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New passport leads to final destinations

My passport has expired. It elapsed during Covid and I thought, why would I have my picture taken when I feel and look like THIS? Well, now I’m stuck. There’s a special gathering in Canada I want to attend, and as I looked at buying tickets online, I realized I can’t go. I’m not legal. Rats. I had been waiting all summer to get my passport pictures taken – waiting until a day I might look a little better. A little younger maybe? And the funniest thing, as each day passed, younger didn’t describe the face looking back at me. Each morning, my mirror slides further into a ...

Use of nuclear weapons a possibility for Russia

Ukraine is driving Russian forces out of occupied areas in a massive retreat. Vladimir Putin is calling up 300,000 reserves and buying weapons and ammunition from North Korea. More than 1,300 anti-war rioters have been arrested in Russia. Putin is getting desperate. He is threatening to use nuclear weapons. If his troops keep losing he just might resort to tactical nuclear weapons. When we think of nuclear weapons we tend to think of our nuclear triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles, our nuclear submarine missiles, and our manned B-52 bombers. These are all long-range delivery ...

Seasonal changes

Along with the change of seasons, I also change the type of clothing that I wear. I spent one morning this week changing my wardrobe from the summer short sleeved things to the longer sleeves that are my winter wardrobe. I do not store them far away; I use some old suitcases as storage. I also exchanged my short pants for long ones. It feels good to be in jeans again. I actually moved my jeans to my new bedroom. I was having a hard time sleeping in the bedroom that I was in and decided to move to the one with my single bed. After all, I bought it so that when I can no longer go ...

She was proud to be the Coal Miner’s Daughter

Last week, the Coal Miner’s daughter went home to meet her daddy, her last road trip. Loretta Lynn, the Queen of Country Music, died at age 90, and the news brought me to tears. Losing two queens in four weeks has made me think about my attachments, my loyalties, and who I respect. Why do Queen Elizabeth’s and Loretta’s deaths seem like extraordinary losses to me? I realized it is because they were both so true to themselves. And I admired their sense of responsibility in a world that seems to be quickly losing that. Loretta’s story is pretty well-known: born into Appalachian ...

Still time to give love to roses

By REBECCA NORTON RYAN In the next few weeks we will put our roses to bed for the winter season. I try to have roses winter ready by Nov. 1. I am definitely a fair weather gardener. Roses start to go dormant after the first hard frost. All subsequent frosts will also tell your roses that ...

Hunting is part of journey

Editor’s note: This series will connect topics between Christianity and hunting. The series will run throughout the archery and rifle deer seasons. Let the journey of archery season begin. Thousands of hunters across Pennsylvania in the last week have entered into their treestands trying to harvest a deer. Often at the end of the season archery hunters will tell their story from the moment their trail cameras went up in the late summer to the moment they harvested the deer. Every hunter also enters into the story of the forest — from summer’s green leaves to autumn’s ...