Most people probably have forgotten Hudson cars, which have been done here before. Named after Joseph Hudson owner of Hudson department stores and a heavy investor in the automobile venture, Hudson Motor Car Company was formed early in 1909 and a few months later their first cars rolled out of the factory in Detroit.  Behind the 1909 or 1910 Hudson runabout above is a 1948 Hudson Super club coupe. They're obviously at a Hudson enthusiasts' meet of some sort. Because of price and quality, Hudson was popular early on, during the WWI era even was the world’s largest producer of six-cylinder cars. My Weller grandparents had a Hudson touring car in the nineteen-teens, drove it and a Model T Ford touring car when they left this house after Alfred’s death and moved to Ocilla, Georgia, where Pop was the Ford dealer for a few years.  If my time-turner would do it this morning, I’d go back twenty years and ask my father what model year their Hudson was, a...

Gina recently gave me a larger picture of Alfred, now hanging in a special place. It’s the family’s best picture of him, and it is said that the dead live on through us and our memories and the things we do to honor them. When I was a boy many southern towns had a statue of a Confederate general in the square, a similar notion; your hero lives forever by being honored in such a way. In our age of political sensitivities some of those statues may have been pulled down as the statue of JoePa was quickly removed from its place of honor at Beaver Stadium.  At my seminary there was a statue of Martin Luther sitting, and it was tradition for the juniors to splash Luther with paint and for the middlers or seniors to prevent that happening.  One who commuted daily from Harrisburg, I never got into the close community that characterizes seminary life, but I do recall the excitement when dawn broke on Luther painted. Seems to me that every Lutheran seminary has a stat...

Ancestors In the second half of the nineteenth century, cousins of Mamie McClammy Gentry, my mother’s mother, made their way from Alabama to Texas, thence as cowboys in an 1880s cattle drive from Texas north to Montana, and settled there. William McClammy married a woman of German and Indian ancestry and the McClammy name became and still is part of the Native American community on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana. In genealogical research my sister found McClammy family there, last year went out to meet them. A third cousin has come down from Montana, and we are enjoying getting to know her, and our family connection to Sioux, Assiniboine and Chippewa.   My interest in family history has been back into the male line, Weller specifically, because of the church connection. But limiting myself that way is dumb, because my heritage is equally back into both sides, male and female, Weller, Godfrey, Gentry, McClammy, the names doubling with each generation...

     Sure, it can be distracting, not to say annoying , when someone’s cell phone rings at the highlight of your sermon, or during the holiest action of the Mass when the people are meant to look up at the elevating Host not looking round for the perpetrator; but the word is agape and the deed is forgiveness and the call may be one of life and death, so don’t mind, never mind.       My cell phone problems are other though: (a) my phone is usually not on my person but laid down somewhere “safe” so I can get it soon as I finish with this task, but then I forget it altogether and can’t find it later; and (b) when I turn off the sound I can never remember to turn it back on later. Thus, here we are Tuesday morning and I just came across my cell phone, which has been sitting here in my “den” where I never would have looked for it, with the sound still turned off from Sunday morning before the 8:00 o’clock service, and missed several calls and texts th...

In Flanders fields the poppies blow       Between the crosses, row on row,    That mark our place; and in the sky    The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,    Loved and were loved, and now we lie          In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw    The torch; be yours to hold it high.    If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow          In Flanders fields. We beseech thee also so to rule the hearts of those who bear the authority of government in this and every land, that they may be led to  wise  decisions and  right  actions for the welfare and peace of the world. *     ...

Don’t Eat That Her column  http://www.creators.com/liberal/connie-schultz.html  yesterday struck head of spike again. In the relief of the moment we can’t help being thankful, but feeling blessed for surviving the tornado though the neighbors lost their home and a child, what about them , why weren’t they blessed? Or is my religion selfish, even obscene, or worse, my God partial? Yet our God is personal, and in Cleveland that day I truly felt blessed with all the prayers and awaking looking up at Nicholas and Tass. Moreover, being thankful is a gut reaction for us. But Connie Schultz, while others thanked God for a miracle, God is good , when three Cleveland women were rescued from a decade in hell, Schultz said of herself, “I am a deeply flawed Christian” -- instead of thanking God -- for wondering where God was the ten years the women were chained, raped, bullied and tormented by a madman.  Religion is always dragged into the present kicking, screaming and...

Four-Oh-Six Linda’s mother loved to travel, and after Linda’s father died in December 1970 she managed to do so to her heart’s content. During the Cold War, she traveled widely including in Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain, returning home shuddering at the grim uniformed guards with tommy guns throughout every city block and on every rooftop. Death or Life. It’s a caution to judge others when one is equally liable for judgment on various counts of life. One can’t judge the Arias jury who were dismissed after inability to decide unanimously on execution or life imprisonment. Another jury won’t likely find it any easier; I know this because even a dozen members of my Sunday School class can’t agree on anything. If Arias prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, the case could be settled from a couple of life sentence possibilities, billable hours could be closed out, and millions of taxpayer dollars could be spent elsewhere over the next thirty years...