When Mr. Obama campaigned for President of the United States in 2008, he assured voters that he would bring the county together and especially quell the gridlock in Washington that had made it difficult for the United States Congress to pass important legislation.? But, instead, the discord in Washington is greater than ever and has spread throughout our country.? How did this happen??

I realize that I am not a political science major and as just a regular citizen who has never run for office I may be guilty of being na?ve and oversimplifying politics.? That being said, it appears to me that President Obama almost goes out of his way at sowing discord rather than negotiating agreement.? For example, as recently as his State of the Union address earlier this week, the President started out on a very conciliatory note, but before too long he began to make threats of what he would do with his pen if the Republicans failed to pass certain legislation.? And the next day he began making campaign-type speeches in different states degrading Republicans, and especially the Republican held United States House of Representatives.? Such verbiage may please his Democratic base.? It certainly does not, however, bring about any type of unity, but further fuels discord in Washington. Read more…

I received an e-mail on my Web site that features my latest book: The Big Ten of Grammar: Identifying and Fixing the Ten Most Frequent Grammatical Errors.? Of course, I liked the e-mail because of what it said about my book, but even more because of its general emphasis on a completely different and very important subject.

?The e-mail reads as follows:? Read more…

With Super Bowl XLIII only a week away, we are at the end of the 2013 National Football League season. All during the football season, but especially during the playoffs, there is much talk about the quarterbacks. For last Sunday’s A.F.C. championship game, the focus of attention was not so much on the two teams playing, but on the two veteran quarterbacks, Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. And the headlines in sports pages across the country on Monday morning were all about whether Manning could win his second Super Bowl ring after sixteen seasons, at age thirty-seven (old for a football player), and after going through multiple neck surgeries in 2011 and having to sit out that entire season.

Last Tuesday (01/21/14), The New York Times had this to say: “The Broncos’ Peyton Manning could become the first quarterback to win a Super Bowl with two franchises. He won Super Bowl XLI in 2007 with the Colts.” I would feel better had The Times story read that “Peyton Manning could become the first quarterback to lead his team to victory” and “He led his team to victory in 2007.” The quarterback is very important, but the quarterback alone does not win the game; it takes the entire team. Read more…

In times past, most people heated their houses using fireplaces, stoves and coal furnaces. Some people still do. It makes no difference which of these forms of heating one uses, there are always ashes or clinkers to get out of the house and hauled away without leaving a mess behind.

As a boy growing up, it was my job to take out the leftovers from the furnace. I had to put the ashes and clinkers in a large trash can and lug them up the basement stairs and out to the back alley, whether it was raining or snowing, where someone came by and hauled them away. And my mother and father always reminded me not to make dust that went throughout the house. It was a tedious and tiresome job.

The point I’m making here is that it is not always easy to get rid of the useless remnants of living, in this case, the left-over ashes. Read more…

If we take a thumbnail look at the history leading up to the first Thanksgiving celebration in America, perhaps we will be more likely to appreciate this year’s Thanksgiving.

In about 1570, the Puritan movement emerged in England.? The people were called Puritans because they wanted to reform or “purify” the Church of England.? They did not want to leave the Church, but reform it from within.? After about twenty-five years, with little progress toward reform having been made, another movement, the Separatists, emerged.? They were called Separatists because they concluded that it was impossible to reform the Church from within and began to “separate” from the Church and establish independent congregations. Read more…

In the early days of our country, it became obvious that the Articles of Confederation was an inadequate governing document.? The early leaders had declared our independence and fought the Revolutionary War to rid our country of domination by the King of England and the unreasonable demands of the British government.? The Articles provided for a weakened central government with each state retaining its individual rights.? Under the Articles, each state had one vote, but the government had no power to enforce what few laws it supposedly had the authority to make.? So a Constitutional Convention was called for the purpose of writing a new governing document for our young county. Read more…