and years. You can do it, too, and it's going to get easier for you. It just takes a lot of practice."

Certainly there are people who are exceptionally gifted at what they do, whether they are professional athletes or not. But few people are born exceptionally gifted at swinging a golf club or swimming the length of a pool or writing stories. They simply practice a lot -- that and they have passion for what they do -- and they become skilled.

That realization is why I'm glad I didn't even pick up a golf club until age 35. If I had attempted golf 10 years ago, I think I would have given up too easily. I know it's going to take a lot of practice to be just a decent player. But I'm willing to give it a try.

More views from paradise

2007-10-04T16:28:00.001-07:00

As promised, here's just a sampling of photos from our trip to Hawaii. They are in no particular order. In order from top to bottom, they are:

1. The memorial over the USS Arizona, the ship that sank and lost 1,177 men during the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. (Honolulu) The ship is still visible underneath the memorial in the shallow waters of the harbor. The ship continues to release oil (about one quart a day), nearly 66 years after the attack, and you can see the oil slicks on the surface of the water. The USS Arizona Memorial is the most popular tourist site in Hawaii. We were there during the "off season" (if there is an off season in Hawaii), and we waited with lots of people to take the first ferry out to the memorial. There are lots of Japanese tourists there, too.

2. Mike and me at a waterfall on the Road to Hana. (Maui) This winding road (some people say it's scary, but we didn't think so) is about the journey, not the destination. It takes about 3 hours to drive about 50 miles, but it's well worth the trip.

3. Us with Mike's family. Sitting are Mike and his brother Brad. Standing from left to right, me, Mike's mom Fran, Mike's sister Ann, Mike's dad Howard and Mike's new sister-in-law and Brad's bride Marlene. (They got married the day before this photo was taken.)

4. Me and Mike with our (virgin) "Hula girls" (orange drinks).

5. Sails and boogie boards on Wailea Beach (Maui).

6. Allamanda flowers on the Road to Hana (Maui)

7. The view at Wailua on the Road to Hana (Maui)

8. Another view on the Road to Hana

9. The turquoise waters of Waimea Bay on Oahu's north shore. This is where Mike and I went snorkeling for the first time. We saw lots of colorful fish and two sea turtles. Snorkeling is a blast.

10. Wailea, Maui. Photo taken from the steps of the Marriott Resort Hotel.

11. A boat off Waikiki Beach at sunset.

12. Afterschool surfers at the Banzai Pipeline, Oahu's north shore. It's not quite surfing season yet in Hawaii, but these boys are itching for some action. The waves that afternoon had picked up, and dozens of surfers were out. During surfing season (November to March), Oahu's north shore offers world-class surfing. The roads are packed with surfers and onlookers watching them. The waves can reach 25-30 feet high.

13. The waves and volcanic rocks at Keenae Peninsula, on the Road to Hana (Maui). Amazing shot, I think. (Mike took it.)

14. A sea turtle on the beach at Haleiwa Alii Beach Park, Oahu's north shore. Haleiwa (pronounced hah-lee-ay-vah) is a great little town, a piece of "old Hawaii." We had heard that you could see lots of sea turtles on this beach. We went there at sunset and thought this big turtle was a rock at first. He sat there the entire time. We took lots of photos and enjoyed the sunset with him.

16. A surfer off Oahu's north shore. The surfers swim out off shore and wait for the big waves to come up. When the waves come, you see dozens of them get up on their boards and try to ride the waves all the way to shore. This guy's ride was obviously cut short.

17. Rainbow over Diamondhead Crater, just before sunset on Waikiki Beach (Honolulu). Rainbows happen about five times a day in Hawaii. The rain there feels lighter than running through a sprinkler. The showers last a few minutes, then the sun comes out again. Thus, the frequency of the rainbows.

18. Keenae Peninsula, on the Road to Hana (Maui) This was an amazing spot. Most vivid to me were the colors -- the green trees, blue water, white clouds and black rocks. I could have sat there all day just watching the waves crash against the rocks.

Riding the Rockies wave

2007-10-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

I was planning on posting some photos of our trip to Hawaii today (I'll do that later this week) until last night's Rockies game against the San Diego Padres. What a game! I haven't been a baseball follower for very long -- I just started following the Rockies this season -- but that was the most incredible game I've ever watched. Mike has been following baseball most of his life, and he said it was the best game he's ever seen. True to the way they've played all season, the Rockies eeked out a win in the 13th inning, beating the Padres 9-8 to move on to the playoffs.

Mike was covering the game for Denver's KOA Radio from Coors Field, and I was watching it on TV at home. At the top of the eighth inning, Mike called me and said the Rockies were going to win. The game at that point was tied 6-6. Little did we know we'd still be watching more than an hour later, and the game would go into the 13th inning.

The pitching on both sides was amazing. It was excruciating to watch at times. You could tell the batters for both teams just wanted to hit one out of the ballpark and end the game. I literally prayed for the Rockies batters as they came up to bat. I had a fleeting thought that the game would end in the 13th inning -- I think I thought that because the Rockies prior to yesterday's game had won 13 out of their last 14 games. Every time Matt Holliday, Todd Helton or Brad Hawpe went up to the plate, the crowd went wild, expecting them to be the hero of the day. I had a sense, though, that it would be someone else. I don't know why, but I prayed it would be Jamey Carroll, a rather quiet, unassuming guy.

Sure enough, Carroll made the hit that led to the winning run. Matt Holliday was on third base, and he slid face-first into home plate. There's a dispute as to whether he actually touched home plate, but it doesn't matter now. The Rockies won, and today they are in Philadelphia preparing to meet the Phillies for the National League Division Series of the playoffs.

The best thing about the Rockies win last night is that it silenced the critics. The Rockies haven't been in the playoffs since 1995. They haven't been a very good team for a lot of years, and the critics here in Denver have had nothing but negativity to spew about the management of the team, from the owners on down. The management's strategy was to build a team from the ground up -- to build up young, minor-league players -- "homegrown talent," as they call it. The critics, from sports columnists to TV broadcasters to fans, said it would never work, that the Rockies needed to go out and buy some players before they'd ever be any good.

The Rockies may not do very well in the playoffs, although something tells me they have a few surprises up their sleeves yet, but no one can deny that this has been a special season for them. They have talented players. Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki is likely to be named Rookie of the Year. Matt Holliday has a chance to be named the National League's Most Valuable Player for the season. The Rockies bullpen can go up against the best pitchers in the league, as we saw last night. They also have determination to win. They rallied at the end of the season to win 13 of 14 games to even get to last night's game. By contrast, the Mets tanked at the end of the season and gave up their seven-game lead in National League East.

Last night's game had us all on the edge of our seats last night in Denver. For the first time I can ever think of, the Rockies are more important in this city than the Broncos. (On Sunday when both the Rockies and the Broncos were playing at the same time, most sports fans had their eyes on the Rockies game.)

We get to do this all again tomorrow night when the Rockies play the Phillies. I have a feeling it's going to be a wild ride.

The view from paradise

2007-09-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

Aloha from Maui! Mike and I have been here for three days. Yesterday was Mike's brother's wedding, held at the Grand Wailea Resort, a spectacular place that is so gorgeous, it's almost overwhelming. What a place to get married. Since we arrived Thursday night, we've done a lot of wedding-related things, had some beach time and taken a few walks along the shoreline. Mike took the photo here during a walk Saturday morning. The early mornings are the best -- the heat and humidity haven't kicked in quite yet, the light is perfect for pictures and it's quiet. It's the off-season here, although there are still tourists around. It's just not packed like I've heard mid-summer and winter can be.

The wedding festivities are over, but our vacation is only half over. Tomorrow we will do the ever-famous Road to Hana (I remember driving this road on a family vacation to Maui as a kid), then we fly out tomorrow night for Honolulu, where we'll spend three days.

This is the first warm weather/beach vacation Mike and I have ever taken. Most of our trips are so busy and packed with one thing after the other, in the end we need a vacation from our vacation. This afternoon we went to the beach with the intention of going snorkeling, something neither of us has ever done. We got there and saw the waves were pretty rough, so we skipped the snorkeling and decided just to spend some time wading/swimming (the waves were too high to do much swimming) and soak up the sun. It was nice just to spend an hour or two on the beach together. We both agreed that the whole idea of a beach vacation is pretty appealing -- more so than we thought. Then again, we've both had quite a crazy season of working the past two or three months. We needed to go someplace like Hawaii, where you really don't feel the pressure to do a whole lot except relax. It took me about three days to start feeling relaxed. I'm still a little uptight. This afternoon I got irritated with an "island driver" going about 30 mph in front of me. I sped around the guy about the same time I realized I'm not in my bustling, had-to-be-there-five-minutes-ago life right now. I can get stuck behind a guy going 30 mph and not care. Where do I have to be to drive in such a hurry anyway?

The sun has just set here. A few minutes ago the sky was ablaze with pink and orange. Now it's cooling down and getting dark. I have some packing to do before the next leg of our journey tomorrow. I'll write more about our trip when we get back.

My first day of golf

2007-09-09T08:52:00.001-07:00

I had my very first golf lesson ever yesterday. I had been talking about wanting to learn to play for a couple of years, and Mike gave me a set of golf clubs for my birthday. I signed up for four lessons at a golf course down the street from where we live.

Today my arms and wrists are sore, my neck is stiff, and I realize just how much practice it's going to take to just get a basic swing down. (My instructor calls it a "turn," not a swing -- you're just turning your left hip to hit the ball.) Mike tells me it could be a couple of years before I feel like I have a comfortable swing. No wonder people get frustrated with this sport. We watch these professionals on TV who make it look so easy --not taking into account that the likes of Tiger Woods have had a golf club in their hands since age 3 -- and we think, "Well, gee, I should be able to do that." Yeah, right.

What I've learned so far is that if you pick up a golf club and swing it like you think you should -- without any instructions at all -- you're probably doing it incorrectly. It's not a natural movement. Yesterday I figured out my first weakness -- I twist my wrists in the back swing, and therefore when I bring the club down to hit the ball, I don't hit it right. I've got to keep my left elbow locked, my wrists locked, my body leaning forward, my knees bent but not bent too much. Boy, it's a lot to remember.

After the lesson I hit some balls at the driving range with Mike. He gave me some pointers, and the other men around me started giving me pointers, too. (I quickly learned not to listen to them . . . Mike said everyone who golfs thinks they know how to do it. I decided I'm just going to pay attention to my instructor.) For my first day, I think I made some progress. I'm no Annika Sorenstam or Michelle Wie, and I don't think I ever will be. That's not the goal, anyway. Mike kept telling me to relax and have fun. I kept getting frustrated that in one day, I didn't have a perfect swing.

I think I'm going to enjoy it, though, if I can relax. It really is beautiful out there, with the green grass, trees, the quiet and nothing to worry about except, of course, how you're playing the game. I'm nowhere near ready to attempt an actual course yet. I've still got a lot of time at the driving range ahead of me.

A sight to remember

2007-08-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Last night our neighbors, Mike and I saw something we'll not soon forget. Around 9 p.m., we watched as the Space Shuttle made its way from the northwest sky to the southeast.

Our neighbors told us about the appearance of the shuttle in last night's sky. They had heard on the TV news that it would be visible at 9:01 p.m. We spotted it a few minutes before that. At first it looked like a reddish-colored star, and we wondered if we were looking at the right thing, but it didn't take long to notice it was moving quickly -- very quickly -- across the night sky. The shuttle has to move at 17,500 miles an hour to keep orbiting Earth. We saw a second white light behind it, following at the same speed and in the same orbit. I've done some research since last night and found out what we saw was actually the International Space Station (the first reddish light we saw), with the Space Shuttle (the dimmer, white light) following behind it. A few minutes later, the shuttle and space station disappeared to our eyes.

As we watched, it amazed me that the shuttle was millions of miles away, and we were watching it orbiting the earth. (It orbits the earth once every 90 minutes or so. For more facts about the shuttle, go here.) It amazed me that people were up there, with a view of Earth few of us will ever see or comprehend. What amazes me now is that those same people are home tonight, subject again to the law of gravity. The shuttle entered Earth's atmosphere this morning and landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida despite some problems with this latest mission. And wow, to think that the shuttle was up there last night in the vastness of space, and it had to come home early to avoid any danger posed by Hurricane Dean. I'll bet the astronauts saw the hurricane from space -- it probably looked like a blob of swirling clouds around the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

The vastness of the universe compared to our little corner of it is too much for my mind to grasp. Seeing the Space Shuttle last night reminded me of how big God is -- and how amazing it is that He has His hand on astronauts in a tiny vessel, tiny compared to Him anyway, and people like us on the ground marveling at it all.

I'm not ready for this

2007-08-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm just not ready for the football season to start. I know, I know, it's only the preseason . . . the meaningless four weeks that seem to drag on until they finally decide to get down to business. The Denver Broncos played their first preseason game tonight, a win against San Francisco. As I watched and listened to it, I just couldn't fathom that it's time for football again.

Football season means a lot of things in our household. First and foremost, it means our weekends revolve around Broncos games . . . not because we're huge fans, but because part of Mike's job is hosting the Broncos pre-game, half-time and post-game shows on KOA Radio in Denver. For the past few years my contribution to the broadcasts has been bringing lunch (or dinner depending on what time the game starts) to the crew in the studio working the broadcasts. No, I don't make lunch each week (that would be much too ambitious), although occasionally I'll bring homemade cookies. It's usually Qdoba or Quiznos or something other than pizza. For a long time the studio crew ordered pizza almost every week, and they grew sick of it. I don't blame them. So on Sunday afternoons, I go pick up the food and bring a stack of grading to do for my classes as I watch the game in the KOA studio. (In case you were wondering, I get to eat, too. It's my reward for bringing the food.)

Dinner tonight was Qdoba, but as I sat for a while watching the game, I had to admit my heart just isn't in football yet. It was actually a little surreal to be watching the game. I'm still focused on the Colorado Rockies, who for the first time in a long time are playing games in August that still mean something. This summer, I've learned so much about baseball, I think I actually enjoy it more than football. The high temperature in Denver today was about 100 degrees. It's still summer. I've really enjoyed the summer this year, and I'm just not ready to let it go and embrace fall and all its glory, including football.

It doesn't really matter anyway. The last days of summer are still mine to enjoy. Preseason football means nothing. I'm convinced it's just another opportunity to make money (tickets to games, television broadcasts, advertising, etc.) and it gives the NFL a good month to hype up the regular season. Soon enough the weekend after Labor Day will come, and by then I'll feel more ready to embrace the change of seasons and the start to the REAL football season, or at least the part that counts.

The hike was awesome!

2007-08-06T08:11:00.000-07:00

We made it! The hike Mike, my Uncle Ren and I did Saturday over Schofield Pass from Crested Butte to Marble was incredible. It turned out to be about 12 miles, most of it downhill. That doesn't mean, however, that our legs weren't sore at the end of the day . . . and they're still sore two days later. By the end of the day, I was praising the opportunities to go uphill for even a short distance. The worst part was the longest, steepest downhill stretch at the very end of the hike as we approached Marble. By then my quads and knees felt like jello.

The weather was perfect -- cloudy at the beginning of the day, sunny in the middle and cloudy again at the end. My mom, dad and Aunt Jan drove Kebler and McClure passes from Crested Butte to Marble to pick us up at the end of the day . . . a huge help. There's no way we wanted to turn around and hike 12 miles back.

The highlight was the diverse scenery . . . Emerald Lake at the beginning of the hike, the green forests with blooming wildflowers, forests of tall aspen trees, having to ford two streams (good thing we brought sandals with us) the steep "shelf road" (with quite a sheer drop-off) we shared with several jeeps, ATVs and mountain bikers, the dangerous Devil's Punch Bowl, the charming ghost town of Crystal and Crystal Mill (one of the most photographed sites in Colorado), the clear Crystal River that we followed for four miles from Crystal to Marble.

I'm so glad we did the hike. What great memories we have. Now I want to hike over West Maroon Pass, which starts near Schofield Pass and leads to the Maroon Bells outside Aspen. The summer is nearing an end for me and Mike because our schedules get crazy in late August and September, so we'll probably have to save that hike for next year.

Getting ready for a challenge

2007-08-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

Ever since Mike and I went to Crested Butte earlier this summer, we've wanted to go back and hike over Schofield Pass, an old wagon road between mining towns that has come a legend of a road among ATVers and other four-wheelers.

On Saturday we're doing the hike with my Uncle Ren, aka Mr. Hiker/Athlete/I'm Up for Anything Outdoors. We're not really sure how long the hike will be, although we're guessing 12-15 miles. We'll hike from just outside Crested Butte to Marble. In Marble my Aunt Jan will pick us up in a car so we don't have to make another 15-mile trek back to Crested Butte, where we'll be staying. If you look at a map of Colorado, you'll see that Crested Butte and Marble aren't very far apart -- maybe 20 miles at the most -- but there's no paved road to get there. In a regular car you have go drive around by way of Kebler Pass and McClure Pass-- that translates into a two- or three-hour drive.

Of course it will take us a lot longer than two or three hours to hike the most direct route, but we'll pass the former town site of Schofield (a former mining camp) and the Crystal Mill, one of the most photographed old buildings in Colorado. Mike and I have become what I call ghost town junkies during the past few summers. This summer, especially, we've spent several weekends exploring some little-known places in Colorado, most of them old mining towns now abandoned with nothing left but a handful of old cabins, and driving on back roads we never knew existed. We've done all of this in Mike's little Nissan Sentra. (I think his car, aka the Silver Bullet, is going to need its shocks replaced before long.) It's been fun, though. We've learned about Colorado history along the way, seen some incredible scenery and gotten to know our beautiful state beyond the typical tourist areas.

When we found out about the road over Schofield Pass, we were instantly interested in hiking it. Four-wheel drives can navigate the route (click here for a description of the journey), but we wanted to get there on our own two feet. Most of the stuff you read about Schofield says it's a pretty dangerous road even for a four-wheel drive. People have died driving the route; the most notorious tragedy was in 1970 when a jeep full of people plunged into a point along the road called the Devil's Punch Bowl. Then again, we've read other accounts that say it's not nearly as dangerous as people make it out to be, and what's the big deal anyway?

I'm still a little nervous, though, mostly because I'm more of a 5-miles max kind of hiker, not a 15-mile kind of hiker. Mike and I both work out 4-5 days a week, but I still wonder if I'm up for this. And we're going with my Uncle Ren, an exercise nut who's an Ironman triathlete and is now hiking Colorado 14-ers. (I don't have much interest in hiking 14ers. I've done two of them in my life, and that's enough. A lot of people make a hobby of hiking Colorado's 54 14,000-plus-foot peaks. I'd rather do hikes like Schofield Pass; they're more off the beaten path.)

As I write this I realize I sound like I'm about 50 years old, not 35. We're still young, and we've been looking forward to this all summer long. I'll write about it when we get back and post some photos.

Time flies

2007-08-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe, but I'm already done teaching my five-week Introduction to Journalism class, or at least I will be done tomorrow after the final exam. A month ago, I had only just begun. That's the beauty of summer classes -- they're intense while they last, but they are over before you know it.

It's been a good class. My summer students are usually my best ones. This class was no exception. They kept me on my toes with good questions and a desire to learn.

I have two weeks now before the fall semester begins. I'll be teaching another five-week class -- the Metro State journalism department offers three of its core courses in five-week increments each semester -- and this one is even more intense. It's Beginning Reporting, a class where students do an assignment a day. Practice, practice, practice -- it's the only way to really learn how to report and write like my students' future jobs will require. But that daily practice means I'll have 15 assignments a day to grade. Ugh. Grading is the part of teaching I dislike the most. (And I don't have teaching assistants to do my grading for me . . . I wish I did.)

Meanwhile, I have a few reporting assignments of my own to juggle as I prepare for the fall and finish up the grading from the summer class. Teaching takes up a lot of my time, and between my two jobs (writing and teaching), I talk more about teaching and spend more time thinking about it than writing. (The teaching is still somewhat new, whereas the writing is like second nature, I guess.) Sometimes it's hard to switch my focus and remember I'm still a journalist, too, not only a journalism teacher.

Living by the heart, not a code

2007-07-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

In class this week I've been giving my students a crash course in journalism ethics. It's a crash course because it's an inexhaustible topic . . . one that continually challenges my journalistic ideals and keeps me wondering how such polar opposites can exist in journalism . . . the likes of Woodward and Bernstein, who never set out to become famous but became so through their dogged reporting on the Watergate scandal . . . and the likes of people like Jayson Blair, who fabricated and plagiarized story after story in the New York Times, leading to his own firing and the resignation of several editors there.

Today we examined the story of Stephen Glass, a reporter at The New Republic magazine who got caught fabricating 27 of the 41 stories he had written for the magazine over the course of a couple of years. (For more on how Glass got caught, go here.) We watched the 2003 movie about Glass, a made-for-Hollywood film that I'm sure takes some liberties to tell the story, but my, what a story it is. It all boils down to the fact that little by little, Glass inserted lies into his stories, to the point he fabricated entire articles, and didn't get caught for a while. A "60 Minutes" piece that you can also watch on the DVD of the film shows a now supposedly contrite Glass apologizing for his misdeeds. His regret seems insincere. You've got to wonder how a guy gets to the point of making stuff up, passing it off as nonfiction and then lying to his editors about making it up.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of journalism that makes news. Reporters who don't screw up don't become headlines. They just go about their work, all the while the vast majority of the public suspects that somewhere in the average journalist is a liar and a cheat like Stephen Glass.

For their writing assignment due this week, my students have to answer the question, "What makes the difference between an ethical journalist and an unethical one?" Many of them will give me answers like, "An ethical journalist follows the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, while unethical ones don't." (The SPJ is a trade association whose code of ethics includes seeking the truth and reporting it, minimizing harm to people involved in and affected by stories, acting independently of outside pressures and sources like advertisers and public relations people, and being accountable, i.e. admitting your mistakes when you make them.) That answer is a shallow one -- it doesn't really get to the heart of the issue.

I think what separates an ethical journalist from an unethical one is not a code. It's the heart. Stephen Glass admits that he lied and made up stories for his own glory. He wanted to be liked. He gleaned satisfaction and self-esteem from having the wittiest, most entertaining stories in his magazine. He wanted to be the center of attention. After Jayson Blair got caught making up stories in the New York Times, his editors thought back to some of the stories he covered and thought, "Gee, I wondered how he was able to get the interviews he did and get sources to open up like he did." Blair selfishly played with the newspaper's reputation because it felt good to be the one reporter who got what nobody else seemingly could. That should be a red flag to editors -- but, see, editors have their own vain ambitions as well. They want to be the editors behind the reporters getting the great stories.

On the flip side, we have the example of James Nachtwey, a war photographer featured in the documentary film War Photographer. For more information on him, go here. There's quite a bit of political commentary in the film I don't necessarily subscribe to. (Nachtwey sees himself as protesting war by covering war and hopes his images influence people to stop whatever brawl they're involved in.) But there are ethical lessons to be gleaned from how Nachtwey goes about his work. He's unassuming; he lets people tell their stories and visibly respects those in his photo-stories. He has basically given up any chance for a "regular person's" life to do what he does -- you can't exactly travel the globe covering its conflicts and keep a stable environment with a family at home. Not every journalist can do what Nachtwey does, nor is he the only example of a journalist who tries, at least, to approach his stories and the people in them with respect and dignity. His personality doesn't make him an ethical journalist, but the heart behind his work does.

I wrote in a previous blog that teaching journalism ethics is my least favorite part of teaching this class. It's actually my most favorite as well. The topic fascinates me and confounds me at the same time. It fascinates me because I've tried so hard in my career to treat people right and to cover stories with care. I hate to make mistakes in my work, and I think that reflects my heart to do the job well. Ethics confound me as well because there are examples like Glass and Blair. Their selfishness saddens me because they, not the plenty of ethical journalists out there, are often the face of journalism to the world. Journalists are not like doctors or lawyers. There's no examination to pass before you can call yourself a journalist. There's no license to practice journalism, which makes it vulnerable to be hijacked by impostors.

My students (like a lot of people, I might add) want hard and fast rules to follow. Give them the exact thing you want them to do, and they're happy. It's easy to look at something like the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics and read it like a list of do's and don'ts. To me, though, it's about the heart. My husband and I talk often about people in our line of work who are motivated by selfish ambition. You can sniff these people out pretty easily because their stories are usually ultimately about them, not the people they're writing about, interviewing, etc. (You can see this on TV talk shows when the host has to pontificate about how much he or she knows about the topic, all the while never really asking the interviewee a question.)

Ego is a tricky thing. It plays such a huge role in journalism. Young journalists are taught to be competitive, hungry to get the hot story. They're told to become self-promoters eager to get the best opportunities. Some would argue that without this kind of attitude, journalists would lie down, let important stories go untold and let their competitors win the race to get the best news first. But this is also what leads to the Stephen Glasses of the world.

I think the James Nachtweys of the world are a dying breed. Yes, they've become well-known for their work, and they've done excellent work at that. But they've managed to do it without seeking the fame and without becoming totally cynical to the world around them. The difference is the heart.

Summer colds

2007-07-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

What's the deal with getting a cold in the middle of summer?

I woke up Sunday morning, and my throat was dry and scratchy. I thought it was just a result of sleeping with the fan on for several days in a row. But the scratchiness didn't go away. In fact, it's turned into sniffling, sneezing and that out-of-breath feeling just walking around the house or exerting myself in any simple way-- all symptoms of a cold. I usually get colds in the fall or winter, but I've never had one in the middle of summer. It's 90 degrees outside, and I'm inside sneezing, sniffling and wanting to take a nap.

I saw a blurb on a medical site on the Internet that said summer colds are just a misnomer for hay fever, i.e. allergies. Nope, I don't think these symptoms are just allergies.

I think I may have picked it up from my students, several of whom are also muddling through summer colds. Oh, well. I do feel a little better today, well enough to exercise this morning. I think I may head out into the sunshine this afternoon.

I guess there's a bright side to having a cold in the summertime: At least there's warmth, sunshine and all those fun summer things to do waiting for you outside once you feel better.

New recruits

2007-07-05T15:53:00.001-07:00

On Monday I started teaching a five-week version of Introduction to Journalism and Mass Media at Metro State College of Denver. It was a weird week to start teaching a summer class with the Fourth of July falling in the middle of it, but it was good to be back in the classroom again.

I have 15 students -- some of them wanting to go into journalism, others just taking the class as an elective. The five-week summer version of the course is my favorite to teach. The class moves quickly, which keeps both me and the students more interested in the material. (By week 9 or 10 of a regular semester class, it's tempting to just check out and wish the end of the semester would come quickly.) I feel like I get to know the students better as well, since I see them four days a week for two hours a day. Summer students tend to be a bit more motivated as well. I figure if you're going to school over the summer, you either have to or you want to.

I've taught this class so many times, it's hard sometimes for me to see it from a fresh perspective. Those new eyes always seem to come with what we did in class today. I always show the movie "All the President's Men," the story of how two Washington Post reporters broke the Watergate story in 1972, at this point in the course. It serves as a good introduction to the topic of newspapers and their role in American society. The movie, based on the nonfiction book by the same name, also never fails to put a little inspiration back into my journalistic heart as well. The film (made in 1976) stars two very young but now famous actors, Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein. I always manage to get something out of watching these two portray Woodward and Bernstein, America's first real celebrity journalists (although they didn't set out to become celebrities). I've seen the film probably 10 times, but I never get tired of it.

What struck me today was watching Woodward (Redford) insist on having real, definitive facts before he ran with a story, while Bernstein (Hoffman) was more comfortable inferring things, assuming things, filling in the blanks. I tend to be more like Woodward. In my career I've lived through the consequences of making assumptions, even in small things that don't really seem to matter. As a journalist you can't even assume you know how to spell someone's name, no matter how simple it is, like Joe Smith or Jane Johnson. You have to ask questions -- and keep asking them -- even if you think you understand something. I've gotten over the fear of sounding stupid by asking "dumb" questions. I'd rather sound stupid in an interview than look stupid when a story is published and is wrong.

These are the little nuances of being in journalism that are fun to see with new eyes and try to pass on to the "new recruits" in my classes. It's even more fun in the other class I teach, Beginning Reporting (which I won't teach until the fall), where students learn the basics of writing news stories. I know I drive my students crazy, nitpicking on "minor" things like spelling people's names correctly. They get zeros on their assignments for spelling names wrong -- even getting one little letter in a person's name wrong. I tell them that learning to pay attention to details begins now in the classroom, not when they get their first job. They balk when they get their first zero -- and most of my students get at least one zero through the course of a semester -- but they learn quickly to double check and triple check what they're doing. And when the occasional student begs me to give them a break -- after all, they thought they double-checked everything -- I remind them that I'm training them for the real world, where not only editors/producers, but readers/viewers/listeners expect journalists to be professionals. It's serious business, and now is the time to take it seriously.

I also tell them that in a bigger sense, integrity begins with the little things. And how you handle the little things reflects how you'll handle the big things. Some people don't grasp that Woodward and Bernstein didn't have the story of their careers handed to them. Their editor never called them into his office and said, "Hey, guys, write this huge investigative piece on Watergate, will you? We've figured out all the details; we just need some hotshot writers like you to write it for us."

No, they pieced it together little by little, one development at a time. Those developments were uncovered for two years before President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. And Woodward was there, insisting that the stories be based on facts, not assumptions. Call me an idealist, but that's the kind of journalist I want these "new recruits" to be.

Compassionate leadership

2007-06-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

I read this on leadership expert John C. Maxwell's Leadership Wired newsletter (http://www.injoy.com/) and thought I'd share it here. It is challenging and thought-provoking.

COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP
Consider these sobering statistics:
• Two of three Americans are overweight.

• One child dies of hunger in the world every four seconds.

To feed a starving child for a year costs roughly $200, about the same amount the average American spends each year on soft drinks. By simply passing up soda, Americans could cut child hunger by 75% worldwide.

Leaders are responsible for leveraging their influence to serve others. When leaders use power for selfish benefit, we commonly refer to their “abuse” of power. Would it be a stretch to claim that Americans abuse their power by guzzling sodas when malnourished children are dying in slums?

Now, it’s impractical to think that Americans would never spend another dollar for Pepsi or Coke, and it’s unreasonable to ask of them. However, when 65% of Americans are overweight, surely some changes can be made to cut consumption in the USA and give generously to those in poverty around the world.

The list of the world’s ailments can be daunting—AIDS, starvation, water shortages, environmental contamination, etc. However, the affluence of Americans may be equal to the task, if only leaders would mobilize the resources within their grasp.

Many are simply too lazy to contribute to social causes, or they refuse to let the world’s problems disrupt their comfort. Still others justify their inaction by citing the “drop in the bucket” mentality. However, with enough drops, a bucket gets full.

Leaders are honor-bound to assist those in need. In the words of U2’s Bono, “In the Global Village, distance no longer decides who is your neighbor, and ‘Love thy neighbor’ is not advice, it’s a command.” In the age of globalization, we buy shoes made in China, shirts from India, oil from the Middle East, and diamonds from Africa. Is it just for children in those regions to suffer and starve while ours eat potato chips and play X-box?

THE CHALLENGE
How are you modeling compassionate leadership?

To what causes are you lending your resources?

How are you inspiring others to give generously to social causes?

Mike and I have had the pleasure of sponsoring two children through two different Christian relief organizations, Compassion International and World Vision. (The photo above is from Compassion's Web site, http://www.compassion.com/. A little girl named Hanna has a tea party outside her home in Guatemala.) Through Compassion, we sponsor a 13-year-old girl named Princy who lives in India, and through World Vision (http://www.worldvision.org/), we sponsor 6-year-old Lawrence who lives in Zimbabwe. Our monthly sponsorships provide Princy and Lawrence with basic needs -- health care, education, school supplies, spiritual teaching and formation, etc.

I started sponsoring Princy in 2001, before Mike met and I got married. I was inspired to start sponsoring her in part because I had just returned from a three-month experience in India, where the contrasts between rich and poor are staggering. The rich live just like most Americans -- nice homes, nice cars, nice clothing, opportunities to get a good education. In the area of India where I was, the poor live interspersed in the neighborhoods of the rich -- mostly in shacks rigged up in alleyways. Children dressed in rags beg on the street corners. Poor men may drive rickshaws or do the laundry of their rich neighbors. Younger women care for their children. Day after day poor older men and women hammer rocks into tiny pieces for construction projects.

I have also seen poverty in other parts of the world -- Vietnam, Mexico, the Dominican Republic. Seeing poverty like that had an impact on me. I have memories of these places -- the sights, sounds, smells, even tastes -- that snap me back into reality when I catch myself thinking that I'm lacking in any material way. It's easy in the United States to think you don't have enough -- after all, there are plenty of people who have more. But how much is enough? And when do we start giving away the excess we have?

Princy and her family live in a fishing village in south India, and it's been a joy to be part of her life for the past six years. We exchange letters a few times a year. A photo of her on my desk prompts me to pray for her and her family. It means a lot to me and Mike to be part of her life -- only one little life among the more than a billion souls in India, but that little life matters.

A few months ago, Mike and I started sponsoring Lawrence, who lives in a community in Zimbabwe severely affected by AIDS. Of the 40 million people worldwide suffering from AIDS, 24 million live in Africa. In Zimbabwe, the life expectancy for women is 34 years; for men, it's 37 years. (This is sobering -- Mike and I would likely be dead right now if we lived in Zimbabwe.) A missionary friend of ours in France recently visited Zimbabwe as part of a World Vision visit, and here's what he said about the experience in a recent newsletter:

. . . We saw firsthand how World Vision is seeking to bring the whole gospel to an impoverished area, empowering local people to work together towards development and transformation of their communities. I was so touched and impressed by the work being done; by the wonderful, all-African staff; and by the response of the people. Everywhere we went there was singing, dancing, praying, thanking . . . What a stark difference from my world. In utter poverty these people find a way to rejoice! There is too much to say! The trip was nostalgic, alarming, exhilarating, humbling and awakening. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

What a stark difference from our world here in the United States, too, in more ways than one. I share these stories about the children we sponsor not because we deserve praise or a pat on the back. We could certainly do more than we do. We don't sponsor these children to earn kudos with anyone, not even God. We do it because we can -- and because we have been blessed to be a blessing. We do it because it's a personal way we can respond to the stark needs across the world. And it's such a reality check for us when we get letters from the children or hear about experiences like our friend who traveled to Zimbabwe.

"If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like noonday." -- Isaiah 58:9-10

"He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." -- Proverbs 14:31

Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese . . .

2007-06-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

I saw this story today on Yahoo! News and had to share it. The gist is that New York City is going to require fast-food restaurants to post calorie counts on menus beginning Sunday. (The requirement goes along with a ban on New York City restaurants using cooking oils with trans fats, which also takes effect Sunday.) The fast-food restaurants don't like the new law requiring calorie disclosure on menus, of course, and say it's because the calorie counts will make their menus impossible to read. I think people will be shocked to see just how many calories are in that bacon double cheeseburger. Maybe they'll take their appetites elsewhere. I know I would.

I stopped eating at most fast food restaurants a few years ago, but not because of the high calories, although that's reason enough to avoid them. The older I get, the more I just don't feel very well after eating at places like McDonald's or Taco Bell. I can't even eat a salad at McDonald's. I can still eat Wendy's single hamburgers, and I get cravings for Chick-Fil-A grilled chicken sandwiches. Turkey sandwiches at Subway treat my stomach kindly, but the rest of the fast-food chains make my tummy churn just thinking about eating their food.

Chains refuse to put calories on menus
By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - Don't expect to see the calorie count for Burger King's Double Whopper with cheese on the menu anytime soon.
Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's are among the chains planning to defy New York City's new rule that they begin posting calories on menus Sunday.
Other big fast food eateries like Taco Bell and KFC aren't saying whether they will comply, but with just days to go until the deadline, the menu boards in their Big Apple restaurants remain unchanged.
All are hoping a New York Restaurant Association lawsuit in federal court will get the new regulation thrown out. Meanwhile, the city won't fine anyone for violating it until October.
"We are not trying to avoid providing this information to customers," said Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch. He noted that the company has made nutritional information available for 30 years on fliers and posters.
However, New York is the first city in the country to require certain fast food restaurants to list calorie counts next to menu items in type that is at least as large as the price.
Lynch says adding all those numbers will make menus impossible to read.
"You'll either have to have a Times Square-sized menu board, or it could look like a bad day at the eye doctor's office," said Jack Whipple, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants."
Fast food chains also say they have been unfairly singled because the new rule only applies to restaurants that serve standardized portions and offer nutritional information voluntarily.
Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy group, had a different take:
"They are afraid that when people see these eye-popping calorie numbers, they might switch to a smaller size," he said. "They feel it is gong to hurt sales."
For the record, that Double Whopper with Cheese will run you 990 calories, or more than half the recommended daily calories for an adult woman.

I've become a recycling nut

2007-06-25T15:59:00.001-07:00

A few months ago Mike and I started recycling our plastics, paper board, glass, aluminum, etc. We'd already been recycling our newspapers, but a story I wrote last fall about recycling efforts in Northern Colorado(http://ncbr.datajoe.com/app/ecom/pub_article_details.php?id=84157) opened my eyes a bit. Actually, it rekindled my desire to do my part and recycle what I could.

I used to live in Greeley, Colo., where I'd drop off my recycling at a grimy little place out in the country. I hated going there -- the guys who ran it kind of gave me the creeps -- but I was committed to recycling. I'm not an environmentalist by any means -- I have my doubts that global warming is our fault and that we can really do that much to stop it -- but recycling just makes sense to me. I mean, why throw that plastic water bottle away when it could be recycled into another plastic bottle? Why let it sit in a landfill FOREVER when it doesn't have to? I lived in an apartment in Greeley and therefore didn't have a recycling pick-up service. I had to seek a place out on my own and then collect all my recyclable items in bags and store them until I took them in.

I've moved a couple of times since I lived in Greeley and pretty much forgot about recycling. Every once in a while I'd heft the trash out to the trash bin and think about all the stuff in there that could be recycled.

The story I did for the Northern Colorado Business Report last November motivated me to start recycling again. For one, I did some research about landfills. (For a brief introduction to landfills, go to http://www.howstuffworks.com/landfill.htm.) Landfills are basically big holes in the ground where our trash gets buried. Much of what we throw away never decomposes or biodegrades, and it stays in that hole forever. On the East Coast, recycling is actually cheaper than land filling. Why? Because the landfills are full. Yes, some East Coast trash companies are hauling their trash out West because there's simply more room out here to bury the trash. I also learned that some counties in Colorado are really on the ball about recycling and have county-sponsored programs, such as Larimer County and Boulder County. Others are comparatively light years behind, such as Weld County, where I used to live. Land filling in Weld County -- the third largest county in the state that has a lot of wide open space -- is big business. Therefore recycling isn't very valued.

That brings me to Douglas County, where Mike and I currently live. Since we live in a condominium complex, there is no recycling pick-up. (That's a whole other can of worms I opened when doing research for the story. Apartment and condo complexes are hard to crack in terms of organizing recycling efforts. What happens is recycling bins get set up; residents ignore the signs that say "Recycling Only" and dump trash in there, and then the trash haulers, which are also the recycling companies, get fed up having to separate the trash from the recyclables. Therefore the recycling bins go away, and residents who want to recycle have to find other means to do the right thing.)

But I digress . . . anyway, doing the story turned me into a bit of a recycling nut. Mike is into it, too. Before we throw anything away we ask ourselves if it can be recycled. A few weeks after we started collecting our recyclables, I happened upon a few recycling bins behind a Catholic church. For six months, our little system worked perfectly. We collected the recyclables and would take them over to the bins behind the church every few weeks. Then one day a few weeks ago, we went to the church, and the recycling bins were gone!

There was a sign that said, "Recycling bins must be removed by order of the Douglas County Development Department." I was really mad. REALLY mad. I mean, here we are, two average citizens trying to do our part to help the environment, and the government says NO. I'm not sure what happened with the bins -- whether a neighbor complained, whether the recycling company didn't pick up the stuff often enough or what.

I was mad enough to want to abandon our recycling efforts entirely. But something held me back. I did some research on the Internet and found that there aren't many places you can drop off recyclable items in our area. Sure, if we lived in a house we could pay the trash company to pick recycling up. We could drive 20 miles to Commerce City to a drop-off center. There are plenty of places to take phone books, car batteries, electronics or appliances. But I wanted a place to take everyday stuff.

Today, I found it. And it made my day. Seriously. The El Jebel Shriners have set up recycling bins at various locations across the Denver area, and I found one in an elementary-school parking lot close to home. While I dumped our stuff in there, I half expected someone from the school to come out and tell me I couldn't use the bins. But no one stopped me.

I sure hope this new recycling location turns out to be a good one. I hope the bins don't disappear on us. In the meantime, I think I'm going to call Douglas County -- heck, I may even try to find out who my county commissioner is and call him or her-- and encourage them to start a county-wide recycling drop-off center. For heaven's sake, recycling isn't a new concept. It's the norm on the East and West coasts, and many universities across the country, including ones in Colorado, have campus-wide recycling programs.

To me, it's the biggest no-brainer thing you can do to reduce waste and help the environment, minor though it may seem to the individuals doing it.

SWEEP!

2007-06-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a fine day for baseball fans in Colorado. The Colorado Rockies, after really struggling through the first six weeks of the season, swept the New York Yankees in a three-game series. (The photo here (credit: Denver Post) shows Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba celebrating the final win yesterday afternoon with closing pitcher Brian Fuentes.)

By the way the local media have told the story, you'd think the Rockies had made it to the World Series.

Whoa, now, hold your horses -- there's still a lot of baseball yet to play this year.

I've become a Rockies fan this year in large part to my husband Mike. He follows baseball -- especially the Rockies -- more than any other sport. We watch the Rockies almost every night. Mike also has a kind of inside track on the team because of a weekly baseball talk show he does for KOA Radio in Denver. It's part of his job, yes, but through four baseball seasons of doing the Saturday show and talking to a lot of people within the Rockies organization, he's come to respect what the team is trying to do -- build players from the ground up. Local newspaper columnists and radio and TV sports guys have had nothing but negativity to spew about the Rockies. Early in the season when the Rockies were struggling, criticism abounded about the owners, the management, the players. It was doom and gloom day after day.

Now suddenly things look a little brighter. The Rockies, at least today, are the best team in Major League Baseball considering their record since May 22. The columnists are too full of pride to admit they may be wrong, that building a team from the ground up may actually be working. On the other hand, some media people need to learn a thing or two about baseball -- a sport that is like a marathon (there are 162 games in a season after all), not the 100-yard dash. One local radio guy said this morning that the Rockies were in a "pennant race." If you know anything about baseball, you know that winning three games in a row in mid-June -- even against one of the winning-est teams like the Yankees -- does not make a pennant race. As Mike told me this morning, you don't start talking about pennant races until late August.

The players know this; the managers and owners know this. They're more likely to look at the sweep against the Yankees as just three great games, nothing more, nothing less. The games did make a statement, though. Here's an excerpt from today's Denver Post story:

At 9:30 a.m. Thursday, a battery of friends sat outside Coors Field with cheap beer, warm smiles and brooms. And they weren't the cleaning crew. They were waiting for Rockpile tickets. To cheer the home team. Imagine that.

The Rockies rewarded their faith with a comic book finish. The Legends of Fall were no match for the Legion of Broom.

The Rockies swept the New York Yankees with a 4-3 victory before a third consecutive sellout crowd, sweeping a series that nobody thought they were going to win, let alone dominate.

With a baby-faced shortstop, a gritty starting pitcher and less winning tradition than a leftover sock at Yankee Stadium, the Rockies spotted New York two runs, then knocked out Roger Clemens. Just a month ago, there was talk of Colorado sinking in quicksand. At 18-27, the Rockies were one of the National League's worst teams.

Thursday, they rode off in buses for a 10-day road trip just 3 1/2 games behind the division-leading San Diego Padres, all but cackling at ruining the Yankees' hyped visit to Denver.

"To sweep any team is a great," said Rodrigo Lopez, who remained undefeated, surrendering two runs in 5 2/3 innings. "But to sweep the Yankees with all that mystique, we made a statement."

Today the Rockies are in Toronto to play the Blue Jays, then they're off to two more series on the road. There's still half the season left to play. Last year before the All Star Break, the Rockies were in first place in their division, and they tanked the second half of the season. Could that happen again this year? Sure it could. After all, Rockies fans have been disappointed before.

I listened on the radio to the end of yesterday's game. The score was 4-3 Rockies, and a Yankees batter swung and missed, marking the end of the game. The crowd erupted. I threw my hand in the air and yelled "Woo-hoo!" sitting in my car. It sure was sweet to watch (and listen to) them win three games against the Yankees. The fans came out in droves, too. The attendance for the three games fell about 1,400 people short of an attendance record for one series at Coors Field.

The Rockies could disappoint us again this year -- although I really hope they don't -- but at least for three games this season, Rockies fans and baseball lovers everywhere saw an underdog team beat the world's best-known baseball team -- a team (most) everyone expected to dominate.

Tourists at home in Colorado

2007-06-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of our recent trip to Crested Butte (June 4-7). We spent about four days in this former coal-mining town, now a Colorado ski resort. I've lived in Colorado most of my life but had never been there. (Crested Butte is a bit of a haul -- about four hours -- from Denver, so most Denver skiers flock to the ski areas just west of the metro area.) We hung out in town and saw Gothic and Tincup, two more Colorado ghost towns we can check off our list of ghost towns we want to see. We're kind of ghost-town junkies because we like the history and we like to ponder what life was like for early settlers in Colorado's mountains. We also did some hiking and watched snow (yes, snow in June) fall on one cold, blustery day.

On the way home we drove the West Elk Loop, a scenic drive that took us past the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a stunning deep, narrow canyon that seems to come out of nowhere -- the landscape around it is a pretty flat mesa. I had been to the Black Canyon years ago; it was good to see it again. We went over McClure Pass and drove through Marble. (We'd been there before -- another great Colorado ghost town known, of course, for its marble quarries.) Then we headed back on Interstate 70 through Glenwood Springs, Glenwood Canyon, Vail, Summit County, etc.

The trip reminded me what a blessing it is to live in such a beautiful state. We plan to go back to Crested Butte in August for a hike over Schofield Pass, a former wagon road between Gothic and Marble that is hardly passable by four-wheel drive now. The best way to go over it is by hiking. We're looking forward to some more breathtaking scenery and a memorable experience.

Honoring the sacrifice of many

2007-05-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to a service at Denver’s Fort Logan National Cemetery in honor of Memorial Day. It was the first time I had ever been to such a service on Memorial Day. In the past the day has meant family barbecues, the Bolder Boulder (an annual 10K race in Boulder) and picnics in the mountains. Memorial Day meant more to me this year. Mike and I spent last Memorial Day in Normandy, France, touring the D-Day beaches and wandering through the American cemetery above Omaha Beach. Somehow, after seeing that, the sacrifice of those who have served -- and continue to serve -- our country is more meaningful to us. We wanted to commemorate Memorial Day this year in the way, however small on our part, it was meant to be commemorated.

The service at Fort Logan was touching. Several thousand people attended, one of the largest crowds that had ever gathered for the Memorial Day service at the cemetery. I talked to a woman sitting behind me whose husband served in the Army during World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He died about 10 years ago and is buried at Fort Logan. We also saw a friend at the service, a Marine who served in World War II. He lost his wife a few years ago, and she’s buried at Fort Logan.

Several dozen people at the service rose to their feet when asked to stand in honor of a loved one who had served in the military and had died since last Memorial Day. (The local media took that to mean all of those people lost loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, but those in attendance represented many current and former service members who had died in the last year, not just those serving in the current conflict.)

I wanted to take some flowers to place somewhere at Fort Logan, where 90,000 servicemen, servicewomen and their families are buried. Before the service I picked up a bunch of white carnations at the grocery store, not knowing exactly where they’d end up. I asked God to show us where to put them. As we walked through the cemetery, two gravestones caught my attention. One of the gravestones said, “Well done my good and faithful servant,” a reference to a story Jesus tells in Matthew 25. I split up the carnations and put half in front of that gravestone.

The other gravestone said, “A man after God’s own heart,” a reference to ancient Israel’s King David but a sentiment a lot of believers wish to have said about them. A woman was kneeling and crying before the second gravestone. I approached her, told her the words on the gravestone touched us and asked if we could place some flowers before it. She smiled through her tears. ‘Daddy would love that,” she said. I looked at the dates on the gravestone. The woman’s father had just died last fall. This was her first Memorial Day without him, and she was obviously struggling.

I can only hope our small gesture of placing a few white carnations at the foot of his gravestone gave her a little bit of comfort on a difficult day.

What a difference a few months can make

2007-05-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

My husband and I were feeling pretty lucky when we went to San Francisco in March and saw gas prices there at about $3.30 per gallon. Now we're the glum ones. Gas prices in our neighborhood just hit about $3.25 per gallon. Back in March, they were about $2.75. In January, a gallon cost $1.99.

Amazing what a difference a few months can make.

The lowest gas prices in the San Francisco area today (outside the city, mind you) are not much higher than they are here -- about $3.40. In the city they've hit $3.75. One gas station is charging $4.33! Click on this link for more: http://www.sanfrangasprices.com.

I never thought I'd see the day when gas in Denver is more expensive than gas in New York City. Gas prices in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, etc. are about $3.10. In the heart of the city they're about $3.30. Check out this link for more info: http://www.newyorkgasprices.com.

It's getting out of control. Both Mike and I drive little Nissan Sentras. It now costs us $40 to fill up our 12-gallon tanks.

I guess we can still consider ourselves lucky. We don't drive the SUVs most of our neighbors drive.

The irony is that after Denver got hit with a few big snowstorms this winter, the sales of SUVs skyrocketed at local car dealerships. That's back when gas prices had decreased, and the immediacy of driving through snow for a few weeks outweighed the reality that gas would increase again in a few months.

I wonder if many of those SUV owners are now regretting their decision to trade in their front-wheel drives -- which perform great in the snow; we get around fine in ours -- for gas-guzzling four-wheel drives that are becoming too expensive to fill up.

Wanderlust

2007-05-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

I came to the realization today that I think I'm grieving a bit. A year ago this coming Sunday, my husband Mike and I left on a two-week trip to Europe. We spent a week in England and a week in France. We had a great time, met some great people, took lots of photos and brought home some wonderful memories. (One photo posted here shows us and Big Ben in London. The other photo is of us at Mont Saint Michel, an abbey on a tiny island off the coast of northern France.) I want to go overseas again. And I guess I'm a little sad.

I've gotten this way around the one-year anniversary of other overseas trips I've taken. At age 17 and right out of high school, I spent a month in France with a French family, my first journey overseas. Other teenagers save up their money to buy clothes and cars. I saved the money I made working at a child-care center to go to France. I had taken six years of French at the time and immersed myself in the language and the culture. The night before I returned home, I had a conversation with an American woman in Paris and realized it had been a whole month since I'd spoken more than a few words in English. (My "French father,"a school teacher by vocation, was a stickler for my speaking French all the time and would critique me every time I opened my mouth. It was annoying at the time, but I learned a lot.) Those few weeks away taught me that I could not only survive in another land and another culture, but I could actually thrive and enjoy it.

Six years ago I spent three months in India. It was such a significant experience in my life and changed me so deeply, I saw everything for the year or so after I returned through "India glasses." I marked all the month anniversaries of returning from India and could hardly believe it when one year, two years, then three and four years passed since the experience. Certain things still bring me back there, like the taste of curry and the smell of incense. On the hottest of our summer days when it gets above 100 degrees, I remind myself it could be worse. On our last day in India, we drove about six hours in a non-air-conditioned car to the Taj Mahal. The temperature reached 120 degrees that day. I drank three full liters of water and never went to the bathroom -- I sweated it all out.

About a year after I returned from India, I went to Vietnam on a humanitarian mission trip to bring medical care to orphanages and rural communites. That experience was only two weeks long, but I still taste, smell or hear certain things that remind me of my time there. I remember the laughter and faces of the orphan children who stole my heart. For one afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City (we know it as Saigon), I got to hold babies with HIV and AIDS in my arms. Few of them ever get any affection. Most of them probably ended up dying. I get tears in my eyes remembering their faces.

One particular song -- Michael Card's "I Will Bring You Home" -- I played over and over again on my portable CD player after I and the group I was with witnessed a terrible tragedy on a street outside Hanoi. A dump truck caught a man's bicycle wheel and flew him into the air, smashing him to pieces. It was such a violent sight, many of us were emotionally shaken. We drove back by the accident site a few hours later, after the sun had set, and many people had gathered in a candlelight vigil for the man. I listen to that Michael Card song today, and it brings me back to that moment in Vietnam.

Last year in England and France, Mike and I walked about 10 miles a day and came back about 10 pounds lighter. We became masters of packing -- we wore backbacks and refused to wheel anything around. Our primary modes of transporation were subways and trains. I brushed up on my French (Mike did, too -- he took some high school French) and felt in many ways like I'd come home. All the memories of my first trip to France when I was 17 came flooding back. In England we were awestruck by St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the most beautiful church I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of churches in all my travels. We were amazed by Oxford, the tradition and high standards of which makes our university system seem like elementary school. We fell in love with Normandy and its people as we for the first time learned about the sacrifices of American, British and Canadian soldiers during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Paris, the last stop on our journey, was kind of a tough place for us. People rave about its charm, but we preferred Normandy.

These are the memories I'm pondering this week. We've talked about going back to Normandy and going to Belgium, too. We've also talked about visiting some friends of Mike's in the Czech Republic. Who knows what we'll end up doing? All I have is the memories of these experiences -- and the joy of having been to such amazing places with people I'll never forget.

Shopping woes

2007-05-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

I went shopping fthis weekend for clothes for the first time in a while. I usually piecemeal my shopping together -- a pair of pants or a shirt there, shoes and a handbag there. So it's not that often I look for quite a few things in one day. What I learned from my experience this weekend: I'm getting old.

I had the hardest time finding anything I liked this weekend. Many clothing stores cater to the "junior" crowd -- those anywhere between the ages of 13 and 25. I'm 34, and already I'm hopelessly out of date. Several of my friends who are my age dress what I call "young" -- hipster jeans, baby-doll shirts, chunky beaded necklaces that are now all the rage. Sure, they look like they're in their mid-20s, but here's the thing: I don't really want to look younger. I don't want to look older, either. I just want to look like me.

At the end of my fourth-grade year many years ago, my teacher handed out awards. I got the "best-dressed" award. I developed my taste in clothes from my mom, who used to buy me plaid skirts and blazers, slacks and sweaters. I looked a lot like a Catholic schoolgirl back in fourth grade. Since then, I've had a classic preference in clothing. I like simple stuff -- tailored pants and jackets, tasteful shirts, scarves, basic shoes. Nothing fancy, just professional, I guess.

I had a momentary lapse in clothing judgment this weekend and tried on some of the "young" stuff. The baby-doll shirts left me feeling exposed. Anything beyond a basic V-neck
feels a little bit too revealing to me. The hipster pants are too tight to be comfortable. The chunky beaded necklaces just aren't me.

I opted for the a few items at the Ann Taylor outlet store -- not as expensive as the "real" Ann Taylor, but more than I would have spent on some of the trendier stuff at other stores. I walked away happy, feeling like I'd been true to myself. I went home, tried everything on again and decided I didn't care about being up on the latest trends. Besides, the trendy stuff won't last long. I'd have to give it all away to Goodwill in six months and go shopping again to get the latest and greatest. (The photo above, by the way, is not a picture of what I bought this weekend. It's a photo I found on e-bay of "trendy" clothes a teenage girl is trying to sell.)

My preference for the timeless, for the classic pieces that will still be around no matter how styles change, started when I was 9 years old. And you know what? I think if my fourth-grade teacher could see me now, she'd still give me the best-dressed award.

Sports talk

2007-05-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

When my husband Mike and I first started dating, many of my girlfriends (and others) asked me whether Mike is a sports fanatic. The question was a fair one. Most men like sports, and on top of that Mike is a sports broadcaster. My friends naturally assumed that he'd be obsessed with sports, maybe even more obsessed than most men are thought to be.

So people were surprised when I said, "No, Mike likes sports, but I don't think he's obsessed with them." He's immersed in sports talk all day long for his job. Often the last thing he wants to do is come home, plop himself in front of the TV and engage in sports all night long. In the three years we've been married, I have to admit I've learned quite a lot about sports. Mike WILL watch about any sport on television, including bowling and the "sport" that I consider a joke-- the world championship poker series. So while he watches sports, I occasionally watch too and start asking questions.

Before I explain what I've learned from Mike, I have to give a bit of background: I grew up with two brothers and a dad who, not surprisingly, loved sports. I remember shouting to get my dad's attention while he sat in his basement hideaway reading -- you guessed it -- Sports Illustrated while a basketball game blared on the TV in front of him. My dad never had the patience to teach me much about the rules of his favorite sports. My younger brother Jim was the one who taught me the ins and outs of football. I was about 12, and he was an 8-year-old teaching me about football. Because I understood it, football became my favorite sport to watch. I understand what first downs are, what offsides and holding mean, the significance of a fourth-and-goal play. I don't know all the positions the players on the field play, but I get the basics. I can sit down and genuinely enjoy a game.

This winter Mike did the radio play-by-play for the University of Colorado women's basketball games. I attended several games with him -- even went on a road trip to my alma mater -- and thus learned a lot about basketball, the sport that moves so fast it's hard to keep up with. I've come to enjoy college basketball, particularly women's basketball. College hoops are much more competitive than the NBA, which is so slow it looks like the players are just standing around waiting for someone to CARE and actually make a play. Their skill level is incredible when they actually engage in the game, but otherwise the players look way too nonchalant for me to get into what's happening. I'm sorry, but the occasional dunk shot isn't enough to get me that excited.

Now we're into baseball season, and every night as Mike watches his Colorado Rockies -- the team everyone loves to hate in Denver, but Mike still believes in them -- I ask questions. I've learned what the "hole" is between the shortstop and third base. Last Sunday we attended our first Rockies game of the season, the game where Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki made the 13th-ever unassisted triple play in Major League history. Before that game, someone would have said "unassisted triple play," and I would have said, "What?" I learned tonight that when a pitcher hits a batter with a ball (thus resulting in an automatic walk), the batter never rubs the spot where the 90-plus mile-an-hour ball hit him. I mean, that hit had to have hurt. But I guess it's a macho thing not to show it did. I've learned enough about baseball in the first month of this year's season that I'm beginning to think of it as the most fascinating sport of all of them. "Everything means something in baseball, from the scoring to what happens on the field," Mike tells me. It's fun to be curious and figure out what everything means.

One of these days maybe Mike will get me into what he IS obsessed about -- fantasy baseball. His fantasy baseball teams -- all four of them -- are why Mike watches way more sports on TV in the spring and summer than any other time of the year. I asked him tonight why he watches so much baseball. I assumed he liked it better than football or basketball. "Because there's nothing else to do in the summer," he said. Short pause. "No, it's probably because of my fantasy teams." And since in baseball, everything means something, every pitch, every hit, every run, every everything will affect Mike's fantasy teams one way or another. Mike is competitive; he likes to keep track of statistics, and he likes to win -- thus, the fantasy teams are such a kick for him.

Before Mike and I got married, a friend of mine gave me some good advice: "Since Mike's job is about sports and he likes sports, you ought to get into them too." At first I was like, "What?" Now I understand what she meant. A lot of my girlfriends complain that their husbands are so into sports. They complain that it captivates too much of their time and energy. I figure there are a lot worse things they could be into. There are also a lot worse things on television than sports. I still can't get into those dumb poker matches -- talk about egomaniacs; the poker players are the worst -- but I'd rather watch them than some of the other stuff on TV, including many of the shows that attract primarily a female audience.

Mike says the difference between me and other women is that I have a genuine curiosity about sports. The truth is I have a genuine curiosity about him, what he thinks, what makes him tick, why he likes certain things and dislikes others. That's why I'll continue to sit with him, let him turn on a game and start asking questions. It doesn't take long for me to start enjoying it as much as he does.

Gas price racket

2007-04-26T17:03:00.001-07:00

OK, they've got me. I just read the article posted here http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/energy/article/0,2777,DRMN_23914_5506977,00.html about yet another gas price increase. The article says gas stations in Denver are running out of gas because of refinery problems in Texas and Oklahoma. It says gas prices are supposed to top $3 a gallon within a few days. And by this summer, they could be $4 a gallon.

Three years ago, shortly before my husband and I got married, gas was like $1.80 a gallon. What in the world is going on?

My dad is one of those who insists there's not a gas price racket. "It's just the way it is," he told me about a month ago while we discussed the topic on the way to go skiing. That's not a good enough reason for me. I think it's a racket.

Sure enough, this evening I went out to fill up my tank (it was about 3/4 empty), and I pulled into a gas station that HAD NO GAS LEFT. The last time that happened was the days following Hurricane Katrina. I pulled into another gas station nearby, and it was like Grand Central Station. Everyone else must have read the same article I did and ran out to fill up before prices increase again -- for about the fifth time this month.

The crazy thing is we all complain about the prices, but we really can't do anything about them. The rising prices haven't kept me -- even once -- from filling up my tank. My husband and I recently added about $20 to our gas budget each month anticipating higher prices this summer. We added to that budget right on time.

Think about it: The prices of other things go up, and you think twice about buying them. Strawberries at the grocery store are on sale this time of year because it's strawberry season. You can get them for 2 packages for $3 or $4. But if they go up to $4 apiece, you ask yourself if you really need them, right? How about your favorite cereal? On sale one week and you buy. Back to regular price the next week and you refrain.

But gas? It's not the same. We HAVE to have it. Most American cities don't have public transportation systems that make driving unncessesary. That trip to the grocery store we make to buy the strawberries and cereal on sale? Gotta drive. I suppose we could walk or ride a bike, but we classify that kind of transportation as recreation, as exercise, not necessity. Plus, in the 'burbs, most of us live a half an hour walk or more away from places we need to go. Our neighborhoods and cities are designed in such a way that we REQUIRE cars. (I'd love it if we could live more like the Europeans, who walk way more than we do -- and hence weigh less -- because their homes are close to the centers of their cities. Even in the suburbs of major cities, walking is the way to go. I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "And their gas prices are way more outrageous than ours . . . ")

That's why I think gas prices are a racket. As soon as the producers found out we'll pay whatever price is listed outside the gas station, they just give the reason of the week for the price increases, and we accept it -- and keep filling up like always.

A follow-up to a previous posting

2007-04-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is a follow-up to a previous posting about humility vs. pride. This is from a commentary on The Peacemaker by Ken Sande.

Anything grounded is safer…

God opposes the proud but give grace to the humble. -- James 4:6

When you need to show others their faults, do not talk down to them as though you are faultless and they are inferior to you. Instead, talk with them as though you are standing side by side at the foot of the cross. Acknowledge your present, ongoing need for the Savior. Admit ways that you have wrestled with the same or other sins or weaknesses, and give hope by describing how God has forgiven you and is currently working in you to help you change…When people see this kind of humility and common bond, they will be less inclined to react to correction with pride and defensiveness.
-- Taken from The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande, Updated Edition (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2003) pp. 172.

Food for Thought

Circle the words you and your in the passage above. How many did you circle? Nine? If there had been one or two uses of the words you and your, it probably wouldn't have drawn any attention. But nine? That's enough where we need to stop, look, and listen. Ken is wisely sharing a beneficial approach to use when we need to show others their faults: talk about your own. From our peers in the office to aging parents to the children at play in the backyard, nobody likes to be talked down to--nobody! Talking down usually invites a defensiveness that's hard to overcome. Side by side talking, however, lays a common ground that you and the other person can stand on. Interestingly enough, the root word for humility is humus, from which we get our word for ground. Being grounded, or humble, in our approach to these situations provides protection from the lightning bolts of pride and defensiveness.

A sense of loss again

2007-04-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Today I'm sad. I think most people across the nation feel this way after yesterday's shootings at Virginia Tech. We've had too many of these terrible events for me to count: Columbine in 1999 followed by all the copycat incidents, the shootings at the school in Bailey, Colo. last September and the Amish school shootings in Pennsylvania last fall, to name only a few. I skimmed through the coverage of yesterday's events in today's Rocky Mountain News, and tears came to my eyes.

After 9/11, I became more observant in my everyday life. I take light rail to my classes each week at Metropolitan State College of Denver, and I find myself noticing people more than I did a few years ago. There are a lot of characters who ride light rail, so I have to be careful about jumping to conclusions about my fellow riders. But still, I try to pay attention to what's going on around me. I think that's a good thing because I don't think most people don't pay that close attention. They're immersed in their books, their newspapers, their iPods and cell phones. It's easy to disengage and then be caught by surprise when something terrible does happen.

I feel extra vigilant after yesterday's events because I teach at a university. It's an urban campus with more than 20,000 students in the heart of downtown Denver. In the two years I've taught there, I've never heard anything about what emergency plans the university has in place in case of an event just like yesterday's. Several weeks ago I heard some shouting outside my classroom in the middle of my class. It sounded like distressed shouting -- like an argument, someone not happy about something. At that moment my heart squeezed in my chest and I thought, "If something happens in this building, I have no idea what to do." I immediately shut the classroom door and went on with my class. The shouting outside died down, but the fear in me was real. Something could happen anywhere, even my classroom.

This morning, Metro State sent out safety tips to all its students and faculty in case something like yesterday's shootings should happen where we are. The tips go beyond just being aware of your surroundings and reporting any suspicious activity. How about this one: "Believe what you see. As events unfold in front of you, trust your eyes and your ears as you see people running or hear the gunfire and people screaming. Many people report that they thought the event wasn't real. They think it is a movie or a joke. Stay aware of what is happening around you, and trust your instincts that something is wrong -- believe the warning!" Or this one: "Find cover. Get behind something that will stop bullets, not just conceal you. High-powered bullets can penetrate a large amount of materials. Look for brick walls, planters, mailboxes, cars or thick trees."

This list of tips is proof that our schools and college campuses become war zones when these events unfold. The bottom line is none of us -- students, teachers, staff -- are trained to operate in a war zone. That gives the advantage to the yahoos with guns who decide to take a few dozen people with them while they take out their anger on the world.

Yesterday on a radio show about the shootings at Virginia Tech, a caller brought up the highly debated issue of teachers carrying concealed weapons. It's an idea often poo-pooed by the public and by teachers themselves. The argument against it is that teachers or administrators -- even more security guards on school campuses -- with guns just compound the problem. Educators are supposed to be advocates of nonviolence, so what good does it do to have them carry guns? Plus, who's to say the teachers with weapons won't become the perpetrators? Newspaper editors and politicians in other countries blame yesterday's shootings on our American gun culture. They say we hold so tightly onto the Second Amendment right to bear arms, we've failed to protect our own citizens from the likes of Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris and now Cho
Seung-Hui.

In the emotion of yesterday's events, I gave it some serious consideration. I wondered if I could carry a weapon so I could defend myself and my classroom in case some idiot walked in and started shooting. In reality I might not do much good. These shootings happen so fast, and the professors yesterday were among the first people shot when the gunman walked into the classrooms.

Call it a reaction to fear or just getting caught up in the emotion of what happened, but now I'm thinking carrying a concealed weapon might not be such a bad idea.

Dwelling with the humble

2007-04-13T14:59:00.000-07:00

"Heaven may be in a sordid slum or a palace, and I can make My Home in the humblest heart. I can only dwell with the humble. Pride stands sentinel at the door of the heart to shut out the lowly, humble Christ." --- From "God Calling," edited by A.J. Russell

The 'I' in the above statement is God. I read this excerpt from the devotional "God Calling" last night and wanted to share it here. Pride vs. humility seems to be a theme in my life lately. Not just with me, but in situations I see others going through as well. A theme Bible verse for me during the past few weeks has been 1 Peter 5:5-7: "All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

The apostle Peter, the author here, is quoting Proverbs 3:34 with the phrase, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Interesting what God does with the proud -- He doesn't just ignore them, put up with them or otherwise appease them. He opposes them. Have you ever felt opposed by God? He doesn't ignore the humble either. He doesn't think them spineless. He gives grace to them. Grace is unmerited favor. So God favors the humble.

Christ Himself is the very picture of humility: "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8)

Think about that: Christ in his very nature is God, yet He didn't insist on being treated as if He were God. "He made himself nothing . . . . And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself . . . ." A humble God? It's almost too hard for me to grasp.

The fact that God Himself is humble explains why He opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humility and pride are like oil and water. They don't mix. They can't survive together.

Humility is hard. Our culture tells us humility is becoming a doormat. It's letting people run over you. I've been learning humility is more complex. It's holding your tongue when you could speak up, when you think you have a right to speak up. It's also the opposite -- speaking up when you're afraid of how people will receive what you have to say. Humility is not always having to prove you're right. It's being OK with yourself when you realize you're wrong -- and a willingness to admit when you are. It's knowing you don't know everything, and realizing no one expects you to.

Humility is not having to be the center of everything, not insisting you get the credit for everything you contribute. It's giving other people the benefit of the doubt, not letting your "imagination balloons" about what others are thinking and feeling, get the best of you. The hard part for me is mixing humility with proper boundaries. It's easy to go to the extreme and adopt the doormat definition of humility.

"I can only dwell with the humble." Is pride standing sentinel at the door to my heart? The thing I've been learning about pride is that it's like the elephant in the room few want to talk about. It's obvious to the humble but invisible to the prideful.

Isn't he cute?

2007-04-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

I just read the story on Yahoo! News -- "Move over Britney and Paris, Knut the polar bear is becoming an Internet sensation." Well, thank God something is overshadowing people's obsession with the likes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. (No matter how long I ponder it, I will never understand why so many people in the world are obsessed with celebrities who have nothing to do but make a mess of their lives.)

So I was intrigued by this Yahoo! story, and I browsed through the 75 -- yes 75 -- photos of Knut, the white fluffy bear who's causing quite a media circus in Germany and elsewhere. Evidently the little guy was rejected by his mother and had to be hand-fed by zookeepers. In a few short weeks -- he was only introduced to his "public" in March -- he has become an international celebrity. He's the topic of talk shows, songs, marketing campaigns, etc. Hundreds of Germans line up at the Berlin Zoo every day to get a glimpse of him. (It's good to know Americans aren't the only ones who go ga-ga over things like baby polar bears.) It doesn't surprise me. People are enthralled with stories about animals. They're more protective of animals than their own kids. I remember a story I reported several years ago about a dog that was shot after trying to attack an animal control officer. The photo that ran with my story showed the dog lying on the ground, a pool of blood next to it. The newspaper I worked for got more angry phone calls about that photo -- how dare we run such a graphic image of a poor animal -- than we did about more graphic photographs we'd run in the past of people involved in car crashes, etc. Hurt a person -- oh, well. Hurt an animal -- someone is going to pay.

Forgive me, I digress . . . I have to admit Knut is awfully cute. He looks like the polar bear stuffed animals I've seen at the Denver Zoo gift shop. Just think, kids -- a life-size version of the stuffed animal you have on your bed! Then I saw the photos of the adult-size polar bears (one of which is the newest member of the Denver Zoo family). One of these big guys is the largest carnivore in the world, according to the story I read. Ouch. You mean little Knut is going to grow into that?

Somehow I don't think the world's newest celebrity is going to last very long. You can tell he's growing -- and growing fast -- in the pictures taken just in the past few weeks. Oh, I know he'll be baby-sized for a while yet, but people won't be lining up to see him at the zoo forever. It's kind of sad, really. I'm not sad for Knut. Maybe he's hamming it up a little bit for his public -- just look at him wave and swim and roll around in his photo albums on the Web -- but he doesn't really know what a stir he's created. He won't profit from any endorsement deals or interviews on late-night talk shows. He'll see his own image on the T-shirt of one of his adoring fans, and the only question running through his mind will be, "When do I get some more food?"

No, I'm sad for the rest of us looking for something to entertain ourselves. We'll be back to Britney and Paris in no time.

He is risen! He is risen indeed.

2007-04-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share the following song lyrics. They are from "The Easter Song," written by Anne Herring. I popped in one of Keith Green's CDs the other day and was delighted that this song, one of my favorites of his, was on it.

There are so many Christmas songs, many of which I learned as a child and still remember all the verses. I wonder, though, why we don't have more Easter songs. I guess you could argue a lot of hymns, praise songs, worship songs, etc. are at their essence Easter songs. I love the use of one of the most famous lines in a Christmas song -- Joy to the World -- in this song about Easter. And remember the bells of Christmas Day? How about the bells of Easter?

Still, Easter doesn't get nearly enough attention, even among Christians. The birth of the baby overshadows the resurrection of the God-man. My faith -- my whole existence -- hinges on Easter. Not just the death of Christ on the cross, not just His sacrifice, but also the resurrection -- the actual, historical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. His resurrection was not figurative, not merely a symbol, not just a nice thing to think about. Without the resurrection, following Jesus means nothing. He's just another nice guy, another well-intentioned prophet, who died for a cause but has no real power. Christianity is not Christianity without both Jesus' death and resurrection. They go together like springtime and flowers, like popcorn and movies, like hotdogs and ketchup.

He is risen from the dead! He is God and has power over death -- he defeated it. That is totally mind-boggling. Forget the cultural symbols of Easter -- pastel eggs, chocolate bunnies, green grass and daffodils. Wrap your mind around an empty tomb this weekend.

He is risen! He is risen indeed.

The Easter Song
Here the bells ringing
They're singing that you can be born again
Here the bells ringing
They're singing Christ is risen from the dead
The angel up on the tombstone
Said He has risen, just as He said
Quickly now, go tell his disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead

Joy to the world,
He has risen, hallelujah
He's risen, hallelujah
He's risen, hallelujah

Hear the bells ringing
They're singing that you can be healed right now
Hear the bells ringing,
They're singing Christ, He will reveal it now
The angels, they all surround us
And they are ministering Jesus' power
Quickly now, reach out and receive it
For this could be your glorious hour

Joy to the world,
He has risen, hallelujah
He's risen, hallelujah
He's risen, hallelujah, hallelujah

The angel up on the tombstone
Said he has risen, just as he said
Quickly now, go tell his disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead

Joy to the world,
He has risen, hallelujah
He's risen, hallelujah
He's risen, hallelujah
Hallelujah

Dealing with Disconnection

2007-03-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

I had a recurring conversation with a good friend the other day. It's a conversation I've had before with her as well as others. It boils down to how to make meaningful connections with others, especially within church communities. In an age when we have so many ways to forge connections with people -- phones, e-mail, get-togethers, church functions that center around just about every topic you could imagine -- why do I find that so many of my associations with others are shallow?

When I was younger, making meaningful friendships seemed easy. I became friends with people in my elementary, junior high and high school classes. In college, the people in closest proximity to me-- the ones who lived on my dorm floor -- became my good friends. I still have some of those friends. I still keep in touch with a few dear friends from high school and a few from college.

Once I graduated from college and lived on my own, though, friendships became more difficult to start and maintain. At church, where you'd think friendships would be easily made, connections were difficult. I was single until I was 31, and I always got the sense in the churches I attended that I was out of place. I wasn't married, didn't have kids. So where did I belong? Nowhere, it seemed. I went to church, but nothing really kept me in any one community. Not singles groups. Not Bible studies. I "church hopped" for a while in search of some sort of meaningful connections with people.

I thought it would become easier when I got married. The reality is it's just as difficult. When I was single, I could forge connections with individuals. Now my husband and I go to church as a couple. We are together, a unit. On the one hand, I enjoy that. Marriage is a wonderful thing, and Mike has become my dearest friend. On the other hand, I think it's harder to make friends as a couple. You both have to click with the people you're trying to make friends with. That's not always easy.

I find that churches separate people into age groups -- teenagers, college students, young marrieds, young families, parents of teenagers, seniors, etc. -- and those separations keep us from thinking we have anything in common with those who aren't in our same age bracket or season of life. Singles feel like they can't relate to moms. Young moms find it hard to see what they have in common with empty-nesters. I find that most people in their 30s like me and Mike are busy with their own families. Couples our age with kids have demands on their time that we don't have. And most other couples we know who have been married the same amount of time we have -- three years -- are in their mid-20s, not their mid-30s. Sometimes that difference feels like a generation gap. (I, too, can be stuck in the age-bracket mentality.)

We certainly haven't done everything we can to reach out. It takes intention. Friendships aren't going to happen like clockwork like they did in high school or college. It's too easy to just go to work, come home, flip on the TV, surf the Internet and disengage from the things that demand our attention all day long. (Funny how the things meant to connect us -- namely technological advances like cell phones and e-mail -- really can leave us feeling more isolated.) It's easy not to invite another couple over for dinner or ask an individual friend to coffee. It's easy to stay in our own little world -- nothing given, nothing received, nothing shared, nothing gained.

I don't have an answer to this dilemma of how to make meaningful connections. I just notice that I've had this conversation a lot lately with others who have noticed the same thing in their lives. It tells me I'm not alone, that it's a more common experience than I realized. Perhaps that's common experience enough for us to reach out to one another.

"We appreciate what we share, we do not appreciate what we receive. Friendship . . . is not acquired by giving presents. Friendship . . . comes about by two people sharing a significant moment, by having an experience in common." -- Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Few Days in the City by the Bay

2007-03-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how much your perspective can change when you get away from your "normal" life. My husband Mike and I returned Tuesday night from a five-day getaway to San Francisco. The last time I was there I was 12 years old. Mike grew up in San Rafael, Calif., just north of San Francisco. But like most people who grow up near popular vacation spots, he had never really been a tourist in his own town.

Mike had never been to Alcatraz (former federal prison on an island a mile from SF), so we went there. We walked the streets of Chinatown and North Beach, where we found the perfect pizza place to have dinner and a cute Italian pastry shop where we had coffee. We watched the sunset from China Beach and Baker Beach, both with great views of the Golden Gate Bridge. We strolled through Sausalito and took a drive through the Marin Headlands on the north side of Golden Gate. We took a cable-car ride to Union Square, ate a great fish dinner at Pompei's Grotto on Fisherman's Wharf and had ice cream at Ghirardelli Square. The wharf area is less charming and more touristy than I remember it from 20 years ago. Chinatown was less of a culture shock (I've traveled to other parts of the world since I was last there as a kid). North Beach, where San Francisco's Italian immigrants settled, felt very much like a little pocket of Europe.

We also spent a day at the University of California-Berkeley, where Mike went to college in the late 80s. We visited the KALX, the student-run radio station at Cal where Mike got his start in radio. It was enlightening to see the town where Mike grew up and the campus where he attended college. It's a part of his life I've never seen, so it's good to put all the pieces together. In January, we both visited my college campus in Columbia, Mo.

Spring was in full swing in the Bay Area. Coming home to Denver, where the trees are still bare and spring is a couple of weeks away from really getting started, I miss the green grass, the blooming trees and flowers I grew accustomed to over the past few days.

Most of all it was nice to leave the busy-ness of life behind for a few days. It's especially nice when vacation seems like it was longer than it actually was -- not because it was bad, but because you're able to leave everything behind and relax. Today it's back to work for both of us, but we go back a little more rested and a little less hurried. Vacations are good.

First signs of spring

2007-03-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

It's spring! Or at least it feels that way today. Spring in Denver has a way of teasing you with 70-degree days, then blasting you with an ugly reminder of winter. I took this photo today of the first flowers of spring at the entrance to the condo complex where I live.

Spring this year seems especially welcome. We've had a crazy winter. People in the Denver area have become spoiled by our drought-winters; it snows only a couple of times, then remains "perpetual spring" the rest of the season, with 50- and 60-degree temperatures the norm. This year where I live, we had four feet of snow on the ground by New Year's Day. The snow melted by mid-February, but you would have thought people here were stuck in their houses for months. Everywhere I went, people told me how sick they were of the weather. (The truth is, we don't know what REAL winter is here . . . )

Every year I am surprised by the first flowers of spring, the purple and yellow blooms that push through the cold, hard earth to reveal their brilliance. Not far behind are the happy daffodils and elegant tulips that bow in the breezes of April. We plant the bulbs of these flowers in the autumn, then forget about them all winter long. As the snow falls and the winter winds whip across the landscape, something is happening underneath, even though we can't see it. It takes months to see the signs of spring, but it never fails -- the flowers always bloom.

It reminds me of a life lived with God. Sometimes the winters of our lives seem to last forever. The snows fall, and the winds seem unbearable. But before winter ever started, God planted a seed in our hearts to germinate underneath the barrenness of winter. We are convinced the spring will never come. But just like the surprise of the first flowers of spring, the seeds of our hearts seem to bloom out of nowhere, and suddenly winter starts fading. The grass turns green again. Out come the daffodils and tulips. The trees start budding. And everything becomes new again.

Saying thanks to the Greatest Generation

2007-03-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'm only half-way through the book Flags of our Fathers, by James Bradley, and already it's on my list of favorite books. The story holds more meaning for me because of some recent experiences.

Last spring my husband Mike and I spent a few days in Normandy, France, as part of a two-week trip to England and France. We were so moved by a tour we did of the D-Day beaches of Normandy that we both felt compelled to do something with what we had learned. (The tour was led by Battlebus Tours, http://www.battlebus.fr/, which I highly recommend if you're planning a trip to Normandy. The tour was fantastic and emotionally moving.) Neither Mike nor I remember learning much about World War II during history classes in school. Our grandparents were too old to fight in the war, and our parents were just children at the time. We're getting our dose of history -- living history -- now.

Through a friend, Mike made contact with an organization that sends veterans, free of charge, back to the sites of their battlefield campaigns. The focus of the next few years is World War II veterans, who are dying at a rate of about 1,000 per day, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The foundation raises money and sponsors trips for veterans back to Europe and the Pacific. It also organizes trips to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. The point is to honor these veterans before they die, give them a forum to tell their stories (which many have refused to talk about for six decades) and let them experience the appreciation of today's generations for their service to our country.

Two weeks ago I had the honor of accompanying 24 World War II veterans from Colorado on a three-day trip to the National World War II Memorial in Washington. These 23 men -- and one woman -- served in a variety of roles during the war. Some flew bombing missions over Europe in the 8th Air Force. Others landed on the beaches of Normandy, marched across Europe and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, a six-week fight in the middle of a harsh winter that resulted in more than 80,000 American casualties. Others were Marines who fought in the Pacific front of the war, including the invasion of the tiny island of Iwo Jima, a horrific 36-day battle that makes the D-Day landings at Normandy almost pale in comparison. Iwo Jima -- and the famous photograph of Marines raising a flag at the top of Mount Suribachi on the island -- is the subject of Flags of our Fathers.

As I read the book, I think of Joe Weinmeier, a former Marine who was a "flamethrower" on Iwo Jima. He wore his heart on his sleeve during the trip to Washington; the tears came easily as he described what the trip meant to him. As he gazed up at the Marine Memorial in Washington, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, Joe marveled that he made it through the battle alive . . . while so many others didn't. I think also of Max and Shirley Brown, sweethearts who married after the war. Max was on Iwo Jima while Shirley was doing her part at home. Shirley joined the Marine Corps Women's Reserve at age 20 and became a truck driver at Parris Island, S.C. In Washington two weeks ago, Shirley stared up at the Marine Memorial, then glanced at her husband of nearly 61 years standing next to her. "To think he came home to me," she said. "And we've had 60 years together."

I also think of my own children, whenever the time is right for me and Mike to have them. They won't have the honor of meeting these men and women, of sitting down and hearing the stories that made them the Greatest Generation. But I'll be able to tell some of their stories, only fragments of history though they may be. Someday I'll stand at the Marine Memorial, my children at my side, and say to them, "I met some of the men who were there."

Teaching journalism ethics

2007-03-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

I feel a bit conflicted every semester around this time. I teach journalism at a college in Denver, and the curriculum includes a segment on ethics. I've run into plenty of ethical decision-making moments in my journalism experience at newspapers and magazines. It's one thing to grapple with ethical issues in a newsroom with other journalists. It's another thing to try to teach college students what the ethical standards are.

Journalists generally have a poor reputation among the public regrarding ethics. The stereotypes abound. Journalists are pushy and insensitive. They care only about getting the story, not caring for the people involved in stories. I contend we get many of these stereotypes from the mass media's own portrayal of themselves -- i.e. television shows and movies with characters who are journalists. Not many people have ever had personal contact with an individual journalist, so their perceptions of journalists come largely from fictional characters on unrealistic programs.

I went to college at the University of Missouri-Columbia, one of the country's finest journalism programs, where my professors taught me "situational ethics" -- essentially, figure out what's right and wrong based on the situation. There is no absolute right and wrong you can apply in each and every situation. I can see that at play in certain areas of journalism, but not all. What about stealing? Is it OK for a journalist to break into an office and steal a document off someone's desk, for example, because the story is important enough to steal for? You can always figure out a way that the ends justify the means.

That brings me to the ends justifying the means in our personal everyday ethics. Individualism is king. Courtesy must be convenient to be worthwhile. The prevailing point of view is, "If it serves me in some way, then fine, I'll abide by the standard." If it serves me to be nice to someone, then I'll be nice. If I can get ahead in my job, then I'll help someone else. If it makes me look good, then fine, I'll play along and pretend like it matters to do the right thing. And this comes into play not just in "big things" like going after work promotions or dealing with a difficult family member. How about taking a ream of paper from the office supply room, lying to your child's teacher, butting in front of someone in line at the grocery store?

I find it ironic that surveys show a generally poor public perception of journalists and their ethics. The average person doesn't have higher ethical standards than the journalists they criticize. In fact, a 2005 study done at my alma mater shows journalists rank among doctors and pastors in using the "best quality ethical reasoning" when making decisions. Journalists in the study were significantly more ethical than the average adult.
Surprised?