Category: Honoring

Happy Presidents’ Day!

john-adams…Since we can’t be bothered to celebrate Washington and Lincoln’s birthday separately. I mean, one is only the father of our country, and the other saved it from collapse, no big deal.

Had they lived in our time, I’m sure neither would win the Nobel Peace Prize either. Just sayin’.

Power always thinks… that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.

~ John Adams

 

Happy Thanksgiving?

golgothaOne year ago, on Thanksgiving Day in fact, my father had carotid surgery which led to a stroke. For him it was the last straw. He spent the next year in and out of the hospital, rehabilitation, and finally home with hospice care, where he slowly succumbed to the congestive heart failure that took his life.

This past Monday was my father’s birthday. He would have been 89. Because his birthday normally falls so close to Thanksgiving, our family has always celebrated the two together. The crowning event of the feast is when Dad has his birthday mincemeat pie. I’ve written about this before.

This Thanksgiving we won’t have our father with us at the table, not in person anyway, and I’ve been struggling not to feel sad about it. After all, this is a day specially set aside for counting our blessings.

Well, there is one thing that I’m especially thankful for this year…

Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving?”

The Gettysburg Address

abraham-lincoln-1865-cchFour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Charlie Trotter, R.I.P.

Owner and head chef of his well-regarded eponymous restaurant in Chicago, charlietrotterCharlie died yesterday at the age of 54. The cause is as yet unknown, but this is just another reminder that we are never guaranteed a tomorrow.

I never got to eat at Charlie Trotter’s before it closed—couldn’t afford it. Besides, I always thought he was a bit of a snob which is completely unfair of me. I regret that now.

Charlie was great at what he did, and more than that, he helped others to achieve success as well.

Bon voyage!