Tag Archives: a personal note

April 25, 2019

Missing! My Newswithviews Column

By leeduigon

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I knock myself out, writing those Newswithviews columns every week, and it’s extremely frustrating when the column goes missing.

You can get to the NWV home page, but you can’t open my column. Don’t ask me why not: the message I get is sheer gibberish to me, might as well be in cuneiform. I asked Susan to try to open it on her computer, and the same thing happened. So at least I know it’s not because my computer is broken.

I will check from time to time to see if my column ever sees the light of day. Then I can post it here, as I usually do first thing Thursday morning.

Meanwhile, everybody, please let me know if you spot hide or hair of it. Like, anywhere.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Uncategorized

April 22, 2019

Yes, I’ll Try…

By leeduigon

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We’ve just come back from two hours’ worth of errands–laundry, grocery, this store, that store, bank–and I wonder if I can get the iguana to shove over and make room for me on that branch.

But first I will have a cigar. It’s raining. I’ll have it under an umbrella. And then I will come back in and try to write some nooze for you. There’s a college story that got my dander up.

And then I want to take a few hours off.

For those of you looking for new stuff–well, sorry, couldn’t manage it today, but the archive is chock-full of interesting posts and comments, thousands of ’em. Stay and browse. You might find something really interesting.

Oh–and we’re taking hymn requests all day, if you’ve got any.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Uncategorized

April 22, 2019

I Just Can’t Stand It

By leeduigon

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Early to work today, with nothing much accomplished–sorry, but when I scanned the nooze this morning, I just couldn’t bear to write it down. Hundreds of people killed by terrorists in Sri Lanka. Teens swallowing Climate Change, hook, line, and sinker. And look at that, I’ve started to write it anyway–! Mille tonnere, as Hercule Poirot would say. I have no idea what that means.

I just want things to be normal again, without assorted monsters and boogiemen peering over my shoulder.

Lord, are you hearing my prayers? At least, O God, relieve my wife’s afflictions. The doctor and all his tests, they were no help. I need to be able to say, as the Psalmist says, “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:2).

I’m going to keep on shooting prayers at you, Lord, until you heal her. In Jesus’ name, please heal her now!

The rest of it, I’ll face. Just do this for me, Father. Please. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

 

20 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Uncategorized

April 20, 2019

Prayer Request: Us

By leeduigon

I’m looking at a whopping great car repair bill, and my heel spur is on the warpath lately, which hurts. But Patty needs your prayers more than I do.

My doctor subjected her to a bunch of tests but never offered a diagnosis. And now, in addition to her other afflictions, her ankles are painfully swollen and this morning a delivery person, opening the door to our foyer, hit Patty in the head with it as she bent over the recycling box. So things are not going at all well for us here.

Please join in prayer for my wife: we need those prayers. O Lord our God, have mercy on us, let it be that we’ve bottomed out and now you’ll start to make things better for us. Please, Father, heal my wife! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

11 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Uncategorized

April 20, 2019

My Poor Car [wail and gnash teeth]

By leeduigon

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Wahoo! The repair bill for my car will be at least $1,000, probably more–something about rusted-out brake line tubing, I dunno.

Options: 1) Do the repairs; 2) go without a car for the rest of my life; 3) buy a used car, with no idea, really, of what I’m getting; 4) buy a new car, costing a mountain of money, with computers in it that spy on you.

Hot dog. I guess I’ll take Door No. 1, Monty.

No, I am not ready to pedal my bike to Whole Foods every time we need something to eat and buy really healthy foods in small amounts. I am too old to enjoy riding my bike in inclement weather, with idiots creeping up behind me and beeping their horns.

 

3 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Uncategorized

April 19, 2019

Sorry, No Nooze Today

By leeduigon

This is Good Friday, and our blog will observe it by not covering any of the nooze today. Hence the video of the baby iguana eating watercress. Aren’t they pretty little things? God’s stuff is just so good.

I’d love to raise a baby iguana again. If you do it right–and it’s easy to do it right–you wind up with a wonderful pet. If you do it wrong, you wind up with this big mean lizard who wants to bite you. A friend of mine had an iguana who bit him on the tongue. Yes, he was showing off by sticking his tongue out. Teenage boys do things like that. And the iguana bit off the tip of it. Yowch! Served him right.

But my iguana was raised right, and he never bit anybody. And if he could have purred while he sat on your lap, he would have.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in religion, Uncategorized

April 19, 2019

No Car Yet

By leeduigon

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I’m no one’s idea of a car buff. I can’t tell one model from another. I’ve never bought a record with a song about cars on it, despite having grown up in the 1950s.

But my car’s still in the shop today, and that has begun to make me antsy. A car is something you use in everyday life and it feels kind of creepy when you haven’t got one. You can’t go anywhere unless someone else takes you. It makes a dent in your independence.

All right, if you listen to NPR and virtue-signal by pedaling your bike to Whole Foods, bully for you–where do we put the statue? But for the rest of us–well, the car played a huge role in the creation of the middle class, and we’re not ready to sacrifice it to your Green New Deal. So go AOC yourselves.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Pop Culture, Uncategorized

April 17, 2019

Fap! My Brakes are Shot

By leeduigon

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It’s not a nice feeling when you need to stop your car and your brake pedal goes all the way down to the floor. I got that feeling today. So my car is in the shop.

Tomorrow I was going to drive down to Keyport on the Garden State Parkway and treat us to some superb sea food from the Keyport Fishery. I try to look on the bright side. If my brakes had waited just another day, and then failed me on the Parkway, it might’ve been adios, muchacho, for me. Thankfully we have a reliable mechanic who’s serviced our cars for forty years. Whatever’s wrong, he’ll fix it.

*Sigh* It was Aunt Joan’s car originally, a 1999 Taurus. She didn’t get much use of it. I’ve tried to take good care of it, but we have no garage, it’s year-round exposure to the elements, and parts wear out.

The last time I had this experience, I owned Uncle Bernie’s car and had driven all the way down the Parkway to see my mother. I didn’t find out I had no brakes until I started back home. Made for an unsatisfactory conclusion to the day.

At least I didn’t get killed.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Uncategorized

April 17, 2019

Our Tulips Are Back!

By leeduigon

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Tulips are supposed to be short-lived; but our original tulip–the tallest one in this picture–was here when we moved in, forty-plus years ago, and it’s not only still here, still beautiful, but it has three offspring.

For a few years there, we thought we were going to lose it because squirrels had decided the flowers made a nice snack. That generation of squirrels seems to have passed, and its successors haven’t shown any taste for tulips.

So the flowers bloom in the spring: God’s stuff reminding us, “God is nigh.”

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Uncategorized

April 16, 2019

The Ol’ Knee Wheel

By leeduigon

What am I doing, sitting here, going through nooze items, when I have a Newswithviews column to write? I’d better get to it.

Meanwhile, allow me to indulge you with one of my favorite judo throws, “Hiza Garuma.” The name means “knee wheel.”

The beauty of this throw is, I could teach any of you to do it in a matter of minutes. Just block your partner’s knee with the sole of your foot, make like you’re turning the wheel of your car, and down he goes. I learned it from a book when I was 13 or so, and taught it to all my friends that summer. There was a whole lot of hiza garuma goin’ on in my neighborhood.

While I’m working on my column, feel free to teach yourselves hiza garuma. Find a loved one or a business associate who doesn’t mind taking a fall. But don’t try it on strangers you pass on the sidewalk: that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

 

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Just for Fun, Video

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