He said some hard things, but the most mysterious is the one about hating this life to find it.  As a teacher, I remember loving it when I could make a lesson fun.  But then there were the endless nights of correcting compositions, no fun at all, but they were what paid off in the end.  The kids learned more about life and I gritted my teeth.

Yes, some of the bitterest lessons I learned did me good.  That’s not all of them, but some things I had to learn the hard way.  And learning is the key to life, as well as life eternal.  It’s not always hateful, but the reward is way out of proportion to the input.

Hey, I believe a living composite such as man is meant to live forever, and I just happen to admire the man who gave us Christmas by being born in a stable.  Try to outdo that for teaching centuries of children.  You know, he’s certainly lived for two thousand years.

You can tell which businesses are doomed for failure.  There’s one media company that requires an access code to speak to a customer service representative.  Access code?  Are we talking about the best seller 1984?

Other businesses, even small businesses, are doomed.  I wanted to get a battery for my wrist watch, and stopped in a watch store in Hicksville.  I needed two batteries, and the shop owner had only two left, one so bad he was reluctant to charge me for it.  Come on, watch batteries are like chocolate ice cream in an ice cream store!  He sold world famous watches.  How did he expect to build a clientele?

This is the land of opportunity.  Success is not always easy, but every man has a brain, and if it’s a little dim, he can get help.  Ask and you shall receive.

Somehow, our family has escaped cancer, but today I heard that my niece’s husband has been diagnosed with a bad case of it.   We need a miracle.  As for my prayers, they are further subdivided, but he who multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed five thousand has no problem with multiplying our prayers for us.

Science is making such rapid progress it may be only a few years before they have a cure for bone marrow cancer, which is the kind Rodney has.  Science has advanced rapidly in Western Civilization, and soon we may see such nations as Russia, which has a good spiritual foundation, advance in the field of medical science.

Equating spiritual foundation with medical science may seem far-fetched, but let’s remember the West, which has had almost all the advances, has a strong Judaeo-Christian background.  Western Civilization comes from somewhere!

I have Carmen and her crew come into the apartment every two weeks to clean for an hour or so, and my wife says she’s never seen a crew that cleans so well.  There are four of them, all women now, (the men found other work) and scrupulous.

They used to have Arnoldo, a cheerful guy, whom I loved to greet with a hearty “Buenos dias!”  I found out later that he was all thumbs – he was probably the guy who broke our light switch.  He found work later with a construction firm.

They work for $85 every two weeks (we’re in our eighties), but it’s worth it for my wife, and I’m generous with the tips.  I don’t have a big pension, but, hey, how long am I going to be here now?

Are you disappointed in what is happening in America?  Did you ever think all this fighting over race and sexuality was foreign-inspired?  Well, BLM and the leads of the Jan. 6 “riot” were paid or inspired by communist cadre, who want to see America disintegrate.

What communists, you ask.  Russian communism is dead, as is the Soviet bloc, which leaves the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) to encourage the hip-pocket dictators in Cuba, Venezuela, and anti-American Iran and North Korea.  Of all these, which one is capable of mounting a sustainable campaign against us?

One country that escaped communism at the beginning (1917) was Switzerland.  The communists persuaded the watch factory workers in that tiny republic to call a general strike.  The Swiss cantons called out their citizen Army, but they knew many of the factory workers were in the Army, so they called out the farmer divisions.  The farmer-soldiers had no patience with the city factory workers, and set up machine-gun emplacements, from which they finally opened fire.  That was the end of the strike.

The city-dwellers in America need a wake-up to what is destroying this country.  Sure, our black citizens were once slaves, but if you go back far enough, we all were.  No need to revert to those days.