My favorite time of year here in the Phoenix valley is anytime my roses are blooming. Like right now. My back yard is awash in red, orange, white, lavender, pink, yellow, coral, and peach. The hummingbirds swoop in to check them out before moving to the front yard where they prefer the trumpet shaped blooms […]

Got an email the other day with the subject line “Interesting Trivia”. It said that at two minutes and three seconds after 1 PM today the date will be:
01:02:03; 04/05/06
It won’t happen again for a hundred years.
We tend to take note of events that don’t come around often. Halley’s Comet makes an appearance every 76 […]

“I never get a vacation. I need one, but I never get one.”
“I need sleep. I’m not getting enough. When I can’t fully recharge with a good night’s sleep, work is overwhelming.”
“I’d love to take a nap. But I have so much to do that I feel guilty taking one.”
That’s what I heard today from […]

 
It’s dry in the desert. That’s why they call it a desert. On a good year, the Phoenix valley receives only 7″ of rain. This hasn’t been a good year. Until God turned on the faucet last Saturday, it had been 143 days in a row with no rain. The last time water fell from […]

In my part-time job at America West Arena (recently renamed US Airways Center after yet another corporate merger) I’ve had opportunity to observe the myriad of pre-event preparations in the building. Included in the flurry of activity is the rehearsal of the national anthem. The group or individual singing or playing gets one shot to […]

Spring 1998. A 2:30 Friday afternoon flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles, the flight taken by many business people trying to get home for the weekend.
 
I’m headed to California to visit Charlie, an old college friend. As you probably know, there are no reserved seats on Southwest Airlines. You show up for the cattle call […]

Most people have likely never heard of my college alma mater, a small Christian liberal arts school in Orange City, Iowa. But since Deb Remmerde went on the CBS Morning Show last Monday a lot more of the country knows about Northwestern College.
 
Deb is a sophomore All-American basketball player for the Lady Raiders. She got […]

Years ago my friend Glen, a cowboy who’d rather be horseback riding and team roping than doing anything else, summarized the inherent problem of not taking life one day at a time as only he could do.
“When ya’ got one foot in yesterday and the other foot in tomorrow, yer’ pissin’ all over today.”
Cowboy vernacular […]

“Daddy, can we make a pile of leaves and jump in them?” Annie and Emma are helping me clean up the backyard. After a week of low overnight temperatures my fig tree had dropped it’s leaves and I was raking them up to throw in the dumpster.
Growing up in Iowa, fall was my favorite season. […]

About 12 years ago when we moved to the Phoenix valley one of the things we wanted to do was find a church to attend. We visited quite a few.
One Sunday during a worship service at a church in Mesa, the pianist played a solo. An arrangement of an old hymn. It was one of […]

It’s a question that’s been posed to most of us at one time or another. “If your house was on fire, besides your family, what would you grab?”
This past week a friend of mine called and asked me to come help him on a job. We both have a cleaning business. He also does work […]

You heard the phrase more than once during the Christmas season. “Let’s wait till after the first of the year.” You may have heard it from me. I said it quite a bit.
“After the first of the year.” During the frenetic Christmas holiday we speak of early January as though it were a wide open, […]

Here in the Phoenix valley, conveniences abound. Drive three minutes in any direction from my house and you’ll find a Target, Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot, Discount Tire, and numerous large grocery stores. Not to mention the endless strip malls full of specialty shops. Anyone need to refurbish a Ford Mustang? Buy a dune buggy? Just […]

Annie and Emma unbuckled their seat belts and tried to be the first to sit next to me. It was time for our “pre-preschool” parking lot conversation. We had been talking about Christmas on the drive over and they were offering some final thoughts. Annie squeezed her tush between the seats, sat down and said, […]

Have your prejudices been challenged lately?
In my part-time job I sell merchandise at America West Arena. Home to the NBA Phoenix Suns, Arizona Rattlers Arena Football team, and the Phoenix Roadrunners Hockey Club. For these events, our walk in store is open like any in a mall. For concerts, the set up is different.
In a […]

“So I’m not four anymore?”
“No, Annie. You’re five now. Happy Birthday!”
For weeks Annie and Emma have been talking about how they would soon be five years old. Now that the day is here, they seem a tiny bit wistful pondering that being five means they are no longer four. I understand that. We look forward […]

Is there a job that you think is beneath you? Has your education, position, title, or wealth elevated you beyond performing mundane tasks?
Ever since high school I had a sense that seminary would be in my future. After graduating from college I realized it wouldn’t be wise for me to go straight to graduate school. […]

12 seconds left in the game. The Phoenix Suns have the ball. They’re down by a point.
Steve Nash, Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire have been a three-headed scoring monster in the second half, breathing 3-point fire from the perimeter and pounding down earthshaking slam dunks underneath. The clock ticks toward double zeros.
Marion, aka “The Matrix”, […]

I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “The more time I spend with the so-called “good people”, the more I understand why Jesus preferred to spend His time with sinners.”
The setting was a facility owned by a large church in the Phoenix valley. The scene was a music concert. A local band was celebrating […]

Do you ever find yourself so busy that you can’t keep track of everything on your schedule? Have you ever said to yourself or to someone around you, “I just don’t have time to think about that right now!”?
Sometimes we get so involved and over-committed that we forget things. Forgetting to pick up your shirts […]

Have you ever been to a carnival and seen a “guess how many are in the jar and win a prize” contest? The jar could have anything in it. Maybe pennies, or marbles, or if you’re at a county fair in the Midwest it might be a jar of shelled corn or soybeans. Everyone writes […]

The Fox News headline says that two 2nd grade girls were found murdered in Zion, Illinois today.
These best friends went out to ride their bikes together and never came back. Some despicable, evil bastard stabbed them multiple times and left them for dead.
In an unrelated Fox News story, a stray dog in Nairobi, Kenya found […]

While walking across the open first level of the Luhr’s Parking garage in downtown Phoenix, I spotted him across the street. A bedraggled, scruffy, gray bearded guy in a dirty blue jacket pushing himself backward down the sidewalk in a wheelchair.
Panhandlers are fairly common around America West Arena, especially late at night after events. Usually […]

I’m at a Jamba Juice in Mesa, Arizona waiting for my Berry Lime Sublime smoothie when I notice a lady staring at my America West Arena name badge. “Is Swea City, Iowa your home town?” I tell her it sure is. And how impressed I am that she pronounced it correctly.
Swea City’s a small place. […]

My roses are blooming. Wanna come see?
I remember my Grandfather saying these words. “My roses are blooming. Wanna come see?” He’d want me to follow and I would. Not because I had a passion for roses. More out of respect for Grandpa. Oh, I liked them ok. But he loved them. He even painted pictures […]