“ Be at war with your vices, at Peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man.” Ben Franklin
2024 will soon be a distant memory and 2025 will be upon us. This timeless advice by Ben Franklin should serve as a New Year’s resolution to all of us. It was mine last year and will also be this year because I never get it right. I am constantly at war with my vices. I curse entirely too much, not enough exercise, extremely hard time expressing my feelings until it is too late, procrastination, I feel like I am not a good husband, scream at my dogs……..constantly at war.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
LIke many things about Paul in the Bible, I can relate.
2024 has been a good year simply because I am still here. I have had some struggles physically but that I guess is to be expected because I am getting older. I have lost 60 lbs so that is a positive. I have learned that truly it is all about your health.
I’m still loving retirement. I spend more time with Daily Bread Ministries in Greer SC. with the soup kitchen and started volunteering with a new food ministry called God’s Manna that a couple of friends of mine have started. It is a mobile soup kitchen where we go out into communities and feed people. I have volunteered at Daily Bread Ministries for over 30 years. It gets harder and harder and sometimes I wonder how much longer I can do this mentally. A family with 6 kids with twins in the oven living in a vehicle, a single woman with bruises on her face where she has been abused. My girl from Chicago with 2 kids who is still homeless because she cannot find housing and I now have lost contact with. Sometimes the frustration is overpowering and often I leave there with questions. I am a person of faith but many times I ask why. Little kids on Christmas morning at a soup kitchen when they should be in the warm house opening presents under the Christmas tree. Homeless people wonder in, having been out all night in this freaking cold weather and I wonder why. I question God. I am reminded that life is all about choices we make and I see so many bad choices and it does get to you after a while. My life has been littered with bad choices. Why am I here and they are there? You are just about to reach the end of your rope then on that Christmas morning while serving, a man comes up to you and hands you an envelope. I put it in my back pocket because I am serving food. I forgot about it until I get home and Rebecca hands it to me and it is a $50 gift certificate. I ended up telling him that I couldn’t take it to which he told me not to rob him of his blessing. I used it to buy the soup kitchen some Duke’s Mayo, so I guess it’s all good.
2024 was also a year of loss in the family as my sister in law passed away. Linda was a wonderful person and I find myself thinking about her at times. She and I butted heads on many occasions and that is why I loved her. On one occasion we met for my brother’s birthday. The card I gave him had a picture of the Grim Reaper in the side mirror. It said, “Objects are closer than they appear, Happy Birthday”. He had a heart attack a hour later. Linda would not speak to me for months. I miss that.
2024 also gave us a new addition to the family and I wonder often, “WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING!!!!!!!!!!!!” Arlo is a angel compared to this one. Someone dumped her out at the soup kitchen so I thought I could find her a home I just didn’t think it would be my home.
2024 also introduced me to The Red Clay Strays. Wow, just wow. A band out of Alabama. As this reviews states. Digging up the ghosts of popular music’s past, and using themselves like arrays to reflect some of the most potent sounds and moods ever devised in music, The Red Clay Strays bring to life chilling moments that remind you so much of what modern American music has forgotten, from Muscle Shoals to Memphis, from doo-wop to Southern rock, from Ben E. King to Canned Heat. About the only thing that’s lacking here is much anything resembling country, except for in some key moments. But with the throwback nature of their soulful sound and the circles they run in, it’s within independent country and roots channels that they’ve made their mark, and been welcomed with open arms.
Rebecca and I are going to see them in February and I haven’t been this excited over a band since…..never. This is what happens when talented people make music.
Being inundated with all the bad that goes on in our country because of war’s, disasters and suffering, there were good things that happened in 2024. One of the most beautiful events we got to witness as well as millions of others were the Northern Lights we experienced when traveled to Iceland. Because of being close to the solar maximum we are reaching the peak of the sun’s predictable 11-year cycle of activity, it resulted in large waves of charged particles being spewed out from the star. When these reach Earth they create auroras, and bigger waves result in the northern and southern lights being visible at latitudes far from our planet’s poles. In other words the Northern Lights were in our back yard. The good news is the peak of solar maximum not arriving until the middle of next year, we can expect further vivid and widespread auroras for some more time yet. Yes I did copy that but I recommend going to Iceland anyway.
What will 2025 hold for us? Nobody knows. I can put on my Nostradamus hat and predict that 2025 will be all about President Donald Trump. I hope we give him a chance. I know it is a radical proposal to some. Regardless of where you may sit on the political spectrum, it’s been a remarkable year. And Trump’s decisive comeback is noteworthy, to say the least.
Here’s a prediction that, tragically, requires no precognition: Our children will keep dying from guns in astoundingly high numbers in 2025. When a 15-year-old girl pulls out a handgun in study hall and starts killing people around her, it’s the kind of thing that should rattle us so deeply that we are never the same. I also predict like other years thoughts and prayers will be handed out and nothing else will be done.
I predict that The Innocence Project will continue to free people who have been wrongly imprisoned. To date they have freed over 250 innocent people who collectively have spent 3800 years incarcerated, some on death row. Please consider giving to this wonderful organization.
I look forward to 2025. As I look out my window in my warm home and see the beautiful sunrise this morning I still sit in awe of God’s creation. I will continue to fight the good fight and try to make a difference in my little corner of my world. Cheers.
Reflections Of A Gasbag 