The doctor didn’t tell me to not linger! She only told me to walk. To engage my legs daily. To stick to an exercise regimen. To stride briskly. To stay in shape. I lingered. The east side of the reservoir. About a half-way point on my 4-mile regimen. I watched the […]
Parden me, Ma’am! I just happen to see things differently. I voted for the other guy. Yes, I know. This world is going to hell in a handbasket. The kind of basket that catches fire quite easily. Your political insight tells you that. I know, you told me; this world is […]
“Stop it!” Do you remember that boy in third grade? The one that discovered the joy of running his fingernails over the chalkboard and making that horrible, screechy sound? “Enough already! Stop it!” He just squealed with delight. He giggled. He turned to face his audience. His eyes shown like a […]
“John, you’ll never be the perfect Christian. You’ve already sinned. You can’t go back and undo your sin. You can only ask for forgiveness.” That’s what my parents told me. The church, too. Total depravity. Totally hopeless. “John, as a Christian, you should always try to achieve perfection. Just like Christ. […]
“Hopeless!” Lota remarked to me this week about how many people in Tanzania he knew who felt hopeless. Many have tried and failed. Many have walked to the brink of despair, not knowing which way to turn, what path to walk, in struggle to simply survive, much less find happiness. I […]
About 30 meters from the top of Half Dome, on his free solo climb to the top, Alex Honnold paused. Doubt? Trepidation? Given, his life lay in the balance. He didn’t really know if his next move would result in a long fall to certain death, or the last realistically successful […]
(A Reverse Safari?) “I told my Mama on the day that I was born, ‘Don’t you cry when you see that I’m gone!” I laughed. That line inspired me, not only because it evoked typical emotions of the times. It metaphorically stoked my imagination. Sung by Barry McGuire of the New […]
Heaven! Well, almost. Maybe not quite. But it comes pretty close! I remember walking from our compound in Kwa Iddi to the main road transecting Arusha. Not right! But I carried an excuse in my imaginary knap sack. Good exercise! My walk to the corner, maybe a light kilometer, constituted good […]
I’m a terrible dancer! In college, the school that I attended figured dancing constituted a sin. Or, almost. By moving your body around in ways that looked like Elvis Presley on steroids, you would tend to stimulate gender-specific hormones. Allowing such hormones to work would certainly lead to mortal sin. So, […]
Almost two months of silence has likely erased anyone’s memory of the last “Crazy Idea” update titled, Dreaming Big, Starting Small. Christmas and New Year family celebrations have certainly participated in the muffling of my periodic sound-off. Preoccupation with both business, and interpersonal communications with Tanzanian friends and associates have also […]