Geometry assignment; 9/4

We went through an entry task of some more practice drawing of geometric figures.  We also spent some time going over a few distance formula homework problems.

Today's lesson focused on the midpoint formula and how to use it in a variety of problem types.

Assignment:  section 13-5;  page 545-546;  written exercises #1-12 all

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Geometry assignment; May 20

This was our second day of reviewing topics dealing with line equations.  Today's work centered on graphing systems of equations and also using the elimination to solve systems of equations.  We went over several examples together as a class before getting started on our assignment.

assignment:  solving systems of equations worksheet

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Geometry assignment; 9/8

We reviewed a couple of problems dealing with the midpoint and distance formula before taking the quiz today.  The students had the period to work on the quiz, and when they finished they got started on their assignment.


Assignment:  Segment Addition and Midpoint worksheet

Sunday Morning Meds--No More

^“A little while, and the wicked will be no more;

though you look for them, they will not be found.”

Almost ten years has passed since a man known as the BTK (“bind, torture, kill”) Killer was sentenced to 175 years in prison.  Dennis Rader, who for years had eluded police in Wichita, Kansas, even as he taunted them through a string of brutal murders, could not, legally, have received a tougher sentence.

It is sometimes as difficult to take to heart some of the sentiment of the Psalms as it is tough to stomach wholesale Old Testament blood-letting.  Honestly, I have to think long and hard today to come up with people I’d associate—or certainly brand—with the word “wicked.”

But Dennis Rader is one of them, a serial murderer who carried out demonic crimes over a thirty-year period, while playing an evil game of cat and mouse with police. Married, with two children, Dennis Rader was a city official who enforced zoning and neighborhood codes and an active member of a local church, where he had been elected the congregation’s president.

He’d served his country in the Air Force, did time in Vietnam.  Dennis Rader was a Jekyl/Hyde, someone occasionally characterized as so nondescript that his being BTK seemed absolutely impossible to those who knew him.  Would they were right.  In his home, police found folders of news clippings proudly documenting his crimes.

           

In a rambling 20-minute statement at the end of the trial, Rader thanked his defense team, his social worker, the members of the jail staff, and his pastor.  He called the murders “selfish and narcisstic,” and then, shockingly, as if he were, in all truth, the final authority, listed the mistakes the prosecution had made in the case.  Madness that rational is just plain evil.

           

That the wicked Rader will never again walk the streets of Wichita or any town or city is a absolute blessing.  One plea on the part of the district attorney was especially memorable.  She asked that the judge limit Rader’s access to pictures of animals and humans and that he be prohibited from writing materials, which, she alleged, he would use to continue his fantasies. 

It was denied—under First Amendment guidelines.  That’s a shame. The world does not need to hear any more about Dennis Rader, even what I’m writing.

           

I do hope, honestly, that the God he worshipped throughout his life forgives him; and if I know grace at all, I know it’s possible.  God’s love vastly surpasses ours.

Maybe in Dennis Rader’s case, what David promises in this verse from Psalm 37 has happened.  Really, the initials “BTK” mean almost nothing to most of us today.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see every last detail of the monstrous life of Dennis Rader disappear completely from the earth, just as David promises, just as the Bible says?

King David dreams of a better world, as all of us do, a world without Dennis Raders.

Lord Jesus, he’s saying, come quickly.           

Algebra 10-12 assignment; May 27

After the long weekend, we got back to work reviewing for the EOC today by going over solving systems of equations.  We worked on both solving by graphing and solving by elimination between two variables.  The examples we did in class together then helped the students get started on their homework before the end of the period.


Assignment:  Solving systems of equations worksheet

Algebra 10-12 assignment; Feb. 7

We took a quiz today during our shortened periods, as well as turning in the weekly entry task sheet.

Homework:  System of equations worksheet;  #2-10 evens,  do all for extra credit

Morning Thanks--Lovely dirt

Yesterday, my neighbor came by and dumped a scoop full of black dirt on what, someday, will be--we hope--our front lawn. What some people tell me, people I trust, is that you can never have enough black dirt. 

I'm no farmer, never have been, never will be; nor am I much of a gardener, to be truthful. But there's something about that line I love:  "You can never have enough black dirt." If it was funny, it could be a Rodney Dangerfield one-liner; but it's not--it's true. "You can never have enough black dirt."

Anyway, we got it. A few days ago, we took a dying plant into a local greenhouse to get a new arrangement. The guy said he'd dig the old one out and put together some new combo for us--50% off too. He did.

But said he put the old sad one into a spare pot he had sitting around because the old guy still had good roots. Just couldn't toss it. I like that.

Anyway, he looked up at us as if what he'd pulled up was dope (this is Iowa, remember, not  Colorado).  Looked straight at me, brows furrowed. "Where'd you get that dirt?" he said. 

I was being grilled.  I hunched my shoulders, and looked at my wife. "I don't know," I told him, feigning innocence. "Out of a pile in our backyard, I guess."

Then, in all sincerity, even deep respect, he looked me straight in the eye. "That's good dirt," he said, as if I'd better take out some additional homeowners insurance. 

This really, really black and gorgeous stuff in a pile on our front yard is called "Primgahr." Don't believe me?--look it up. It's origin is O'Brien County, Iowa, just east of us, and it's just plain midnight, inky black. It's greatly beloved, as you can well imagine, blessed with a rich and well-earned reputation for producing "perfection in all kinds of grain and vegetables," one source claims.

Why am I not surprised?

Here's what it looks like when it's not in a pile on my front yard.

And here's the real story, straight from the mouth of the USDA: 

The Primghar series consists of very deep, somewhat poorly drained, moderately permeable soils formed in loess on uplands and high stream benches. Slope ranges from 0 to 5 percent. Mean annual air temperature is about 47 degrees F, and mean annual precipitation is about 27 inches.

Precipitation will be higher this year, believe me. In fact, maybe the real blessing of Primgahr soil won't be so ultra-apparent this growing season because some sources insist it needs to be drained. It's so black and dense that it retains water bountifully, which is great in drought or near-drought, but less a blessing when rain water is at a premium. 

Josephine Donovan's novel of life among the new, white residents of Sioux County, Iowa, circa 1870, Black Soil, draws its title--and it's setting, by the way--from "Primgahr soil," which means, of course, that that pile of dirty blessedness in my front yard is even famous.

Well, after a fashion. Be interesting to know who were the other two or three people to read that old wonderful story in the last decade. 

If I'd been reared on a farm, if I'd planted hope every spring and worried myself sick every harvest, I'm sure I'd have thought of it long ago. But I was a professor, which means, in some very Siouxland ways, a slow learner.  

When I look out my window right now over miles and miles or Siouxland prairie and think of that rich dump of black soil in my front yard, I just can't help myself, I guess. Garrison Keiler once said in Christian Century that the world would be a better place to live if everyday every last one of us would give thanks for something, anything.

This morning, I'm thankful for lovely dirt.  

Morning Thanks--Code Talkers

This marvelous story has more than its share of ironies.

One of the guys, in uniform, was arrested when an army unit picked him up and sent a message to his Marine commander that they'd captured a Japanese dressed in Marine garb and carrying Marine IDs. An Marine officer was sent over. The Japanese guy was no wolf in sheep's clothing; he was one of their own. He was Navajo, a Code Talker.

Or how about this? Code Talkers used their own Navajo language, a language spoken only on the Reservation, to save American lives. At the very same time at reservation boarding schools, the Navajo language was forbidden. Kids were fined or locked up in a kind of solitary if they used it, because wild injuns had to learn English and become good American citizens. At once, the Navajo language was glorified and demonized.

Then again, lots of the nearly 400 Navajo men who were recruited for the code talker program encountered stares when they teamed up with their Marine buddies because most white soldiers, the bilaganna, as Navajos would say, had no idea who they were. They'd never heard of a Navajo, had no sense of their history or character, and only the vaguest sense of how they'd lived. Even today the spell checker of Microsoft Word doesn't recognize the word hogan. The role the Code Talkers played in World War II was central to its victories, yet most of us didn't know them.

This week the Code Talkers got some significant air time because Chester Nez, the last of the original 29 Marine recruits, died peacefully in his sleep in Albuquerque. The last of the first is now gone, but their story should not be forgotten.

I never met this man, Wilsie Bitsie, but I did meet his family. They are immensely proud. As a boy, he was taught to play the piano by the wife of a missionary doctor in Gallup, New Mexico; as a man he went to war, serving with 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions at Midway and Guam and elsewhere.  He was a hero. He is a hero.

Maybe the most interesting irony is the the fact that Navajos participated at all. Today, there are no shortage of American flags standing in Navajo graveyards, or in any Native American cemetery. For a nation as ravaged by Anglos as they are, Native people have contributed immensely to American war efforts through the years. Grievances exist, after all. Injustice isn't just a chapter in tribal history, it is a major theme, oppression its central conflict. Still, when America called, they answered. And still do.

I'm proud that Rehoboth Christian School, Rehoboth, NM, has dedicated its middle school building to the Navajo Code Talkers, where their portraits line the walls. Even though very few of their white buddies knew anything about them, even though they were stupidly mistaken for the enemy, they're heroes.  



Today is June 6, D-Day, a day of catastrophic loss on the beaches of Normandy, a day of honor, really, for all American World War II vets, including the Navajos, whose language carried batallions through endless South Pacific islands. 

None of them should be forgotten. This morning's thanks is for them, what they did, what they gave to us all.

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Sunday Morning Meds--Be still--sure.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him. Psalm 37

I don’t think I could go back to life without computers—or the internet, for that matter, this unimaginably huge storehouse of information that sits somewhere mysteriously beneath my fingertips, a few keystrokes from the confines of my basement office.  I use it constantly, really.

Computers speed things up—I can red-pencil my students’ papers faster because of “word processing,” even though, by the way, I use neither red pencils nor paper.  I can and do communicate instantaneously with hundreds of people, no matter where they are in the world, as long as they’ve got a modem.  One might think that our lives would be less hurried because of the instantaneous reach of technology today, but that’s not so.  The computer has made those who use it frequently more, not less busy.

What’s more, it facilitates our very human weaknesses. 

A couple of years ago, some friends asked me to pull off some schtick at their children’s wedding.  I did.  People thought it was funny, but apparently not our friends—well, apparently not the father, who sent me a blistering e-mail a day or so later, a note he typed out with the kind of vengeful glee we feel as we vent.  Slap some keys and punch send.   

Why point these fingers?  I’ve done the same thing more often than I care to admit.  In my entire life, I don’t remember ever sending nasty snail mail.  But e-mails?—don’t I wish I could have some back.

A computer doesn’tfacilitate waiting.  If I’m typing along—as I’m doing now—and suddenly it occurs to me to check on some deal I’m working on elsewhere, I can minimize this screen, flick out a note to Zambia, and return—fifteen seconds max. 

           

I can’t speak for others, but the sweet advice of this verse of Psalm 37 seems to me to be far easier said than done in this computer age.  I wonder if my own expectations of God’s almighty hand—what he could and even should do in my life—aren’t in some ways predicated upon a sense of time that’s in part defined by the instantaneousness of a machine that falsely promises more but delivers, somehow, less.

When my father died, a poet friend of mine sent me a poem he’d written at the death of his own father.  That poem offered the most startling picture of timelessness, of eternity, that I’ve ever considered—specifically, that those who die before us don’t sit around in some heavenly café, awaiting the arrival of the next bus, hoping it will include loved ones. 

Because the dead exist out of time, they really don’t miss us; via their clocks, we’re, in a way, already there. Waiting is a time thing, not an eternity thing.  I love that idea because I don’t like to think of my father waiting, even though, of course, we do.

Waiting is a purely this-world job.  God almighty doesn’t punch a time clock.  There isn’t such a thing in eternity.  His time isn’t time at all.

Which makes patience almost heavenly, doesn’t it?  Maybe that’s why this verse seems so easy to say and so difficult to do.  As everyone knows, patience is a virtue, a virtue to be practiced, something I need to work at. . .he said, his fingers bent over the keys.

Lord, help me breath easily.

            

Algebra 10-12 assignment; April 22

We spent time today working on a combination of all the factoring skills that we have acquired during this unit.  We created a note card to use during the test and spent time going over several different types of problems:  GCF, sum and product puzzles, AC method, and grouping.  The students then got started on their homework assignment;

Assignment:  Factoring overview worksheet

Geometry assignment; 9/1

Labor Day today;  no school

Geometry assignment; Feb. 13

We worked through several homework problems together on the Pythagorean Theorem today before starting the next section on the converse of the pythagorean theorem.  The main skill today was to use side lengths to classify triangles as either obtuse, right, or acute.  We we worked several examples before getting started on the homework.

Assignment:  Section 8-2 worksheet on Pythagorean Theorem and its Converse

Geometry assignment; April 30

We went over our homework and did an entry task before getting started on the lesson today.  Today's topic dealt with finding the surface area and volume of a cylinder.  We did a few examples together to remind the students of the previous area work we had done before getting a good start on the homework in class.

Assignment:  Volume / Area of cylinders worksheet

Correspondence*

She kept them in her desk, but I'm not sure if I'm the one who found them. In the flurry of activity surrounding my mother's death and funeral, I don't remember how they ended up in my laptop case, but that’s where they stayed for the last six weeks or so, until Sunday afternoon, when I pulled out the case

There they were, jammed in the bottom.

It's possible no one looked at those letters for years. In fact, it's quite likely she didn't. Most all of us have old letters. . .somewhere. I do, and I don't look at them and wax nostalgic, don't even need them. But neither do I toss them. They document a life.

As do my mother's, the ones I just discovered. Some run back generations, the writers, the characters, long gone before her.

“It is Sunday afternoon, and I am home alone so I thought I would write you a few lines.” This one is dated—June 21, 1903—and addressed to “Deric,” who was my great-grandfather, a man who died years and years before I was born.

“Edgar and Mabel are out picking strawberries,” my great-grandmother says of her children. Fourteen years later Edgar would be killed somewhere in France at the end of World War I. Mabel was my grandma.

“We went to church this morning. It was a lovely day only I wish you could have been home,” Great-grandma Hartman writes.

I know this from family lore: Great-grandpa Deric was not kind to his wife, not at all. I don’t know the stories, but I’ve often thought the worst. What’s unmistakable within the lines of this letter is his wife's anxiety. “If I had been sure you were not coming, I would have gone into Sheboygan over Sunday [but] I did not feel able to go circus day I had pain all week but feel some better to day it is so lonesome and we are afraid to be alone nights.”

There’s brokenness in the sentences, brokenness in her life.

“I get so nervous sometimes and do not sleep well all night. I wish you would go in business again so you could stay at home.”

Deric was a travelling salesman, farm equipment, but obviously not home often, probably somewhere else, carousing. Before my mother died, she told me that one of her earliest memories was going into a tavern on Indiana Avenue, Sheboygan, and watching her mother retrieve her father from a bar stool.

“Brother is still in Iowa,” my great-grandma writes. “He wrote me a letter this week asking me about the auction and how much the land brought and who bought it and everything else, but I did not answer.” What she says--and how she says it--suggests something shady I know nothing about. But my distant Iowa relatives tell me that “brother” was steered away from Wisconsin by his wife, who simply would not allow her husband to work for or with “brother” Deric. She didn't want her husband to become anywhere near him.

There’s more news, all of it spoken in a cadence that’s fearful and sad.

And there’s another letter with it, this one from little Mabel, my grandma, who was just a little girl in 1903, this one also dated June 21.

“Dear papa,” it begins. “It is Sunday and I will write you a few lines to tell you that I went out strawberry picking and I found a quart box full don’t you think that is pretty good mama taught it was good for me pick that much. Fanny Wykhuis papa is dead and that to bad.”

A little more and then: “My hand is so tired I cannot write any more so good bye write soon,” and the signature, “From your little girl, Mabel.”

Great-grandpa Deric may have held on to these letters, but his character suggests that's unlikely. If he didn't keep them and bring them home, then it's possible these notes were never sent, a possibility which carries as much brokenness as any scrambled sentence therein. 

If they were never sent, neither were they tossed, which means it's likely my great-grandma kept both of them, held them dearly because of what they said about what she had felt. And so did Mabel, my grandma, a generation later. And so did my mother, who wouldn’t be born for another 15 years.  Three generations--now four--could have thrown away these letters, but didn't.

Even though these two letters, written on a Sunday afternoon in 1903, may never have been sent, they have been kept most preciously for more than a century.

When I hold them in my hands—and there are more of them, many of them glorious--I can’t help feel both proud and humbled, proud that there’s a story here, a story that’s mine, for good or ill; and humbled too, to know that in joy and in sorrow, I'm not alone, none of us are, to know through their brokenness that human life is what it is, for better and for worse.

That's what we feel in the psalms, finally, isn't it? In David's joy and in his sorrows, in his horrible fears and in his strutting pride, we see ourselves. We're all alike, we’re all human, we’re all looking for love, we all need a savior.

I think I'll keep them. They're good for the soul.

____________________ 

*A shorter version of this essay appears this month in The Banner.

Algebra 10-12 assignment; March 4

We continued working with scientific notation today, expanding our study into doing operations with scientific notation.  We also reviewed working with exponents together during the entry task and with the homework.

We will have a short quiz on exponents tomorrow during the period.

Assignment:  operations with scientific notation worksheet

Algebra 10-12 assignment; 8/28

We spent some time today reviewing the commutative property and seeing how it only applies with the operations of addition and multiplication.  We then worked on the skills of factoring and simplifying fractions.
The students got a chance to get started on their homework at the end of the period.

Assignment:  section 1-2 ;  p. 14  #1-8 all, 18-29 all;  column #1 and column #3 on fraction worksheet

Algebra 10-12 assignment; March 10

We continued our work with polynomials today by going over the concepts of putting polynomials in ascending and descending order.  We also worked on evaluating polynomials for a particular value substituted into the polynomial.

Assignment:  Evaluating polynomials worksheet;  #1-12 all,  15-35 odd

The Most Un-American of All

(Guest post this morning--Piet Westerbeek IV)

I want to thank my father-in-law for letting me be a guest writer on his blog. As you may read, we differ politically, but he is my dad and I respect his beliefs whether we agree or not. That being said, I am about as conservative as they come--which is a miracle since I was born and raised in Southern California. Because of this, I have a pretty good idea of what it feels like for Democrats to live here in conservative Northwest Iowa.

It’s sad really what politics has become--pure hate in many cases. I see so much venom coming from either side of the fence, and it makes me sad and nervous about what kind of nation my children will inherit. My wife will not even voice an opinion on anything she perceives as being political since she is so scared she will hurt people she loves because they reside on such opposite sides of the spectrum.

I recently read this article by Ann Coulter--her latest brain fart. 

This one made me angry. Really angry. I love soccer, so let’s get that understood from the get go. In the article she claims that she has held her tongue for a decade on soccer as not to offend anyone. Ha… Ann Coulter does not keep her mouth shut long enough to breathe through her nose…. But I digress.

The main part of the article, as you will see, is her trying to show that there is an increase in moral decay as/when soccer becomes more popular in the states. When I read that, my jaw dropped to the floor. It really shouldn’t have, because, again, I was reading something by Ann Coulter….. again, I digress.

Here is a quote from the article:

I’ve held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.”

Keep reading--it gets better……

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms.

The rest of the article basically makes stupid points that soccer is an outside influence and that no real American (she insinuates that you are only a true American if your great-grandparents were born here) enjoys or follows soccer for the reasons she listed above. It is one of the biggest pieces of garbage that I have read in my lifetime.

Again, as a conservative I am sure that I share many similar ideas in politics as Miss Coulter. What I cannot stand is the pure hate and ignorance that this article exudes. She is somehow trying to use soccer as a political Trojan horse. She talks about the game and then out spouts the political hatred. 

 Don’t believe me? Here is another quote from Ann: 

I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce, and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.

Uh, what? Is she using drugs? That is the only way I can explain her course of thinking.

Soccer (football) has had an amazing effect on society for exactly the reason Coulter is complaining about it. Soccer teaches team work. It teaches that society is not an individual, it is a tribe. We win together, we lose together. God created us to be social and to work together for the common good for his glory. Coulter, who is a self-proclaimed Christian, should really know better. She should understand that a game that teaches unity, teamwork, and does not stand for just the individual is as American as apple pie and has roots in God’s teachings.

Anne and I may have some of the same political views, but I call out trash no matter where it comes from. This article is trash and about as Un-American as they come. 

 I would go on, but I have a soccer game to watch with my son.

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Going home

For so many reasons, I prefer to drive. Not that I'm afraid of flying--not at all. But once you step up to the line, put your Visa in the kiosk, you're baggage.  When I drive, I'm master of my fate. 

Sort of.  I determine whether the windows are up or down. I control the radio dial or which books play on the iPod. I stop when I want to. When I'm alone, otherwise inappropriate bodily noises pass without embarrassment or tsking. When I want coffee, I don't have to ask.

Maybe that's why I don't always trust a GPS. Besides, there are good moral and psychological reasons not to put your fate in the hands of that woman in the gizmo. Three times I allowed her to be the master of my fate last weekend, but she delivered only twice. Once she led me down wild goose chase lane--the woman thou hast given me, I said.   

Still, batting two for three isn't a bad day at the plate, I figure. 

Here's the story. When our two-day meeting was over, I wasn't all that far from O'Hare so I told a friend I'd drop him off at the airport. I've been around Chicago often enough to know that if I wanted to get home all I had to do was head south on the Tri-State, which would eventually deliver me to I-80 where big green signs say Iowa. No sweat.

But that seemed loony, a long ways down south just to go west. So I put my hands in the hand of the GPS, punched in "Home, James," (that's a joke) and listened to this woman's deceptively kind voice. She directed north to I-90, which, I must admit, first seemed a stretch; but I'd given away my freedom. I was in the hand of that doohickey.

And I-90 was okay because 42 years ago I took that same chunk of road every other weekend and was just about the happiest man in three states, on my way, as I was, to meet a woman who took my breath away and became my wife in a kind of fever that still gives me chills.

Okay, I thought, I'll take this old road again.  What the heck.  An hour north and west, I was smiling.

Just outside of Rockford, the GPS took me off I-90 and put me on Hwy 20, on the way to Dubuque, where, long, long ago, I got my VW serviced. Home was still a double header away, five or six hours at least, but I was no stranger in a strange land. 

Just outside of Freeport stands a old barn with "To God be the Glory," transcribed in shingles. I'm not kidding. Soli deo gloria. I knew where I was because I'd somehow seen a picture of that place before. Then it came back to me. It was the home place of a number of brothers I once knew. Sure it was.  In fact, one of those brothers roofed our house once upon a time and still is my grandkids' teacher and--I'm not making this up--my own district elder.  

 

Not far west up the highway a church sign pointed me south a couple of miles, where I'd find the very church where, in 1870 or so, an Dutch immigrant family of Schaaps worshiped God in America for the first time. Right there.

As if that weren't enough, my very first teaching job was another half hour west and just a bit north of Hwy 20, so the closer I came to the eternally rolling hills of the Mississippi valley, the more clearly I remembered kids who came from the dairies and cheese factories scattered, willy-nilly, throughout emerald vistas as beautiful as anything you'll see anywhere east of the Rockies. 

Right there along the highway, one of those students still makes cheese. He spent years in Europe learning from experts, one of only a few master cheesemakers in a state full of cheeseheads. But it was Saturday night; the factory store was closed.

Galena, the town that time forgot--literally--one of the two most frequented weekend vacation spots in the whole state of Illinois, came up next.  That woman I used to visit and I spent a sweet day and cozy night in a fancy B and B right there just last winter.

And there's more.  There's always more. Two hours west on 20, I passed Ackley and Parkersburg, Iowa, where my grandfather lived as a kid, where he graduated from high school--I've still got his diploma, dated 1898.

I could go on, but I start to yawn at just about anybody's summer vacation in just a matter of minutes. 

I could have flown. The committee would have picked up my ticket.  I could have been in and out of Chicago more quickly, I'm sure, even chowed down a real Chicago hot dog in O'Hare. And flying isn't as bad as I'm making out. In fact, these days I'm so old that I don't even to have to take off my belt and shoes to get past security. 

But you lose something when you walk into an airport. I'll admit it--I put my hand in the hands of that GPS, listened to a strange woman's voice and followed a triptik I certainly wouldn't have created myself if I'd thought much about it--I mean, really, what kind of fool would take Hwy 20 across two states when a dozen interstates beckon?--I had a great trip.

Stupid, really, when you think about it--all those blue highways, not even double-lane. And a storm, too, other side of the river, buckets of rain.

I called my wife who said it wouldn't be long and I'd be out of the driving rain. 

She wasn't wrong, and I got a work of art up against the western sky as a bonus. 

I got home safely by getting there all the time.

Soli deo gloria.