The Point Is – Well, The Point Is To Be A Decent Human.

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Because it wouldn’t be fair, I’m not going to name names or topics for the purposes of today’s blog.

What I will say, and say it loudly, is that we’re all pretty reprehensible on occasion. Every one of us has managed to set friends and loved ones to grind their teeth in the past two years. Not even related to political arguments, but instead, simply misunderstood. Sometimes in ways so wildly unimagined that it could not have been prevented. Sometimes it’s because of a hurt, a past, a fear for the future that we are unaware of in our blindness. Worst of all, it’s something we perhaps should understand, but have no cultural or spiritual basis to move from in our ignorance.

This does not mean that we are failures. It only means that we have an almost unlimited amount of room to grow. Below the fold, I’ll talk a bit about that issue: growth.

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Facebook. Love it, or hate it, it’s a part of the social discourse in our society. One thing I’ve tried very hard to do is not blast people in the comments. I did that but once this past political season, and then truly to show that it wasn’t as gloomy and bad as my friend had thought. But apart from that exception, I try very hard to be wry, sly, humorous in the comments, and offer private counsel in the form of an email, or a private message, when my friends derail in their moments of zeal and stupidity.

Yes, STUPIDITY. It earns capital letters when it involves off-color comments about race, religion, sex, or sexual preference. Why wouldn’t I simply unfriend them and wash my hands? Because I know that nobody is perfect, and in many of the cases they aren’t as bad as that one-off comment might make it seem. If they are rabidly noxious, they usually unfriend me long before I can get around to it.

But I make the case quietly, with thought, and kindness. I appeal to the better nature I know is inside of them. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you have to “school” someone rather than just beat them down. The goal is to persuade and show something else that is better.

Recently, as alluded to in the first line, that happened with someone I know. Their post was angry, full of hurt and hate. And a misconception about the people involved. Just so happened that I knew the offenders very well. And the circumstances even better. And that it wasn’t what my friend who posted thought it was.

Consequently I sent a message and explained the context, the history, and the people. And I asked for them to take that into account as well as my personal word that all was truly well.

A short time went by with no response. But eventually the little window popped up and they thanked me for my counsel. And, most importantly, they edited their post. With the mere trimming of thirty words, and change of hashtags, it went from anger and hurt to joy and hope.

All because we were both rational. We both took the time to listen. We both took the time to appreciate the fact that while we are different colors, educations, professions, genders, and cities of origin, we share more in common as humans. And when we admit that showing some love and tolerance for people who are really angry with us/our group/our political party/our race/our choice of car then, and only then, can we get past hurling epithets and instead smile and shake hands.

Seems a good message given that the Prince of Peace is being celebrated this time of year.

Take that extra breath. Hold your tongue. And extend your hand in friendship.

See you soon.

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Assault on Saint Agnes is now available. Just click this link to find all the options! (I recommend the autographed copy. It’s cheaper than from the big stores, I scribble in it, and you get it mailed within 5 days. We all win.

When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.

Three Strikes And I’m Out?

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Week #3.

Every year I try to bulk up the Fridays with some music videos that might have escaped your attention. Some are repeats of previous years (love them) and some are new.

So, turn down the speakers on your desk at work, and get busy wasting corporate bandwidth!

Today we rock. Let’s start with Aerosmith. It’s some serious Steven Tyler doing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Now The Jackson Five doing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

Time for some New Jersey kids: Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with Jungle Bells.

Of course, I must include some real dreck: The Beatles Christmas Time Is Here Again..

Talk about phoning it in…

Time for England to rescue its reputation. Sir Elton John singing White Christmas

So, all in for Britian it is: Queen doing Thank God It’s Christmas

Well, maybe not all in… but one more: Wham! doing Last Christmas – Don your earmuffs!!!

Palate cleanser after that one, and not a rocker. Alabama performing Christmas In Dixie

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits! Oh yeah – grab a copy of Assault on Saint Agnes if you’re of a mind.

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Assault on Saint Agnes is now available. Just click this link to find all the options! (I recommend the autographed copy. It’s cheaper than from the big stores, I scribble in it, and you get it mailed within 5 days. We all win.

When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.

A Warm Paw Offered In Love. Another Gigantic Step.

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Most of you have read a bit on this blog, or on my Facebook page, about my rescue Sheltie, Stormy. She’s been with us almost four years now, and is doing pretty well. Grey on the chin from age, still pretty spry, and finally accepting us (the humans in the house) as friends, not as potential poisoners posing as kind people.

One, or more, of us is nuts.

One, or more, of us is nuts.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits! Oh yeah – grab a copy of Assault on Saint Agnes if you’re of a mind.

Recently I was sitting on the couch watching some serious documentary action scroll by on Netflix. Stormy came over, plopped down on the floor like the Sphinx, and stared at me. I gently tapped the top of her foot with my toes. Instant movement to get out of reach. I kept following her toes with mine until she tired of the game. Gently, with the kind of caress that only lovers and parents share, I brought my foot up against the pads on the bottom of her paw and left just the slightest pressure before setting my foot down. She dozed off in a minute or two, and that very warm set of toes rested there for quite a while.

My wife got up and walked across the room, and naturally the dog rolled upright and watched her as she went. What happened next was one of the nicest things to happen to me this year. Instead of following my wife upstairs, which Stormy is in the habit of doing, she rolled back on her side. A moment later, she brought her paw over my foot, and very slowly put it right back where it had been a moment before – resting on my toes.

The warmth of that embrace was what you feel when you hold the hand of someone you love. It was, in fact, the exact same thing but across species lines. A remarkable bit of progress for a dog that wouldn’t even stay on the same floor of the house with me for the first month of her residence here.

She still has issues with noises, thunderstorms, sudden movement, and there hasn’t been a face-licking yet. But she just held my hand with her heart.

I’m good with that. Thank you, God, for healing her heart so much. Mine too.

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Assault on Saint Agnes is now available. Just click this link to find all the options! (I recommend the autographed copy. It’s cheaper than from the big stores, I scribble in it, and you get it mailed within 5 days. We all win.

When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.

It’s Friday – More Strange Christmas Videos Just For You!

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Week #2.

Every year I try to bulk up the Fridays with some music videos that might have escaped your attention. Some are repeats of previous years (love them) and some are new.

So, turn down the speakers on your desk at work, and get busy wasting corporate bandwidth!

It ain’t ABBA, but Bjorn Again with Little Drummer Boy.

Okay, quit your whining. I know you want more ska. But you’ll have to settle for Bob Marley doing White Christmas.

So, can you get to a more diametrical opposite of a ganja smoking dude from Jamaica than Pentatonix? Probably not. Here they are doing Silent Night.

Like that? I thought so. Here are The Temptations doing Silent Night.

Nothing says Christmas like The Three Stooges. I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas. (On a personal note, my mother hates this album. I memorized it, much to the glee of my father – a fellow Stooges fan – and regularly sang it all the way through, very loudly. Because there is no other way to sing with The Stooges.)

Not enough to satisfy you? Well, here’s another Stooges classic: Wreck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly.

Enough merriment. This is a serious holiday. To whit, Run DMC with Christmas In Hollis.

This next pick was random, but few are in greater contrast musically than Dean Martin with White Christmas.

Let’s wrap it up today with Benny Goodman. Yup, Jingle Bells by the King of Swing.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits! Oh yeah – grab a copy of Assault on Saint Agnes if you’re of a mind.

********* ********** *********** ***********

 

Assault on Saint Agnes is now available. Just click this link to find all the options! (I recommend the autographed copy. It’s cheaper than from the big stores, I scribble in it, and you get it mailed within 5 days. We all win.

When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.

Watcher In The Doorway.

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Sunday my rescue Sheltie, Stormy, was teaching me about Christianity. Pheh, you say. No, read on and you’ll see why a good shepherd helped me feel the season even more deeply.

Please follow me on Twitter, and “Like” the Facebook author page. Don’t forget to subscribe (the box is on the right side of the page) to be eligible for free e-books and other benefits! Oh yeah – grab a copy of Assault on Saint Agnes if you’re of a mind.

Sunday I had an event that would require me to leave part-way through church. As I’d put in a 13 hour day on Saturday with the red suit (not counting travel time) I elected to sleep in and get some beauty sleep. I need beauty sleep. I will hit a church service Monday on my way to work, so the guilt level was low.

As has become the tradition, when I looked out into the hallway from my bed I saw Stormy sleeping with her back to me. She stands guard and watches the stairs when I’m sleeping. On the mornings when my wife is up and about before I am, Stormy stays at her post until I get up, not leaving the doorway to so much as go out and relieve herself, or get a drink of water. She takes her job seriously.

After I’d consumed caffeine, taken a shower, and combed the beard out I started to apply my face. Yes, that beard won’t whiten itself…yet. While I’m very much gray, and get it bleached a couple of times a year, it looks yellow under the camera. So some Ben Nye’s Snow White is in order to get it camera ready.

While applying the secret sauce, I noticed a nose poking into the bathroom. Stormy very rarely comes in there when I’m around. We joke that it’s her office, but she doesn’t just check on what’s going on in there as a normal thing.

In the four years (almost) that she’s been with us, she’s seen me do this ritual at least
sixty times. But today she was watching with rapt attention.

I never know how much she understands of what we say. I do know that she likes being addressed as a thinking creature. Kissy noises and baby-talk are not on her list of favorite things. She’s clearly very smart, has a huge vocabulary for a dog that came to us late in her life, but I never really know what’s just me babbling and what’s understood.

I explained to her that I was Santa Claus and that I had to change my appearance so that people would recognize me as him. That stopped me in my tracks. Do I really think that I’m Santa Claus? No. But with or without the beard whitener I try very hard to present the image, and act the role, of who Nicholas of Myra really was in this life. Sometimes I’m on the money. Sometimes not. But the makeup is of little consequence.

It’s the tone of voice. The listening to people. The gentle touch on an arm, or the top of a head. The engagement of each person as an individual. Mostly, however, it’s the love. I truly love the people who come to see me as Nicholas.

That might sound funny to those who have never had the blessing of putting on the Red Suit. But it made me ask myself if I followed Christ. Oh, I’m a Christian, but do I really follow Him?

I spent the next few hours on a couch, taking pictures and smiling. But the whole time, I was examining my values and my behavior.

The answer is that I try pretty hard. Yes, I’m still a foul-mouthed cynic with a taste for the bizarre. But I do pay attention to what He says. I try to listen. I try to treat others well. I try to be kind to animals, honor children, and keep the sink empty. I fail a lot. But that’s not what He asks of us: He’s all about the trying, and accepting His love.

And that, folks, is how a Shetland Sheep dog named Stormy got me thinking about God today. Deep critter, good friend, a joy in my life, and a blessing.

Have a great week. Stop in Friday for more Christmas music videos.

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Assault on Saint Agnes is now available. Just click this link to find all the options! (I recommend the autographed copy. It’s cheaper than from the big stores, I scribble in it, and you get it mailed within 5 days. We all win.

When you finish reading any book (especially mine) please review it at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, and www.goodreads.com. Your review increases the chances of someone looking for a new book greatly. Authors appreciate your review, even if it is just “I thought this was a good read and will give it to my dog to chew. I especially liked the ending, because it made me feel better when he killed all of the main characters. (no spoilers, please)” Those few words (more than 20, fewer than 1,000 is ideal), and a 1-5 rating, make or break how the search engines find us. Thanks in advance.