Kids deal with anger and all the issues surrounding it. It can be tough for them if they are not taught how to manage what can become a destructive force in their life.
Some help from Focus on Your Child:
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Being in the first class of baby boomers having been born in 1946, I thought it important to look at my generation from an encyclopedic point of view. Wikipedia does a good job describing the group where the defining event was the Vietnam War.
Tags: baby boomers, Vietnam War, AARP, retirement
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I'm sobered by the fact that I will turn 60 years-old in a little more than a month. Yeah, I was born in 1946 which makes me part of the first class of baby boomers. What happened that year:
This is from a site that offers highlights for each of the baby boomer years.
Tags: babyboomers, Xerox, World Series, AARP, retirement
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We've lived in our home for seven years and it's starting to show some signs of use from daily
living.
Our kitchen needed a paint job, so Gladys and I made a decision to redo it this summer. My goal with this post is to share some positive help to those considering similar projects.
We spent a good chunk of time organizing this effort. For many this all is a no-brainer. But, we organized and prioritized the steps we would need to take, like washing the walls and the woodwork, taking doors off cupboards and making sure that they would all be properly marked and so on and so on.
But the biggest help with potentially one of the most contentious issues was the website of Sherwin Williams. It's color visualizer was a tremendous help in picking colors. You pick a room and then arrange the colors in the room the way you want. You get a good picture of how things will look.
Our local Sherwin Williams store in Lansing was a tremendous help. The staff knows paint and painting. They were helpful. I like Home Depot and Lowes and Menards, but for painting I think I like Sherwin Williams better.
We have a few more pics of our effort on Flickr which can be accessed by clicking on the icon in the bottom left margin.
Tags: Sherwin Williams, home repair, painting, Lowes, Menards, Home Depot
I spent a little more than two weeks in March on a short-term mission trip to Mali in West Africa. While I was there I met the leader of a radio ministry in a neighboring country, Burkina Faso.
Etienne Kiemde, the general director of this Christian radio network, stayed for a couple of days at the same mission house in Bamako where our team was headquartered. With him using his broken English and with me using my four words of French, I learned about how his stations were being used by God to carry the Gospel to places that normally would be hard to reach.
In an e-mail from a couple of days ago, he shared some of the response. Listeners in Burkina Faso are responding to the love of Jesus Christ, he says, when they hear it over the radio. They contact the radio station who are then contacted by volunteers. The responders are people who have to deal with many social and cultural obstacles when accepting Jesus as their Savior.
For Christians all over the world, pray for Etienne, his family and his team and their efforts in their part of West Africa where lives are being changed forever.
Technorati Tags: Burkina Faso, Mali, Christian radio, Family Life Radio, prayer, prayer requests, West Africa
The Detroit Free Press wants to know how often you floss?
I'm serious. Who says that there isn't hard news in the papers these days? This is a poll where you can vote and it is a serious challenge.
As a member of the first class of baby-boomers, I never developed an appreciation for flossing nor did I ever learn how to properly do it. The result: I have a partial denture on the top and one on the bottom.
I could have saved myself a lot of time in the dentist's chair if I had flossed. Then my dentist, Dr. David Flint, gave me a frame where the floss is wrapped between two arms and then around a plastic post. I could do that and I have been doing it pretty regularly. My floss preference is Glide. It goes easily through your teeth.
Why am I talking about this? It's important. You can love your dentist, but you can do it without sacrificing your teeth at his altar.
Technorati Tags: floss, dentist, gum disease, peridontia, Glide dental floss, Detroit Free Press
If you're trying to stay informed about avian/bird flu, here's Detroit Free Press story about how big hunt is on in southeast Michigan for smuggled poultry from China where there are areas affected by the flu.
Technorati Tags: avian flu, bird flu, Detroit, Chinese restaurants, Michigan
This morning's Detroit News has a story about how Dr. Jack Kevorkian wants to get out of prison because of an alleged terminal illness. As I ate my oatmeal with banana on top, I felt sickened and saddened.
Kevorkian, the person who admitted to helping more than 100 people commit suicide, cheapened life in Michigan and around the world. To him ending your own life was nothing more than like putting a dog down.
Look at how our culture has come to regard life since Kevorkian went to prison. Today's Lansing State Journal includes a local story about how two of our teens shot to death a 24-year-old for "weed, cellphone and cash."
I know that there a lot of people who experience excruciating pain and they want it to end. And, I know I could be in that position someday. But, I know that my life will end. I have an end date and it will come soon enough.
Kevorkian needs to serve his sentence. Can our culture ever regain what he took from us, a respect for life?
Technorati Tags: Jack Kevorkian, assisted suicide, right-to-life, Lansing, prison
I have been invited to testify this afternoon before a group of student legislators from the Student Statesmanship Institute this afternoon at the Michigan State Capitol.
Mister/madam chair
I appreciate the opportunity to come before your committee this afternoon to share my thoughts on a very important issue that affects each and everyone of us in some way.
Most recently, I worked for the House member who chaired the committee where this actual bill was considered and voted to the floor. I am very familiar with it from both a policy perspective and a political perspective.
I should also note that I spent more than 15 years going in and out of prisons around throughout the state . . . as a volunteer for Prison Fellowship, the prison ministry started by Chuck Colson.
There are lots of us who are the children of divorced parents?
With your parents being divorced, it can become a cycle that's hard to break.
That's why I noticed today's guest on Focus on the Family where Dr. James Dobson will talking with Dr. John Trent about his new book, Breaking the Cycle of Divorce. You can listen to the interview online by clicking on the link. But . . . for those interested in this topic, check out the links on this page to various relevant articles:
Technorati Tags: Divorce, Focus on the Family, Dr. John Trent, books
Classmates of my son, Justin at RIT, put this bill tracking program--billQ--together. It looks easy and useful. It's web 2.0 and it looks useful. I'd love hearing from others who have tried it.
Technorati Tags: billQ, personal accounting, bills, RIT, web 2.0
In about five weeks, my son, Justin, will have his diploma in information technology from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). It's one of the outstanding tech schools in the world.
Given Michigan's current political and economic climate, he hasn't had much incentive to move back home, other than his great parents and a bunch of friends. Opportunity seemed to exist elsewhere.
Could that be changing?
Google's Adwords headquarters is coming to Michigan, more specifically Ann Arbor. They expect to hire 1,000 people. That's really good news. I hope it's a harbinger of things to come for our state.
I wonder how much our state had to give away to get them to locate here.
Technorati Tags: Google, Michigan, Ann Arbor, information technology, search engines, jobs, web 2.0, Silicon Valley
My son's finishing up this summer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and one of his classes is philosophy. I am a babe in the woods on this topic. Here's good piece from TrueU.org that I need to read through on why such study is important. I scanned it and will read it more carefully soon.
Technorati Tags: philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, college
Big Bald Bobby was driving us from the Inn at Aspen to the Hotel Jerome downtown when we struck up a conversation about blogging. He writes for AspenPost.net when he's not working, downhill biking or skiing or spending time with his girlfriend.
He told how AspenPost.net has become a local news source for the community and about how it routinely beats the local newspaper at stories. Sounds like a perfect example of how mainstream media is losing influence while citizen journalism is gaining prominence.
So, I've been checking out this Aspen community blog on a regular basis and found this post on how newspapers are losing readers. In fact, they are on a pretty steep downward spiral. It will be a while before they crash and burn, but they are in a flame out mode.
Check this out: The post says that newspaper readership averaged 80.8 percent in 1964, went below 70 percent in 1980, below 60 percent in 1995 and stood at 51.6 percent in 2005.
I remember when I couldn't live without getting the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, in addition to the Lansing State Journal. Now I read them online along with other papers.
It used to be fun sitting in a coffeeshop with a fresh brewed cup and the paper. I guess now it's with my iBook.
Technorati Tags: newspapers, Aspen, AspenPost.net, mainstream media, citizen journalism
This opportunity may not last more than the next 20 or so days depending on when Google's spiders do their thing the next time.
Go to Google's search page and plug in: lansing mi church
And then see what comes up in the number one position. Right now, it's Our Savior Church in Lansing, Michigan, a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It's taken almost two years worth of effort to get to this point with the search engines.
More than two years ago, some of its leaders made a decision to use the web as a dynamic source of information for the congregation and other interested parties. My son and I played key roles in making the transition to Dreamweaver and Contribute.
Getting church leaders and members to transition from a predominantly paper-based communications paradigm has been another part of the effort. Churches seem to be slow in crossing this rubicon, but they must if they want to communicate with changing generations.
The next challenge is to get the church school, Our Savior Lutheran School, and its portion of the website optimized to make it more competitive as parents use the web to shop for local schools.
It's exciting to be part of this and at times frustrating. I would be glad to share insights with anybody who's interested.
Technorati Tags: church marketing, lcms, lutheran church, lutheran school, google,
When Justin told me that he was one of the sponsors of Rochester barcamp this coming Saturday--July 14--at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), I was thinking more along the lines of building a better Southern Comfort Manhattan.
But my frame of collegiate reference is Michigan State University during the turbulent sixties when academics seemed to center around the virtues of Stroh's versus a Hamm's. And grad students upped it a notch talking about Southern Comfort versus Jim Beam.
That's not my son's Rochester barcamp. It's a chance for all the geeks in the area and others with something to share about their research to share it with others in a very ad-hoc open environment.
Keep in mind that RIT is one of the outstanding tech schools in the world. Other schools like MIT may come up with the theories, but it's RIT that gets it to work. If you're in the Rochester area next Saturday, it's worth checking out.
I hope that they put up podcasts. I'd love to be part of it that way.
Technorati Tags: Rochester BarCamp, RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology, geeks, computers, web 2.0, MIT,
I remember when Dr. Gary Rosberg spokes at Promise Keepers at Soldiers Field in Chicago. He told the packed stadium about the importance of guarding your heart. In fact, I think I have a book someplace with that title.
This year, he's speaking to Promise Keepers again and he talks about how the closest a lot of men get to other men is when their casket is carried by pallbearers. He also emphasizes the importance of having six men who can help carry you now. He explains more in this mp3 cut. It's worth a listen.
Technorati Tags: Promise Keepers, pallbearers, Dr. Gary Rosberg, death, men, Soldier Field
Our church does an e-mail newsletter as kind of an after-thought. The church office has a bunch of e-mail addresses of members and interested parties and will pop out an e-note as a reminder for activities and actions needed.
It would be too easy to kind of nod and say the e-newsletter was okay and go on from there.
But check Jakob Nielsen's newsletter summarizing his latest research on how users react to e-newsletters. Follow certain guidelines and you'll get a chunk of the audience, he says. They still work and are worth the effort, especially if they are done right.
This is important for churches and other ministries who typically are behind the communication 8-ball.
By the way, Nielsen is a web usability pioneer and his research is valuable for anybody with a presence on the web.
Technorati Tags: Jakob Nielsen, web usability, e-newsletters, church marketing
These stats are from a Detroit Free Press story yesterday about how Michigan's Friend of the Court system will be down more than $50 million in fed money this next fiscal year. It talked about the effects of that and also shared these stats about marriage, families and kids in Michigan. It's something that needs to be talked about at all levels:
Technorati Tags: Michigan, marriage, divorce, families, single-parents, friend of the court, single-mothers, unwed mothers
John at Michiganblog.net has a great story about President George W. Bush and the experience of one person with the President in the Oval Office. Go to the post and scroll down about two thirds of the way because John usually has one post a day including many different items.
Could it be that liberals hate Bush so much because of his boldness in declaring and living out his faith in Jesus Christ? It's worth a read.
Technorati Tags: George W. Bush, Christian Right, MichiganBlog