Janet's Blog

The house is decorated, inside and out. Shopping is done and homemade gifts are finished: plenty of presents are waiting, under the tree. Groceries have been purchased and recipes are lying on the counter, ready for cooking to commence. Schedules have been arranged and rearranged to accommodate everyone's plans. Christmas is nearly here. It's a busy time for my family, as well as yours. It's been a hectic year, full of the ups and downs that come with life. Bill has been working even harder than usual this year, often spending a week or two out of every month in Alabama, near Birmingham, working on a cable TV/internet project--except in the spring, during track season, when Bill coached the pole vaulters from Gering High School. Bill has also decided that a good coach needs to know what he's doing, firsthand, so he has been vaulting, too. He was excited to win first place for his age group at the Cornhusker State Games in Lincoln this year, with a vault of seven ...

It was a windy day, a few weeks ago, when Victoria chauffeured me down south of Gering, for lunch at a diner on the hill. As we drove, we couldn't help but notice the tumbleweeds blowing across the road and stuck in the fences that line the four-lane highway. So, we started talking about tumbleweeds, and how some enterprising citizens of the high plains have actually collected tumbleweeds to sell on e-bay for big bucks. It isn't too hard to find tumbleweeds around here. The prolific, green weeds grow in the ditches and along fence lines, every summer.  In the fall, tumbleweeds become tan and brittle, making it easy for a brisk breeze to break their stems. Then, they are off, tumbling across the fields and roads, dropping their seeds as they roll across the plains, until they gather in their final resting places, in protected shelter belts and against buildings and fences.  No, it wouldn't be hard to find tumbleweeds here. But, if we decided to actually sell them, we...

'Tis the season, when many of my Hispanic friends are busy making tamales for Christmas. Since tamales are such a labor-intensive favorite, they are usually made only for holidays and special occasions. Then, several people often get together to share the work and fun, before they share the fruit of their labor with their friends and families. When I was growing up in the Hotel MaryEtta in Fairbury, I knew exactly one person of Mexican heritage. Tanya Aranda worked in the hotel as a dishwasher, and sometimes, as a maid. She was a short woman with gray hair, who lived with her husband, Pedro, (I think that was his name) in a little house under the viaduct. I know where she lived because Mom would sometimes provide transportation for her, to and from work, especially when the weather was too cold for her to comfortably walk the mile or so between her house and the hotel. Tanya was a hard worker, and a loyal, reliable employee, who was willing to work anywhere she was neede...

At the age of 40, John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth in a space capsule. He died today at the age of 95, and with him, a large part of our country's history is gone, too. Back when I was growing up in Norfolk, and then in Fairbury, Nebraska, everyone knew John Glenn's name. He was always called by both names, John and Glenn, never just John or Mr. Glenn. He was the one and only John Glenn--a household name, and a legend from the very day he orbited the Earth. It only took five hours on February 20, 1962, for John Glenn to circle the Earth three times, but in that brief period, he became a national hero, joining the ranks of other adventuresome Americans, like Lewis and Clark, and Charles Lindbergh, and the Wright brothers. And, even better, he proved that America had what it took to keep up with, and maybe even surpass, the Russians, who had been the first in the world to send a manned spacecraft around the Earth. And so, the great Space Race was on its wa...

It's a familiar image: an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, each trying to influence a person toward good or evil. And it's a familiar feeling, too, that of being pulled in two different directions at the same time. Sometimes it's just plain hard to know what to do. Obviously, we don't really have angels and demons sitting on our shoulders, vying for our attention. Yet, God's Holy Spirit lives within each of the people who have accepted his gracious gift of a Savior. And, we can't deny that the Evil One tries constantly to derail our attempts to do God's bidding. Sometimes, that sneaky devil does his best to deceive me, just as he tempted Adam and Eve in the garden, saying  "Did God really say that?" (Genesis 3:1) Recently, I've been hearing a lot of the devil's taunts: "You're wasting your time writing that book!  No one will want to read it.  You'll never be able to find a publisher.  Writers are ...