Janet's Blog

One of the best things about the Internet is the ease of researching anything that comes to mind. The days of pawing through a library's card catalog in search of books and magazines that might pertain to the subject--those days are over. We no longer need to summarize the relevant content and record it on numerous notecards with all of the bibliography information we will need. No longer do we have to spend tedious hours at the library, painstakingly leafing through stacks of written material in search of pertinent quotes. I, for one, am grateful that the Internet has made research simple. These last two weeks have marked the one- and two-year anniversaries of my parents' deaths. I have been told that their last hours were peaceful, because they had entrusted their lives to Jesus. But as I've been mulling over the memories, I've realized that I have no idea what Mom's or Dad's last words were, since I wasn't with them right then, when they took their final ...

Diversity--it's a big buzz word these days. All people are urged to accept anyone and everyone, no matter their race, ethnicity, religion, culture, gender, sexual orientation, age, social status, physical ability or appearance, values, national origin, or political beliefs. I am sure that I have left some things off of this list, but you get the idea. I have no problem with diversity. Jesus implores all of us to love our neighbors as ourselves, so it's hard to argue that any people should be treated poorly just because they are different than we are. There is only one issue: I've noticed that numerous, vocal people in our American society want everyone to champion every single cause listed above, with no room for individual,  diverse beliefs. To put it more plainly, some people insist that we agree with every possible belief, value, or identity, regardless of our personal convictions about right and wrong.  Newsflash: Even though I may disagree with you abo...

It wasn't too long after Christmas when my brother-in-law, Kent, invited me to join a Facebook group known as "Mystery drone swarm chasers." It started as a reaction to numerous reports of drones flying in formation after dark, mostly over northeastern Colorado and southwestern Nebraska. I had heard some accounts about the mysterious drones, but I was about to hear a lot more. A drone is a fairly small, unmanned aircraft, like this one, used by hobbyists, commercial or government entities, or the military, to take aerial photos, map the terrain, deliver packages, or even spy on the people below them. I didn't accept the invitation to join the group, but, apparently, a simple invitation was enough for me to receive all of their posts. At first, the posts came at a fast and furious pace, reporting sightings of large drones, several feet in diameter, flying after dark in groups of four to six, or even as many as a dozen. The obvious problem was that no one knew w...

I am feeling discouraged about my blog. If you are one of the few people reading my blog lately, you may have noticed that I'm not writing as often as usual, certainly not once a week, as I have intended. I just can't get excited about writing since my readership has declined so drastically since October. I can attribute this sudden decline to a couple of things. First of all, Facebook has changed its algorithms again and, this time, it affected my blog immediately, and not for the better. Secondly, Google is dropping Google +, which also directly affects the number of people who read my blog. I know I am not the only person who is grieving the changes that have been happening on Facebook. For me, and for many others in my extended family, Facebook originally provided a simple, suitable way to communicate when our family was enduring some challenging times. Later, I was pleased to be able to spend a few minutes each day catching up with old friends, and getting to know some...