Some observations on Mothers Day… from a daddy….

If we had to hire a mama… a half million dollars a year would not pay for the job that ranges from seamstress to psychologist….to teacher… custodian…and purchasing manager.

New mothers…. forget a clean house for the next thirteen years.   Your friends will understand there are more important things than Swifter patrol. And if they don’t …  don’t worry about it.

Read all the books you want about motherhood.  But there’s  one most important book…. yeah….that Book.

And speaking of reading….read to your child… get dad to read to them, too.

Try to teach love for family and respect for family members.  And you teach it best by example.

Most problems will pass with a peaceful resolution.  A wise man once told me the best medicine is tincture of time.  

The hardest thing to learn is when to dive in… or when to let your children learn to swim in the waters of life.  

And one piece of advice my wife passed on to our children.   She says… when our kids were very, very young… she started praying for the man or woman they would marry.  

Relish the time.     It passes quickly…and before you know it.. you will be tearfully wondering what to do with the extra bedroom….. and listening to the ticking of a clock in a quiet home.

Unsolicited…. but absolutely free advice.

Oh… and even if all the cards are gone from the shelf… there’s a telephone… and “I love you”   goes a long way on Sunday… or any day for that matter.

You try to not stress out…

But you can’t help it. 

Any time a doctor is checking for cancer… it’s scary.  

The fact that nearly a year ago to the day… I was waking up after cancer surgery… didn’t help.

The best part of the whole 36 hours before, during, and after the colonoscopy was the relaxation right before going to sleep on the examination cot.

Before–and– after— not so much fun.

One up-side of that kind of test… you get results as soon as you are lucid enough to understand what the doctor is saying.   And for  me, it was good news… nothing in there like the year before.  And, barring any difficulties… three years until the next test.

One thing, I cannot understand… is why some people are lucky in their fight against cancer… and some… are not.  And.. it’s not a matter of faith…for I know people much stronger in their faith than me… who have gone at a much younger age.

I do understand this, though:

Support…   

Understand….

And be there for those who are waiting for answers, waiting on treatment… or waiting on worse.

Being there for them.. means all the world.

That’s Foulknews.

Have a good evening.

Did you get sucked into an Internet prank over the past couple of days?   I’ll have to admit… I almost did.

I got a call from someone who was alarmed.  They had just heard from a friend that mega-pastor Joel Osteen had renounced his faith and quit.

I said… hmmmm, wait a minute.  And started working on the keyboard…

And the search engine quickly hit on the Osteen story….and the address looked suspect.  And turns out… it was a hoax.   Cleverly designed… but a hoax.

You would think that with the advance of technology…. the reliability of information would increase…  We would be sure that what is passed off as news is real.

Not so.

There’s more junk floating around than ever before.  And anybody with an agenda, or a sick sense of humor, or a criminal mind… can hand out information easier than spooning out baked beans at a family reunion.

So, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

Sometimes, it’s not easy.  As in this instance…the reports were slick, and professional looking.  Only the web addresses tended to give them away.

It helps to develop a kind of internal smell test… to see if there’s a bit of stink around a report… that requires more investigation, more website checking and source development.  Sometimes, if a story looks just too strange to be real…. it’s– too strange to be real.   But these days, some of the strange developments..are all too real.

Remember this…. the world… your world and mine…will not end if we hold on to a piece of Internet news and wait a few minutes while we check it out…before deeming it true, or false reporting.

The world moves fast….and the scammers and liars rely on that need for speed to hornswaggle us.

And you don’t want to be hornswaggled/

Have a bucket of Benadryl… or a zillion Zyrtec… or a fountain of Flonase…    It’s allergy season in East Tennessee.

For the past hundred years, Knoxville, Tennessee has been declared the allergy capital of east Tennessee.   If you drive a dark colored car… you will notice the little trails of yellow and brown pollen streaking the hood. 

And if there’s enough of it… everybody’s car will be the same color.

Without pollen… the beautiful flowers and trees would get mighty lonely.  It’s their way of making more flowers and trees, and apples.. and corn.. and…well, you get the picture.

And, unfortunately, the doctor gets the business with stuffy noses, and wheezes, and all of the attendant symptoms of allergies.

I wonder how many of you are operating in a Bendadryl fog these days.  You know that it’s the same ingredient in some over the counter sleep medication. 

And on that… I’ll let you take a nap beneath one of the beautiful blooming trees on these bright, warm days.

But if you wake up all yellow like Sponge Bob… remember… you had fair warning.

The nuclear bomb rattling from North Korea might bring back some bad-old memories for baby boomers.  

That includes me.

At Fair Garden School… we saw those old Duck and Cover movies… that scared the heck out of us.

It was not Korea… or China.   The threat of death came from The Soviet Union.

In sixth grade… we saw the world walk right up to the edge of nuclear war… with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In addition to duck and cover … there were walk home drills… that still seem ridiculous to me…

And.. even dogtags with our names, parents names and home address on them.  Now… it might have been a novelty for the younger elementary students.  But for our grade… we knew quite well that dog tags could be used to identify the living– and the dead.

So we have traveled all the way around the block.  And this time.. it’s not a communist beating his show on a table at the UN… it’s a pudgy kid in Korea who has his finger on his nation’s nuclear button… and seems willing to use it.

No chest thumping on our part… but you can be sure that somewhere… American forces keep one hand near our button too.

The more things change… the more they stay the same.

In state after state, there’s a proposal to allow teachers to be the armed defense in schools.  That idea sounds good on the surface… but when you dig into it… there could be problems if an armed teacher is the -only- deterrent to trouble in a school.

Some smaller schools might believe…an armed teacher or principal is enough.

Three words:

continuum of force:

Basic training in firearm use is just the beginning of making our children safe inside schools.

Use of a firearm is the absolute last thing any law officer is trained to use.

continuum of force.

Look at it this way… When a law officer is confronted with a person who is out of control….  They first use words, then stronger words, then either hands, pepper spray, or a taser.   Then… if the confrontation escalates to where serious harm or death is threatened… a firearm.

My question…    If teachers are carrying firearms, would they be trained to use those other means to control a person… or would that chain of force… go straight to a firearm?

Carrying a gun is an awesome responsibility.   Firing one at another person…carries life-long repercussions for all concerned.

A law officer inside a school can not only make it safe from deadly attacks… but also be on hand to take care of more mundane shouting or shoving… or theft.

If the legislature says ‘yes’ to teachers carrying firearms…   Let’s hope some schools don’t pull away from resource officers. 

It starts with a hundred million dollars in the next year.  President Obama wants a new research project to find new ways to understand the human brain and map out the parts, and pathways of out thoughts.

If the years-long project is a success, we might find out literally..how we are wired..and how the millions of brain cells interact.  If the project is a success, we might learn how to re-wire our brains to beat Alzheimer’s, seizure  and Cognitive Disorders. 

There’s no telling where the research could lead.  Parkinson’s disease…autism… could be a memory much like polio is to Americans today.
First, we will have to develop the technology to record the micro-electricity generated by our brains. 

Ever see a human brain?  Just a squiggly mass of cells.  Nothing special … just matter…  But what wonders that brain can produce…symphonies, the transistor, art, a way to the moon, love, and the theory of relativity.

The brain can be an enemy of those of us…who are trapped by cognitive disorder, or other brain illnesses.  We have some medicine..and more is coming each day.
But just think…what if we could – prevent- brain illnesses, even re-wire brains after stroke or injury.

The prospects are so broad now, and we know so little… that it’s hard to even imagine what we will learn. 
Good luck researchers.  Our… thoughts…are with you.
That’s foulknews, have a good evening.

Did you get fooled today?

You know, this is April Fools Day.

I had a great idea for a prank.  But I decided -not- to go with it.

I was going to say the Henley Street Bridge design had messed up…and the renovation was going to come up eighteen inches to the left, and about six inches too low on the south Knoxville side.

I thought better of it.  I didn’t want to start a crowd with pitchforks and torches marching on anybody.

I have been a witness to some of the best radio pranks ever.

And the best prankster was the late Ludlow Porch.  Using sound effects, he had all of north Georgia thinking there was a flip-flop parade.  Ludlow also had folks convinced once that southeastern conference teams were all being forced to change their mascots to a less violent name…such as the Tennessee butterflies.

In earlier years, we could put a wind-up alarm clock under the console…set to ring during the news… or set someone’s copy on fire while they were reading it.  Yep… happened to me.

I kind of miss the days when we could fool around and have some fun…

We take each other with a far too serious note these days.

It might be time to lighten up a bit.  Smile.

And that’s no foolin.

An Italian Professor and a Journalist have revived one of the mysteries from ancient times.
It’s a piece of cloth… fourteen feet long.
And some believe it is the image of Jesus Christ… the Shroud Of Turin… the actual burial cloth.
Giulio Fanti is a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement.  And his new book… Il Mistero della Sindone… or The Mystery of the Shroud.. maintains his dating process puts the cloth in ancient times.. a few centuries before.. or after the time Christ walked the earth.
Fibers were analyzed of the cloth that has the image of a man with long hair and a beard…and wounds consistent with crucifixion.
There’s never been a good explanation of how that image was made.
.. no explanation can verify for some what others believe no explanation is necessary.   For others, no explanation is necessary.
And… for all to see.. There’s.. an app.   It is called Shroud 2.0.  And it has high def photos and microscopic detail.
Mystery, indeed.
A greater mystery… the Grace that begins, not with inspection, but introspection.
That’s Foulknews..  Have a good weekend, and Happy Easter.

 Katelyn Norman got her prom.  

It was not the prom she had wanted.

It was not the prom she dreamed of as a little girl.

Katelyn Norman is a fourteen year old from Campbell County.   And she has cancer.  The chemo has stopped working.   I don’t have to tell you what that means.

One of her dreams was for a prom, and the community turned out to bring one to her.  Hundreds took to the streets, and a dance hall decorated.

But Katelyn was too sick, and was airlifted to Children’s Hospital.

Katelyn Norman got her prom.

Folks at Children’s decorated her room.  Dozens of people drove in a convoy to the hospital.  And held a vigil outside her window.  Inside her room.  There was a mini prom.

Katelyn’s prom.

It’s easy to get into a groove… where life seems unfair to us, or it seems we have missed opportunities….

or people are just too doggone inconsiderate these days.

Or things are just not what they thought it would be for us.

Yeah, it’s easy to get into that groove.

Until you remember Katelyn….  and her prom.

Don’t miss a minute of – your- prom.  It is never too late to dream.

That’s foulknews… Have a good evening.