Five favorite books

 

My five favorite books, read over and over, are: Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo (who grew up in my home town of Whitefish, Montana), Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Savages by Shirley Conran, and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

 

 

All of them, interestingly, are about survival. Sacajawea, of course, is about the famous Indian woman who guided Lewis and Clark. This is big book-- thick as a brick --  and is fascinating. Inspired as a child picking up Indian spearheads from along the shores of Whitefish Lake, it took Waldo 10 years to write it this marvelous book.

 

 

I love Swiss Family Robinson, especially the ways and means by which they survive and thrive after their shipwreck. I've always had a small smattering of skill in making something out of nothing and this is what, in this book, makes my heart flutter -- building shelter from salvaged boards and crafting bowls and utensils and using wits and skill to flourish and survive. Part of me has always embraced a bit of "pioneer woman," matching wits against whatever life throws at me.   

 

 

Gone with the Wind! Has there ever been a more marvelous book printed (well, except for the Bible)? What an amazing story this is. This book captured my heart with the first read and enlightens me with each additional read.

 

 

I have probably read Savages six times or more. In the past I've bought this book half dozen at a time to give to friends. It is the story of a band of spoiled wives who go with their corporate husbands on a junket to a tiny tropical country. When a catastrophe occurs the women are left to fend for themselves. This is truly a book of survival -- about a band of disparate, and desperate, women wandering the jungle and trying to stay alive.

 

 

I first read Atlas Shrugged just after high school and I still remember that feeling of despair and fear that a government could be so obtuse and terrifying in using its power to rid the country of capital enterprise. Everyone is urged to work for socialistic ventures, saving this or that helping these and those. The inventors, entrepreneurs, brilliant businessmen and their ilk are stifled and despised -- although their money isn't. They assuage their helplessness by going on strike.

 

 

 In this book, rules and regulations -- while touted to promote fairness and equality -- are geared to stop and inhibit progress. No one can own more than one business. If a person manufactures, say, shoes, he can't make more shoes than any other company making shoes. Production comes to a standstill as, one by one, the nations greatest minds and innovators disappear, leaving the country in chaos. And what happens next? Can't tell you, you have to read the book -- or watch the movie.

 

 

Even though I was so very young the first time I read this book it took days to shake the incredible alarm it set off in me. It was an urge to get ready for the apocalypse, to stock up and start preparing for the end of life as we know it. It was an unsettling sort of terror that the government could so stifle the very basic compulsion of man -- the ability to create and invent and build. That the government could steer a country into sneering at the basic human nature of wanting to excel and improve and succeed. For individuals to achieve!

I read Atlas Shrugged several times in my early years, each time haunted by its message. But, how many years ago did I last read this book? Twenty, maybe? At least that long ago. And when we watched the movie recently I was stunned to realize that so much of what frightened me originally has come to pass in actuality. Our government is making these changes. Capitalism is being stifled and regulated to the point of collapse. In some cases social programs are gaining while free enterprise is waning. Monetary success is scorned by those who demand government coddling and alarming things are rearing their heads continually -- such as the upcoming Supreme Court decision on whether we can sell our belongings.

 

 

 A belligerent, ugly, powerful book that didn't receive great accolades when it came out in 1957, Atlas Shrugged the movie came out a couple of years ago and, as a movie, doesn't carry the same power as the book to cause fear. Maybe this is because so many movies these days, with their horrific villains and vampires and Satanists overwhelm any frail and seemingly feeble fear of government as downright silly. Despite that, Atlas Shrugged Part 2 will be released this month and I can't wait!

Even though I was so very young the first time I read this book it took days to shake the incredible alarm it set off in me. It was an urge to get ready for the apocalypse, to stock up and start preparing for the end of life as we know it. It was an unsettling sort of terror that the government could so stifle the very basic compulsion of man -- the ability to create and invent and build. That the government could steer a country into sneering at the basic human nature of wanting to excel and improve and succeed. For individuals to achieve!

I read Atlas Shrugged several times in my early years, each time haunted by its message. But, how many years ago did I last read this book? Twenty, maybe? At least that long ago. And when we watched the movie recently I was stunned to realize that so much of what frightened me originally has come to pass in actuality. Our government is making these changes. Capitalism is being stifled and regulated to the point of collapse. In some cases social programs are gaining while free enterprise is waning. Monetary success is scorned by those who demand government coddling and alarming things are rearing their heads continually -- such as the upcoming Supreme Court decision on whether we can sell our belongings.

A belligerent, (sort of) ugly, powerful book that didn't receive great accolades when it came out in 1957, Atlas Shrugged the movie came out a couple of years ago and, as a movie, doesn't carry the same power as the book to cause fear. Maybe this is because so many movies these days, with their horrific villains and vampires and Satanists overwhelm any frail and seemingly feeble fear of government as downright silly. Despite that, Atlas Shrugged Part 2 will be released this month and I can't wait!

Finding the Easy Way Out

One summer evening many years ago we were having a barbecue at my Mom and Dad’s house.  The kids were romping in the yard and Mom and I were puttering in the kitchen, hauling out bowls of potato salad, piles of cantaloupe, and a still-warm chocolate cake lathered with oozing fudge frosting. Through all this activity Dad was attempting to start the barbecue.

We didn’t pay him much attention at first but as time went on his grumbling turned to ranting, which turned to raving. He’d piled on the briquettes and dumped on the starter but it refused to light. He gave up on matches and tried a burning stick. (This was before those automatic lighters.) He poured on more fluid. It still wouldn’t light.

By now the getting-ready chores were done and we were all waiting patiently, hungrily, for the barbecue so we could toss on the steaks. Mom and I sprawled in the lounge chairs to watch the Dad and Grill Show. Since he was an Archie Bunker wannabe, it was really quite entertaining.

Finally, he stomped off to his shop. A few minutes later he reappeared, dragging across the driveway his monstrously huge welder behind him. With a great flourish he shooed the kids to safety at the other side of the yard, donned his welder’s hood and gloves, and fired the thing up. It was like killing a fly with a machine gun. Within seconds the paint had melted off the grill and the little briquettes were glowing. They were so fired up they were dancing and singing. It was one of those little family moments that will always be etched into memory, especially the moment when the little dancing briquettes tumbled to the ground when the bottom of the grill fell out.

I don’t think my dad was ever happier than when faced with a puzzle or a problem. He loved finding a solution.

I’m sort of like that. I love a challenge. I thoroughly enjoy making something of nothing. Some of my happiest years were those when we didn’t have a nickel to our names and our three kids always seemed to be in need of new shoes and a dentist. And the car always needed tires.

Those were challenging years and our house was oddly, but creatively, decorated. I had 500 recipes for hamburger. We were poor but we were gleefully happy. Part of my happiness came from the necessity of being resourceful and creative. Remember when Scarlet O’Hara made the ball gown from the green silk drapes? I was that kind of woman.

It’s a wonderful thing to stretch our minds and come up with solutions. When a woman I know was pondering with her husband the easiest way to fix an electrical problem in the house, he, typical male, wanted to call in an electrician. She, after a bit of practical thinking, said, “Why don’t we try doing this...” and offered a perfectly ingenious solution. She’s still walking proud.

Ingenious solutions are harder to come by than simple solutions. But sometimes they flood our minds with glowing revelation. Maybe that’s why inventors never quit with just one invention. They have minds that are constantly whirling and whirring, that continually ponder new devices and gadgets. My Dad was like that. You could almost hear the wheels turning and he wrote and plotted continually. Almost every morning there would be a napkin of doodles next to his empty coffee cup. His shop was filled with tools he’d adapted for this need or that.

There is that old saying that if you want to find the easiest way to do something, give the task to a lazy man.

There should also be a saying that if you want to find the cheapest way to do something, give the task to a poor man.

I love this story about the government. It took place back in the days when we were spending oodles of money on the space program. When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens wouldn’t work in zero gravity.

It sent the NASA scientists into a dither. This illustrious group spent a decade and $12 billion, ($12 BILLION DOLLARS!), but they eventually developed a pen that would write in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass, and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300° C.
           
The Russians used a pencil.
https://www.facebook.com/jan.thacker#!/

LOST: one good cook

My friend Pam, like most of my buddies, is wondering what has happened to her cooking ability. She used to fix big gourmet meals and now she thinks she’s doing good to heat up a frozen lasagna dinner. Cheese sandwiches and tomato soup are frequent entrees on her dinner menu. For special occasions she toasts the sandwiches. And puts a dollop of sour cream in the soup. And uses real dishes instead of Dixie.

            Maybe, she wonders, it’s because her household has dwindled from a husband and three kids to a husband. Cooking for five takes a lot more responsibility and planning than cooking for two. Plus, her man will eat anything short of roadkill with hair still on and mold. 

            I know how she feels. You know how agoraphobics start out being able to trod the world and slowly evolve to where they’re living in a closet? That’s how my cooking has become. I have cooking agoraphobia. I’m down to three meals: meatloaf, chili, and macaroni and cheese dotted with kielbasa. I don’t count soup and sandwiches as genuine dinner fare. 

            I used to use recipes and cookbooks. Now, if it doesn’t come out of my head it doesn’t get made. And my head just doesn’t hold that much anymore. Except for meatloaf, chili, and macaroni and cheese with kielbasa.

My husband deserves better than he’s getting from my kitchen. But, like Pam’s guy, he never complains. Bless his heart. He prays equally thankful prayers over everything. Maybe because some nights I don’t cook at all, which leaves him grateful when anything’s going on in the kitchen.

            Clearly, something has to be done. Maybe there’s a support group for apathetic meal getters. Someplace to go where they’ll cheer you on and motivate you to use your creativity and skills to prepare truly wonderful dishes. Where they revive your dead interest in cookbooks and recipes.

            “Hello. My name is Jan. I have a problem with cooking. I seem to have somehow lost my ability and desire.”

            “Welcome, Jan. Let’s give Jan a round of applause for having the courage to face her cooking problem and the wisdom to seek a solution.”

            We’ll hear motivational speeches and trade meatloaf recipes and have potluck dinners where everyone brings potato chips and store-bought potato salad and Kleenexes are passed around to dry the tears of guilt. What losers. We can’t even scrape together a dish for a potluck.

            Maybe there’s a pill to perk up the enthusiasm in the kitchen. Something like Viagra for cooks. One little pill and before you know it you’re wearing an apron and are sifting and measuring and butchering the moose that stupidly wandered through the back yard.

            By the time he comes home you have the freezer filled with roasts and hamburger, four-course meals are prepared for the next 40 days and there are enough cinnamon rolls and bread to open a bakery. Plus, you’ve put a beehive next to the garage, harvested the neighbor’s garden, canned 60 quarts of peaches and pears and made 20 gallons of blueberry syrup. And gotten all the way to chapter three in the cookbook you’re writing.

            I vow I’m going to change. I’m going to go back in time and become the wife I was when we were newlyweds. Well, except this time when he comes through the door I’ll have clothes on under the apron. I’ll pore over Betty Crocker cookbooks and thumb through Mom’s recipes and when he comes home from work I’ll lovingly spread some mustard and ketchup on a bun and add a hot dog. Because that’s about all I cooked when we were newlyweds.

            That won’t work. I need to move up a few decades to the time when I actually could put together a pretty good meal. Back when I could read a recipe and actually have all the ingredients on hand and not have to go to the store. Back when we used real napkins and silverware and sometimes even lit candles and ate on that thing…..what’s it called?…oh, yeah, a table! And when I succeed it’ll scare my husband to death. Because he’ll wonder what on earth I’m up to.

           

Spring? Is it Spring?

Jan note: This is a rerun from April, 2001, when we were living in Valdez

From what I hear from my friends, I think the weather in Valdez is as fanciful as that in Fairbanks. Is it winter? Is it spring? Does Mother Nature know? One day is warm enough for a sweater, the next day you’re dragging out a parka. One day you stand still in the middle of the sidewalk and let the blessed warmth of the sun flow over your face, the next day you’re huddled under a scarf trying to keep out the frigid wind from the north.

This is the time of year when you can start out wearing bunny boots and end up going barefoot; when you can start out wearing capris and end up buying a pair of cheap sweatpants at K-Mart so you don’t freeze your tush. It’s when you can go into the store when it’s genuine spring and come out an hour later to genuine blizzard. It’s using the windshield washers one day and shoving off snow with the scraper the next.

As is the tradition with us, we’re now parking one rig at the end of the driveway since only the 4-wheel-drive pickup will make it through the sea-deep wallows and slushy holes in our long driveway. I don’t catch a ride with Troy to the end of the driveway I slog through the mush in my boots and pray I don’t run headlong into the cow and calf moose that call our land their land. The sapling birches are surely too scrawny to climb and the boots to clumsy to run. If it happens that I run into them I only hope it’s in the morning when I’m grouchy enough to not want to put up with much guff.

It is nice to note that I made it through another winter with my sanity intact. Actually, this one was a breeze, quite unlike others which make you question whether you have the brains God gave you and, if so, why on earth you stay in a place that crawls down to 60 below. The only good side of the sanity factor is that it’s a comfort knowing if you do go over the deep end the government will take care of you.

And it could be worse. I read about a group of people wintering in the South Pole in the 1960s who were so bored that they watched the film “Cat Ballou” 87 times. People in another group, after tiring of the westerns, Disney features and porno films on hand, spliced them altogether into their own production and adopted a vocabulary based on their creation. The new language was so bizarre that relief crews arriving in the spring could barely understand them.

Anyway, we’re having some mighty iffy weather and I’ve outlined the differences below:

You think it’s going to be spring so you buy a summer wardrobe. You find out it’s not spring when three months later the tags are still on the clothes.

You think it’s going to be spring so you go on a weight-loss program fit for a bikini. You find out it’s not spring when you lose all the weight, look great for two weeks and then gain it all back. And it’s still not spring.

You think it’s going to be spring so you get out your favorite lawn chair. You find out it isn’t spring when snow turns it into another unidentifiable lump in the yard.

You think it’s going to be spring so you plant 30 flats of petunias. You find out it isn’t spring when they reach a height of 18 inches and have only a few leaves left.

You think it’s going to be spring when you wash your car one lovely April day. You find out it isn’t spring the next morning when you discover the wheels frozen solid in ice puddles and all the doors frozen shut.

You think it’s going to be spring so you clean like a crazy person. You discover it isn’t spring when the house slowly turns back into it’s normal mess and there’s still no sign of spring on the horizon.

You think it’s going to be spring so you pay $30 for a new short hairdo. You find out it isn’t spring when you pay $150 to the clinic to treat frostbite of the ears.

And finally, you think it’s spring so you whoop and holler and grin. When you find out it isn’t spring you sit down and shed a few tears.

The Joy of Looking for a Job

NOTE: This column ran in 2002.

Looking for a job can be one of the most humiliating, defeating, ego-bursting, frightening, and humbling experiences there is—and that’s just the time you spend in the outer office, waiting for your turn. Things really fall apart when you go through the actual interview. You forget your name, any skills you ever had, any office equipment you can operate, except for a flush toilet, and just why you are there in the first place.

If you have never stuttered in your life you will during a job interview. You will also ramble endlessly with meaningless drivel and use sentences that are totally unstructured. Your laugh will change from something warm and cultured to a hideous shriek. You will forget simple things—like what you did on your last job. You will call the interviewer by the wrong name. You will say something brilliant to the interviewer, like “Just what is it you guys do here?”

Back in another lifetime when I managed the News-Miner’s North Pole office, I often had the pleasure of interviewing people for openings we had for writers or office help. It was the first time I had been on that side of the desk.

I knew what it was like to be the one being interviewed so I gave these people a lot of leeway and extra points and consideration for just being there. One lady I interviewed in North Pole came with her husband. He did all of the talking. He introduced them both and then answered every question I asked. He did quite well. Unfortunately, he had another job in the Air Force and she was too shy to even answer the phone.

Job seekers came in flip flops and shorts, men’s shirts and rollers. One lit up a cigarette during the interview and one of them cried. One, whose name was Amy, was the daughter of best-selling author LaVyrle Spencer. Since I was right in the middle of Spencer’s book “Hummingbird” that was one of the most enjoyable interviews I ever conducted.

These people all wanted one thing: an honest job.

On Sundays I look through employment ads. They go something like this: Administrative Assistant. Must know Power Point, Access, Excel, FrameMaker, Photo Shop, QuickBooks, PageMaker. Ten years experience, master’s degree, ability to supervise 24 employees and handle building maintenance and janitorial staff required. $7.50 hour. No benefits.

(However, if you are a dental assistant you can probably demand the world.)

During our Coldfoot years I interviewed dozens of people and looked at hundreds of applications. Some were clever and funny, but none as great as the actual job application, below, that was submitted to a McDonald’s in Florida. This 17-year-old landed a job because he was so honest, and so funny.

     Name: Greg Bulmash

     Sex: Not yet. Still waiting for the right person.

     Desired Position: Company's President or Vice President. But seriously, whatever's available. If I was in a position to be picky, I wouldn't be applying here in the first place.

    Desired Salary: $185,000 a year plus stock options and a Michael Ovitz style severance package. If that's not possible, make an offer and we can haggle.

     Education: Yes.

     Last Position Held: Target for middle management hostility.

     Salary: Less than I'm worth.

     Most Notable Achievement: My incredible collection of stolen pens and post-it notes.

     May we contact your last employer? If I had one, would I be here?

     Do you have any physical conditions that would prohibit you from lifting 50 pounds?: Of what?

     Do you have a car? I think the more appropriate question here would be "Do you have a car that runs?"

     Have you received any special awards or recognition? I may already be a winner of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.

     What would you like to be doing in five years? Living in the Bahamas with a fabulously wealthy dumb sexy blonde super model who thinks I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. Actually, I'd like to be doing that now.

     Do you certify that the above is true and complete? Yes. Absolutely.

     Sign here: Aries.

Now this is a fellow who takes life seriously enough to know he needs to work but leaves enough space for important things such as cleverness, optimistic good humor and an upbeat outlook. I’ll bet he’s a great employee. I’ll bet he didn’t even sweat during his interview, let alone trip on the way in and get lost on the way out. He probably remembered his name, and could put 10 words together and have them actually make sense. I would have hired him.

Hearts, Romance and Brides in Cages

Monday is Valentine’s Day, which isn't that great because who wants to go out to a fancy dinner on a Monday and have one eye on the clock?

For romantic couples Valentine’s Day is the epitome of holidays. It’s the day of declaration, a day for vowing love forevermore. For old marrieds, like Troy and me, it’s a day for celebration that we made it to another Valentine’s Day.

For a lot of us Valentine’s Day means the Day After Valentine’s Day Sale where they have all that great chocolate 50-percent off.

Many a man has chosen Valentine’s Day as the day to ask the love of his life to marry him. How romantic. This is quite different from the approach used by the people of the Trobriand Islands near Papua, New Guinea. There, a woman simply goes up to the man of her choice and bites him on the arm. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t like the biter. She made her choice and he has to marry her.

The ancient Babylonians did it quite differently. There were no old maids because each year all marriageable females were auctioned off. Men bid highly for the most beautiful maidens and that money was used as dowries to go with the less attractive women to entice men to take them. Under this custom there were few unattached females.

I like the custom in ancient Greece and I am going to adopt it. There, women stayed young by counting their age from the date on which they were married rather from the date of their birth. They felt marriage was the true beginning of life and everything that went before was merely preparation. This year I am 46.

Here are some more interesting tidbits:

In many countries in bygone years, courting rituals were strictly enforced to keep the bride’s virtue intact before the actual marriage. And in some parts of the world the methods were extreme. In the Solomon Islands a bride-to-be was kept in a cage, closely guarded, and not released until the time of the wedding. The girl’s parents would keep an unusually sharp eye on their future son-in-law, who had to account for his whereabouts at all times.

In Wales future grooms had to develop artistic skill if they wished to be allowed to visit their brides-to-be. To keep the grooms’ hands busy until the wedding, they had to make wooden spoons with very elaborate and delicate designs for the girls’ parents.

In contrast, nineteenth-century Scottish law required brides to certify their productivity by being pregnant on their wedding day. The law was enforced.

Standards of beauty have changed over the ages as well. Nowadays Americans consider a thin, shapely woman sexy and desirable. But it wasn’t always so. In the late nineteenth century the great American beauty was Lillian Russell, and many a young man sighed over her photographs. This famous singer and actress, at the peak of her career, topped the scales at 186 pounds. The “fat is beautiful” viewpoint still prevails, not in America but in part of Nigeria. Here, when young girls reach puberty, they enter fattening houses, where they spend their time eating almost constantly. When they emerge months later, they appear as "mountains of flesh" and are only then considered truly fit for marriage.

Unusual methods of ending marital bliss have also been recorded. Back in the 1870s, in the city of Corinne, Utah, divorce was made so simple that any man could obtain one instantly. By merely slipping a $2.50 gold coin into a machine and turning a crank, he received divorce papers already signed by the local judge. But only men qualified for obtaining a divorce in this manner. The machine was extremely popular—for a while. Utah statutes failed to back up these slot machine divorces, and they were later declared illegal. As a result many men found they had unwittingly become bigamists.

And on that happy note, I bid you all a Happy Valentine’s Day.

A 1950s Christmas Memory

Dear precious grandkids, you're always asking, "Grandma, tell us what it was like in the old days." Well, this is what it was like! I'll share it with you and any readers.

The size of the family on my mother’s side doubled whenever Harry and Ethel Smith and their brood showed up. Harry was Mom’s baby brother, tall and fit and rakishly handsome with black hair and a grin that revealed strong white teeth. Ethel was short, always happy with smiles and ready laughter. She seemed sort of boneless, like one of those round pork roasts in grocery stores that are held together with white string. As a child, I always thought of her as fat. Later I came to realize she was just always pregnant.


Harry and Ethel had 10 kids, the oldest eight one right after another. There was a lapse of a few years before they started up again and they probably would have had a few more but Harry died of a heart attack one sweltering summer day while working in the woods of northwest Montana. To have the fire of such a vibrant, life-loving man extinguished was a deep blow to the family.

Harry and Ethel lived in an old paint-flaked farmhouse with a front lawn that was kept bare by horses, chickens, goats, and barefooted runny-nosed kids. It wasn’t until the older kids were in high school that the outhouse gave way to a flush toilet in a tiny bathroom Harry squeezed in between the kitchen and back porch. The house was wall-to-wall kids, commotion, laughter, and chaos. It smelled of wet diapers, laundry soap (since doing laundry was a never-ending chore), and good food (since something was always bubbling on the stove).

I loved going there. It was like attending summer camp. Everyone always had a project or something going on. In the summer we rode horses in the river and milked cows and chased down errant calves. In the winter we played cards and jacks, did puzzles and romped in the snow. And we ate. Ethel made the best rolls this side of Heaven, kneading the dough, like she did everything else—with a baby jiggling on her hip.

The year I was eight or nine we had Christmas at Grammy and Granddad's. It was a cold but beautiful sunny day and the snow glinted with diamonds. My other cousins and I had already made a dozen runs with our sleds down the big hill and had been called in to get ready for dinner. Auntie Jane and Mom were fluttering around wondering what to do with all the food since Harry and Ethel were late. All of a sudden, there they all were. Bleeding and bruised and agitated and every single one of them talking a mile a minute. It seemed that Harry had driven the back roads and had missed the corner at the end of a long steep hill a mile away. The car slid through a fence, bounced through the ditch and ended up in a cattail-studded swamp. Miraculously, no one was really hurt.

They had walked the rest of the way, Ethel in high heels and tearfully carrying in front of her a small gaily-wrapped package containing the remains of a teacup she’d intended to give Grammy, and Harry lugging the newest baby.

While the women tended to the cuts and tears, the men took a pickup and a logging chain and went about the business of retrieving the injured car. Personally, I was very interested in the success of getting the car since the trunk was piled deep with presents. Including mine.

We had so much to be thankful for that Christmas day. We were all safe. We were whole. We had each other. That wonderful feeling took over that day, dwarfing everything else. As the subject of the car crash was brought up again and again, the tree didn’t seem as important, nor were the gifts. We were important. Each and every one of us.

This Christmas there are a lot of people who are battered and bruised and bloodied by life. There will be empty places at the Christmas table. In countless homes plates will be salted with tears as heads are bowed to ask God’s blessing.

Life is hard. Life is tragic. Many people won’t even receive the gift of a shattered teacup this year. Others don’t know how they will provide food for their children, let alone presents. Devastated finances, burned-out homes, divorce, illness, death….the list of what can go wrong in a life is endless.

This is a frantic time of year. A time when we strive to be perfect, to give the perfect gifts and to have the perfect Christmas. We spend too much and eat too much and lose track of what’s important. And on December 26 we wallow in guilt and vow that next year it will be different. After two months of glitter and glitz the world suddenly seems ugly and cold and hopeless.

But we are never without hope. And we are never without love. We are surrounded by God’s love and just need to reach out and grab it. He is our hope.

As you come together to celebrate Christmas, please take a few minutes to remember that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. And in him there is hope, peace, love, comfort, joy, and eternal life. There may not have been room at the inn, but there is room in your heart and that’s all he wants—a place in your heart. What a wonderful gift to give our Lord. And what a change it will bring to your life.

I pray that all of you have a very merry, blessed, Christmas.