Hummingbirds enjoying the feeder we’ve contributed to the family backyard. Warm sunshine in the middle of the day. 50’s at night. Watching the planes on approach to Portland International Airport, some 20 miles away. Five minutes that way to Safeway. Ten … Continue reading
Blog Archives
Fresh Thoughts: Living Houses
This gallery contains 6 photos.
In June of 1962, our piano sat on the sidewalk in front of the Montana farmhouse (where the skies are not cloudy all day). Our Dad had entered heaven’s rest on March 31 that year and by mid-June the farm … Continue reading
Where to Start
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Because we’re in the throes of packing and moving (and will be for another 4-5 weeks) nothing new is getting posted. Most of the postings require some time to move them from their present formats (in old study materials, family … Continue reading
Eight Lines from Emily Dickinson
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I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us–don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an … Continue reading
As I Remember It: “Bet ya can’t not laugh….”
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…and sometimes that whispered challenge was all it took. The worst episodes of helpless and badly-timed snickering in our 1950s farm home occurred around the breakfast table when Dad was reading the daily devotional sheet that he took each morning … Continue reading
Band Day in May: circa 1957
This gallery contains 9 photos.
The first Band Day in Williston, North Dakota was held in 1932 which was not a very good year. The Depression was settling in and making itself at home. An invitation was sent to high schools in the small agricultural … Continue reading
National Security and National Solvency~~According to President Eisenhower
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May Day: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (Michael Beschloss, Harper and Row, 1986) is a review of the international context and disastrous events of the U-2 loss over the Soviet Union just two weeks before a summit meeting scheduled in … Continue reading
Here’s a lie: “Humility should be resisted.”
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I have long agreed with God’s definitions, descriptions and proposals about humility, and have evidence of that agreement in something I wrote on September 13, 1983: Humility that’s asked by you, O Christ of Galilee, is that which faces you … Continue reading
The First Day of School
This gallery contains 11 photos.
Somehow it seemed that the first day of school was always a perfectly sunshiny day that still had the smell of wheat chaff in the air. The hollyhocks on the east side of the house were so tall by this … Continue reading
Psalm 62: Waiting in Silence
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Psalm 62:5-7 My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory; the … Continue reading
Grandpa Soren died this afternoon: June 13, 1956
This gallery contains 14 photos.
Mom and I were at the regular Ladies Aid meeting at a neighboring farm where they had a phone. I was playing quietly with my friends and then the phone call drew a line through the middle of the afternoon. … Continue reading
As I Remember It: From Butter to Oleo
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Around 1951, the farmers’ kitchens which had been producing the sweetest table-ready butter this side of heaven for a couple of hundred years and the farmers’ wives who were in charge of those kitchens were somehow persuaded that “there is … Continue reading
What kind of God?
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Only a God of love so high and pure could ask of us so much and seeing that we’ve naught to give reach out and with a touch fill us up with what He asks so we can bring it … Continue reading
Paul’s Sermon Text in Antioch Pisidia
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About 53-57 AD, the Apostle Paul preached a sermon in Antioch of Pisidia which is about 300 miles northwest of “the other Antioch” which is about 20 miles from the Mediterranean Sea and just within Turkish borders. The ancient remains … Continue reading
Letters to Rosebud: Nov 15, 1925
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Dear Edith– I got your letter yesterday so I am going to answer tonight. Walter and I got Willie’s corn out in 3 days, so it wasn’t so very painful. Now Fred Fryhling has a few acres that won’t come … Continue reading
Freddie and Flossie
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There were seven of us siblings stretched out over 17 years: the 3 oldest (two brothers and a sister) sort of clustered at the very beginning; a brother and sister in the middle; and then, 7 years later, my brother … Continue reading
The Humanity of Christ
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In his book, The Incomparable Christ, J. Oswald Sanders sets forth a readable narrative that draws on the Scriptures for deep thoughts served up in bite-sized pieces, pieces which nevertheless may require considerable chewing. In one section he discusses the humanity … Continue reading
Letters to Rosebud: November 9, 1925
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My dear Edith, Well, I got home a couple of hours ago, and as it is mail day tomorrow I am sending you a chapter. I started for home at 9 a.m. when Rev. Nielsen stoped me and got me … Continue reading
Letters to Rosebud: October 19, 1925
This gallery contains 4 photos.
Dear Edith, I rec’d your letter last Saturday and was very glad to get it. So they are doing a little figuring in Sidney: well, they suspect something around here, too. Soon I suppose it will be all over, and … Continue reading
“Please (don’t) pass the peas.”
This gallery contains 6 photos.
The Frederick Hansen home flourished in Montana, eventually featuring eleven girls and two boys. I have always marveled at the fact that Grandpa Hansen, by all accounts, just “went on his way rejoicing” even though I’m sure he was hoping … Continue reading
Mailboxes and Old Barns 