A very special year....

What year did a second woman join the United States Supreme Court?



This was the same year that the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time...


Professional Canadian sports team franchises won both the World Series (first for a Canadian team) and the Stanley Cup (24th time for this franchise)....



Despite what former vice-president Al Gore says, this was the year in which the Internet was offered for "free of charge"....




i watched at Greg & Laura Bruno's house as John Paxson scored a three point basket in game six of the NBA finals to give the Chicago Bulls a victory over the Phoenix Suns for their third consecutive NBA championship... the first three-peat in their franchise history!


And on the first Friday of October of that year in a hospital here in the western suburbs a wide-eyed baby boy was born into my family... he would gain legendary status as the one kid who absolutely refused, often at the top of his lungs ;) to stay with anyone other than his dear mother. He was the biggest one at birth and is the biggest one in our house to this day...

Every since he was a baby, he has had a heart as big as Texas... in all these years he has only grown sweeter... he's a good boy and i love him.

Happy Birthday Jonah!

Never Forget....

i have to admit, it always catches me a bit off guard... as i sit here this morning at Starbucks and listen to the reading of the names... i get very emotional... it's not embarrassing it really hurts... a lot.

All i remember is eating a bowl of cereal rather quickly trying to get out of the door for the start of what was a cool, bright, sunny, fall-ish day. By the end of that day almost 200 people would come together in the worship center of where i served in ministry, trying to make sense of what had occurred that morning as i finished a bowl of corn flakes....

Even now, as i hear these names read aloud all i can think of is, in fact, the terror of the day. Maybe that is a sign of weakness or whatever but that day caused me and countless millions to weep tears that still sting our cheeks to this day.

Many people and pundits talked then and still today (seven years later) of how for that brief moment we (the US) had the sympathy of the world and how we ultimately squandered that by prosecuting questionable military actions around the world, blah, blah, blah.... all i know is that looking at the television screen that morning September 11th, 2001, the only thing that mattered was finding out if my mother, brother and sister- in-law who lived and worked in New York City at the time were alright. i didn't want sympathy, i wanted answers.

To be blunt, i am still a bit angry as well, for as upset as i get every single time i think about 9/11, i believe it would do us good as a nation to see the images of the World Trade Center engulfed in smoke and flames, with greater frequency than simply on the "anniversary" date... perhaps we would with greater consistency remember that evil is very real and very deadly.