Related post:  Jesus, here.

Today we stayed after Mass for a talk by a founder of a national group called “Better Angels“, which bills itself as “a working alliance to depolarize America”.  There were about 75 of us in attendance, and it was a very stimulating hour with Bill Doherty.   We’ll join.  I encourage you to check out this organization.

A couple of hours later, ready to take on the tread mill at the fitness center, I saw the presidential motorcade do a lap at the start of Daytona 500.  It was a fast trip from “depolarize” to “win-lose”.   I much prefer “depolarize”.

EVERYONE loses in “win-lose”, as even the ‘big guy’ in the lead car at Daytona will discover, sooner or later.

I have a great deal to say, here, but it will probably come over the next few days.  Check back once in awhile.

For certain, if you’re in Minnesota, participate in your precinct caucus on February 25, and the Presidential Primary on March 3.  Details can be accessed here.

Do check back in a day or two or three….

NOTE about “53-47”, the headline.  This was the vote on virtually all of the motions proposed at the U.S. Senate Impeachment hearing of the President some weeks ago.  At minimum, it symbolizes that the U.S. is basically, now, two countries, at war within ourselves.  Our Civil War was over the notion of two countries in what is now the United States.  Division doesn’t work very well….

*

Presidents Day, Feb. 17, 2020:

Last night we watched part one of the three part mini-series on George Washington (History Channel).  Parts two and three are tonight and tomorrow night.  Judging from part one, the series is worth your time.  Tonight will begin at the time of the Revolutionary War.  Here is an interesting commentary on Washington’s presidency in today’s Washington Post.  Succinctly, conflict has always been part of politics.  But the public, now more than ever, needs to be diligent about the veracity of instant communications.

Right before, Sixty Minutes had a segment on the allegations of the current President about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election – “CrowdStrike”, “the Server” and such.  “Nyet” is the analysis; a ‘gift’ from the Soviets.  You can watch the segment on line.

We are in the bombardment season of politics, and I recommend paying close attention and full participation .

A colleague at the Retreat I attended a week ago was making a complaint about politicians at lunch.  I responded “we – all of us – are “politics“.  That was all that was said on the topic at that table.

All of the defects of “politicians”, whatever office, whatever party, reside at our doorstep – and to our credit, or our blame.  We elect them, or not, by our vote, or by not voting at all, or voting uninformed.

Thus far we have managed to keep a semblance of democracy in the U,S, for over 230 years, and if it survives, or not, is totally in our court.  Mostly I’m optimistic, but not always.  When political discourse is by twitter, or ‘forwards’, or non-engagement on even the most basic ideas, our country is in trouble.  We have a right to be ignorant, at our peril.

A week or two ago came the first ‘forwards’ of the season, both from friends, who got them from some unidentified other friend – stories passed computer to computer.

The first ‘forward’ was the basic assertion of facts, that weren’t facts in any reasonable context.

For just one example, the first ‘forward’ pointed out for some reason (among other things) how youthful five key actors in the forming of America were.  Indeed, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay and Thomas Jefferson were young in 1776 (born between 1743 and 1756).  But they weren’t the only founders of America, and the United States didn’t officially come into being until the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, thirteen years later.

If you look at our current leaders at all levels, they are relatively youthful as well.  Politics is not an old peoples game.  At the same time, the U.S. is immensely more complex than it was at the time of the Declaration of Independence.

(George Washington was born is 1832.  Ask Google, “what were the ages of the founding fathers” and it answers back:  “As it turns out, many Founding Fathers were younger than 40 years old in 1776, with several qualifying as Founding Teenagers or Twentysomethings. And though the average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44, more than a dozen of them were 35 or younger.“)

The second ‘forward’, purports to trash Bernie Sanders with an assortment of alleged facts, without any sources to check.  And so it goes.

As a matter of course, I don’t refuse ‘forwards’ – they are a source of perspective, rarely guilty of having been fact-checked.  Their purpose is usually to incite, rather than inform.  They will bloom like noxious weeds in the coming months.

Our friend, Annelee, who grew up in Nazi Germany (born 1926) offers a pertinent comment on today in America:  “Would it shake up some people and make them ask “Do we want Trump back?? or are we at the point Germany was at in 1933?  for the German people [in 1933] , media was very limited.  Most people didn’t buy newspapers nor did they own radios. I think there were five private business phones in [my home town of about 5,000 people] while I grew up.  The general public had finished high school or trade school.  Few ever went to college.”  

Annelee Woodstrom, has given many speeches on her book, War Child: Growing up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany,  and her facts have stood the test of many audiences.  She lived the life.  Her book has recently been translated into German.

Other recent posts on this topic at December 14, 2019, and January 21, 2020.

POSSIBLE ADDITIONS LATER.  Comments welcome.

POSTNOTE FEB. 18, 2020:  Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune “Opinion Exchange” page has three excellent Op Eds on the general topic of “socialism”.  They are by Eric Dregni and Steven Backus and the third by David Brooks of the NYTimes.

Shortly I leave for what has become an annual event: the Men’s Retreat at Franciscan Retreat Center in Prior Lake MN.  I asked a staffer how many years I’ve attended.  He checked, every year since 2014, except 2015, which I missed.

I missed 2015 because earlier in the week my Uncle Vince died in North Dakota at 90.  I was Vince’s ‘go to’.  The prior weekend I’d been there, and we all knew the end was near.  So is life.

Now it’s five years after Vince’s death.  Knowing him as I did, I wonder how he’d be in the wake of the events in the last week or so.  He was conservative, no doubt,  but I knew him well, a long, long time, and his notion of conservatism would be severely challenged.

The three day retreat is truly a godsend.  There is plenty of quiet time; no television; discouragement from having mobile devices of any kind.  You can read, walk (depending on conditions), pray.  Mostly we are by ourselves, on purpose.

I think Vincent would like that solitude.

This weekend has another nostalgic piece for me.  Last year I was two months out from heart surgery, and my first weekend out was the retreat.  My friend, Clarence, who had recruited me several years earlier gave me a ride – it was too soon for me to drive myself.

We had a particularly rich ride, out and back, time to reminisce about this and that.  About a month after the Retreat, Clarence was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, and some time later told a few of us the diagnosis.  Clarence was ‘no drama’ – he continued life as usual, with gradually increasing limits.  He ushered till he no longer could come to church.  When he died in the early fall, at 88, he had a truly grace-filled exit; and a deserved celebration of his life at his funeral.

So, Vince and Clarence are my heroes, particularly for this Retreat weekend.

I’ll taking along the book, “The Power of Intention” by Dr. Wayne Dyer.  It was a gift from Annelee, our 93 year old friend.  Look it up.  She said, for certain look for the 2010 edition, if you can get it.  The content is the same, but the art is phenomenal.

Back after the weekend.

Have a good one.

SEE JANUARY 31, 2020, ADDITION BELOW.

Prior post on this topic, here.

This is written as a rough draft, and will be published as such.

Quite often at this space I have written about events I considered important before they actually occurred – trying to put my own “spin” in the mix before, rather than during or after their occurrence.

Such is an upcoming event which begins procedurally this afternoon: the trial of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Senate.  I know as much or as little as anyone about what will actually happen.  If I was able to be the fly on the wall anywhere, it would be at a civil gathering of uninvolved lawyers, expressing their opinions with each other about this crisis….

I struggle with how to describe this national conflict in which we find ourselves, and the best I can come up with is comparison with a family unit – any family unit.  (The one I’m thinking of is our own, which these days comprises 15 adults.  There are infinite varieties of families in our society and in all society.)   These days it is usual to characterize our country as polarized into two conflicting sides.  Any family can be similarly polarized to one degree or another.  Say one ‘side’ gets control of the other; and say further that a new father enters the scene and sides with the dominant group.  What happens to the family unit?  I would submit it is very unhealthy, and tensions increase.  Dysfunction increases.  This is what we seem to be within in this country.  Add to this power, and all, and we have very serious problems as a society, short and long term.  The dominant one will not remain dominant.

*

Saturday, January 18, was the 20th anniversary of my retirement from a career representing public school teachers.  From this time of year in 1972, till January 18, 2000, my daily job was in the scrum of relationships relating to employees and employers.  My job happened to begin coincident with the first salute authorized collectively bargained teacher contracts in Minnesota school districts, including the first grievance procedures ending with binding arbitration.  Like most of my colleagues, and management administrators and school board members, we were in the ‘Wild West’ – learning new rules and roles as we went along.

I did this for 27 years, so in the passage of time learned a few things.

What is about to transpire in the U.S. Senate, at first glance, is puzzling to say the very least.  Possibly there will be pleasant surprises in a few hours or days, but at the moment it doesn’t seem so.

It is a spectacle quite possibly about to be played out by tweet and second-hand information about only a single side of the story – both sides.

It will be compared to but completely unlike, at least it now appears, the Johnson, Nixon and Clinton impeachments of previous years.

My personal bottom-line, at this point, late morning Tue. Jan. 21, 2020, is that every effort will be made to suppress illumination of the issues to the public at large; and that the public who supports Trump won’t care.  Even from my small perch in labor relations, over many years, things like evidence and testimony were important before judgement was rendered by a neutral outsider, an arbitrator.

In the current case, there appear to be no neutrals (the Senators one side or the other) and from the partisan side the dominant party supports the man accused for no good reason whatsoever.  Mostly, they made a terrible decision to embrace Trump in his run for President; they are threatened with things like being subjected to primary contests, if they act independently.  On and on.

I decided to keep the newspapers from the Impeachment Trial period. This is only the second time I’ve done this. The first was during the period of the 2000 Presidential election. I still have those papers.

POSTNOTE: January 31, 2020, before the debate in the Senate:

Not a word has been spoken in the Senate today.  My prediction, after watching large swatches of the assorted presentations, including the “q&a”: the President will not be impeached; people can watch the Super Bowl unimpeded; there will be a triumphal State of the Union….

There is not a whole lot that needs to be said, especially to ‘mixed company’.  Just some brief observations:

Much ado was made of the fact that 63,000,000 voted for Trump in 2016; I recall no mention at all of 66,000,000, including myself, who voted for Hillary Clinton.  And about 40% of Americans voted for neither, which is shameful, however, most Americans did not vote for Trump.

Secondly, I got to thinking the other day about the spectacle of it all, basically, a lawyer dominated institution (especially the Senate), to a nation where lawyers are, while not a novelty, a distinct minority.  Here’s a good article about lawyers and Congress;  statistics about lawyers in the United States.   Succinctly, 49% of Senators apparently are “lawyers”; about one-half of one percent of adult Americans are lawyers.  In my own family of origin, I know of no one who is a practicing lawyer….

Of course, it makes sense that lawmakers have a strong sense of the law, and being a lawyer is a useful skill in being in Congress, generally.

But this statistic amplifies the absurdity of a so-called “public trial” by television to a public who has at best a television program view of the law.  I don’t need to give examples.

At one point, when I was watching the argument, I thought back to two of the first legal hearings in my career representing school teachers.

The first was very early in my career as a teacher union staff person attempting to administrate a grievance procedure which ended in binding arbitration.  This would have been in 1972.  I hardly knew what arbitration was, much less how to do it.  My client was a teacher, newly minted law school graduate, who was testing his new knowledge of the law with a grievance.  He knew much more about the law than I.  Long story short: we lost.  It was my first experience with things like evidence and witnesses, as well as the fact that advocates have different points of view.  The arbitrator, George Jacobs, knowing what faced him, was very gentle with us, helping us navigate those completely uncharted waters.  I’m ever grateful.

The second recollection was even more memorable:  One of my members was being fired for alleged abuse of unruly fourth grade boys.  The school districts counsel, a prominent lawyer in Minnesota, was summing up with a flourish for his clients, the local school board.  The teacher, he thundered, threw a student three feet across the room.  I’ll never forget it. We all can imagine what three feet is;  the oration suggesting putting an innocent fourth grade boy almost into orbit.

Arguments by respective counsels over, the school board voted 6-o to reinstate the teacher, who had been suspended for the entire year.

The teacher never returned to teaching, anywhere.  That was my first acquaintance with the practice of law.

Of course, I don’t know what will happen today.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be correct.

We Americans will live with the consequences of todays political decision.

Personally, I am grateful that the House voted impeachment and that this “trial” was held.  Everything is now part of the permanent record of this country, and at some point, if we manage to survive as a country of law, future students will be able to read the actual record.

Final comment, Friday evening: The Senate adjourned for the weekend; the decision is essentially sealed.  I watched the proceedings.  This is a sad day, with more to come.

I write on Saturday, December 14.  Some weeks ago I said I’d comment on the Impeachment of Donald Trump.

Thursday night I watched much of the rhetoric in Judiciary; overnight, a rare nightmare visited in my sleep – one that I’ll remember: an ominous very dark storm cloud rapidly approaching a crowd, one of whom was me.  We were all trying to escape.

Then I woke up.

My position on the Impeachment of President Trump: Three of the four presidential impeachments have been proposed in the past 45 years: Nixon (1974), Clinton (1998), Trump (2019).  The fourth – Andrew Johnson, 1867 – was the only other presidential impeachment proposed in the nations first 200 years.

Donald Trump deserves impeachment.  Most likely the Senate will acquit, if the House votes to impeach…we won’t know any of this for certain for some time.  This is a political matter, and politics is people.  Nonetheless, to me, what is important about this impeachment, regardless of outcome, is that there will be a formal historical record for posterity, all of it; the recorded argument the evidence for some future time.  Those who follow us hopefully learn from this.

At this moment I don’t even know for sure when the final House vote will be – possibly next Wednesday.  We will know who voted, and how they voted.  Every one of the House positions, and many Senators as well, are up for election in November.  Representatives will have to go on the public record, not only for 2020, but for the rest of history.  Ultimately the truth will out.  Sooner or later every one of us will die, including Trump.  But the residue of what we do will live on, and it will be undeniable to those who follow us.

The Storm Cloud:  On Halloween night, 2000 – it was a Tuesday – my wife and I were in Washington D.C., and then-Rep. Bill Luther gave us gallery passes for an evening session of the U.S. House of Representatives.  There were only a few of us in the gallery. Cameras were not allowed, so I have only my memory.  While I recall the debate while we were there, the topic isn’t relevant.

At some point in our time in the gallery, a Congressman whose name I don’t recall, a Republican from somewhere in Illinois, came up to greet us.  Specifically, he came to apologize for what we were witnessing below: two small clumps of legislators, one Republican, the other Democrat, hardly anyone listening to anything the speaker was saying.

The hearing adjourned.  About a week later, the Bush-Gore election of 2000….

We were witnessing the still young, but already very apparent and acute dysfunction of the Federal Legislature.  Why the Congressman came up to visit us, I don’t know.  He wasn’t any of our representative.  I do remember him saying he wasn’t running for reelection.  He was disgusted.

The Present Day: I write between the spectacles we have and certainly will witness: Judiciary and full House.  Preceding was the House Intelligence Committee; for the preceding two years the committees were controlled by the Republicans.  We are witnessing in real time the wisdom of the Abraham Lincoln quote “a house divided against itself cannot stand”.  As a nation, in my opinion, we are in the deadliest Civil War we’ve ever had.   There have been and will be no winners, regardless of who prevails in one battle or the other before or down the road.  We are killing ourselves and our nation is ever weaker.  Nature (ourselves), history proves over and over, needs balance, not dominance.

Personally: To be clear: I strongly supported (and support) Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama; I have confidence in Nancy Pelosi, and Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler.

Ultimately, the judge and the jury in coming weeks will be the American people, who will reap the benefits or the punishment of their own collective action, through their elected representatives.

Elections always have long-term consequences.  In my opinion, the consequences of especially the tax policy passed at the end of 2017 – year one of Trump with Republican controlled House and Senate – will be the millstone for all of us within ten years.  How do tax cuts pay for the benefits we all take for granted.  Too late, we’ll wonder, why did this happen?  The simple answer: our own action or inaction made it happen.

Much was said about how popular Trump is.  The sound bite parade talks about how he got 63,000,000 votes (about 27% of potential voters).  In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 66,000,000 votes.  About 100,000,000 didn’t vote at all, some for fringe or write-ins.  Far fewer citizens even vote in other elections for other offices.  Lack of informed voting and voters is a major problem for our society.  Trump was elected by about one-fourth of the electorate; 2018 was the first response to his election and performance.  Billions will be spent for the upcoming election, to what end?

Another sound bite: we don’t need to Impeach, let the people speak in the 2020 election.  I remember the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency – and Republican majority refusal to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court Justice.  The Republicans lament lack of fairness in the hearings leading up to the impeachment.  They speak out of both sides of their mouths.  Since 2001, the Republicans have controlled Congress for 14 of the last 19 years, the Senate effectively for even longer (majority rules are more difficult to counter in the Senate).

The Republicans lament what they  aggressively exploited when they were in control.  (Here is the party representation in the Senate and U.S. Congress over history, particularly recent history: U.S. Government001)

There is a great deal more I would like to say.  LEARN THE ISSUES.  We all will live by the results, whatever they turn out to be.

Below are some reflections from a personal standpoint on the past.

*

POSTNOTES:

A. I think it is pertinent to at least provide readers with my own bias, conveyed the months of July and August, 2016, the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election,  published August 3, 2016, in part “Government by Twitter“.   The Republican Convention, endorsing Donald Trump, was held July 18-21, 2016, in Cleveland.  The Democratic Convention was held in Philadelphia July 25-28, 2016.  For anyone really interested, other blog posts which touched the topic of politics in that time period in 2016 were July 6, 19, 31 and August 10 and 26.   Access in the archive section.  At the time, I knew next to nothing about Donald Trump – I never even watched “The Apprentice” or whatever the program was called.  I remember hesitating to use the word “Twitter”.  I knew little about Twitter, and what I knew, I could not imagine it would be commonly used even if Trump became President.  How wrong I was.

B.  The Nixon Impeachment 1974: I was 34 years old, and politically aware.  This was in the days before the internet.  I remember watching Nixon’s resignation speech on a lounge television with a group of teachers at a summer leadership conference at the College of St. Benedict.  My recollection is that we were a very somber group.  This was a national issue, and to my recollection the Republicans and Democrats dealt with it as such, rather than the later tribal wars we now deal with on most other than routine issues.

C.  The Bill Clinton Impeachment 1998: I was 58 years old.  I assess every Republican utterance in the current Trump matter against their action against Bill Clinton basically in 1998.  I did take a personal position through a letter to Sen. Joe Lieberman, which you can read here: Clinton Impeachment001.

D.  Just Above Sunset for December 16: Peerspective and Context: This is very gloomy, but realistically so.  If there is to be change, it must happen from each and every one of us, one action at a time, unceasingly.  We either are part of the solution, or part of the problem.

A year ago, December 4, 2018, the team at Fairview Southdale in Edina MN went to work on me.  Dec 1 and 2, 2019, a year later, I took the two photos below.  In the last 365 days between lies the story of the last year.  I’ve written a number of times about the trip in between.  The links are at the end of this post, for anyone interested.

Dec. 2, 2019, right after the exercise at Lifetime Fitness. The photographer (moi) is in the background.

The game, December 1, 2019

Actually, the Monopoly game sets the real anniversary, May 25, 2018.  Grandson Ben and I share the stage, neither of us enthusiastic participants; our respective caregivers thrown into the role, which they thankfully accepted.

May 25, 2018, was the day when my primary care physician listened with concern to a heart which was making not-cool sounds, starting me down the path to the Operating Theatre some months later.  It was a routine physical – no one had to pick me off the street and rush me to the hospital.

The same day, a few hours later and about 150 miles away, Grandson Ben, 13, and his Dad, were in a very nearly fatal highway collision, with Ben being very nearly in the ‘bullseye’, ending up medivac’ed to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis; in a coma for about three weeks, thence a long period of beginning recovery which lasted into the fall, at Children’s and then Gillette hospital in St. Paul.  Ben had severe head and other injuries.

Sunday, Ben and his Grandma were playing Monopoly, and at the end, he asked her to leave the Board up so that he could show his parents.  I was at the gym at the time.  One and a half years out, Ben has largely recovered except for an injury which possibly will be permanent.  In the Monopoly game, he is able to make strategic decisions, and he can make change, but he cannot read the cards or the Board descriptions.  He can count, and he can read the individual letters, but not the letters put together into words.  I think I can say, without exaggeration, that none of us, back in May of 2018, had any reason to believe that his recovery would be as remarkable as it had been, and this is largely due to those incredible communities within the general medical community.  Ditto for myself.

Thanks to all of you.

As I say, my personal journey is, in part, described in the links at the end of the post.

I think I am essentially as close to 100% as a person nearing 80 years old can be.  There is no 4-minute mile in my future; nor any marathon, or “leaping tall buildings in a single bound”, nor any childhood fantasy sold by Charles Atlas!

I, and Ben, join millions of others who today, or yesterday, or tomorrow end up somewhere they’d probably rather no be.

There is no point in talking in detail about my own personal experience, or what I know of grandson Ben’s.

From the beginning – long before even diagnosis – I was part of the Fairview system, so I saw many years of excellent medical service.  But when you reach the big leagues, which open heart surgery really is, a quick learning is that medicine is really a community action, part of which is the patient, of course, but as important every single cog in the wheel of service to the patient, who is not always the most gracious of consumers.

Some personal thoughts:

We tend to see on the news only the atrocities or the miracles.  The business end of medicine is in the ordinary day to day service by all manner of medical and technical personnel.  Human beings.  My surgery happened on a single day, but it was by no means a single event.  The experience began months before the surgery, and continues even now.

I use the word “community” much in the same sense as I would use the word to describe “public education” or “police” and “fire” and assorted similar services where the reality is often far less than perfect.

There is a downside, a systemic defect, which is driven by our own collective political will.  We. and Ben’s parents as well, were advantaged by having good insurance.  Huge numbers of people have no access to affordable insurance for various reasons.  In this wealthiest country on the planet, there is no good excuse to not cover every citizen similar to the coverage I had.  Insurance spreads the risk – that is what it is whether public or private.

Were I able, I’d carry this in some form or another world-wide, to basics like access to clean water, or toilets.  Two enduring memories for me:

1. In Haiti, which I visited on two occasions, 2003 and 2006, witnessing first hand that access to health facilities is very sparse.
2. In Cebu City, Philippines, in 1994, I was given a tour by the wealthy man who was my host.  I recall standing within sight of a hospital in the city, and my hosts simple and quiet and respectful declaration, which went something like this: if you’re rich in my country, you can get medical care  as good as anywhere in the United States; if you’re poor, you die.  It was not stated as dismissive.  But just a political reality.

I’m very grateful, this day, to be mostly recovered, hoping for good continuing reports.  I’m thankful to every single person who in any way participated in my experience.

Have a most blessed and merry holiday season.

*

PRE-NOTE AND POST-NOTE: I decided to look up whatever I’d written since the surgery Dec. 4, 2018.   I simply entered “heart” as search word, and up came the following, all of which I’ve scan, none of which I expect anyone to read…but the links are there.  Here they are in order.  I may have missed one or two.  Dec.22, 2018; Dec. 28, 2018; Jan. 1, 2019; Feb. 1, 2019; Apr. 20, 2019; May 4, 2019; Jun. 20, 2019; Jul 13, 2019; Oct. 14, 2019; Oct. 25, 2019.  I did not ‘spill the  beans’ on the upcoming heart surgery until after an early July family get-together in North Dakota; and I delayed the surgery until after grandson Spencer’s graduation from Marine Boot Camp in San Diego in October.  I was ‘walking wounded’, and not a crisis case.

Some preliminary dates to the surgery itself related to myself and grandson Ben, who with his Dad was in a near fatal accident on May 25, 2018: May 27, 2018; Jul. 4, 2018; Jul. 14, 2018; Jul. 17, 2018; Nov. 20, 2018.  Possibly I’ve missed some others.

Spencer Hagebock and Cathy, Dec. 25, 2018, four days home from the hospital. Spencer had two months before completed Marine boot camp at San Diego, and was a surprise visitor on Christmas. I had been discharged on the 21st.

Daughter Heather and myself, late November 2019

POSTNOTE:  Last Sunday, Fr. Tasto, retired gave his homily (always splendid) and a featured part was a story about musician Jim Croce, who died in a plane crash at age 30 in 1973.  I won’t even attempt to match Fr. Tasto’s skills in telling stories, but this one, about “Time In A Bottle“, struck a chord with me, and doubtless many others.  Croce wrote the song sometime before he died in a plane crash at age 30, then the song continued to rise on the charts to #1.  Of course I was not recording the homily, only listening, and making my own interpretation, which was, not to take life for granted.  There may be tomorrow, maybe not.  Have a great day.