Best Wishes

As a younger man and when friends would marry, other folks sometimes would give me a nudge and a wink, telling me "You're Next!".
Anxious to return their encouragement, I would tell them the same thing at funerals.

My Personal & Private Journal(s)

I began keeping a hand-written personal journal on February 16th, 1971, simply because it was suggested by the Prophet, Seer, & Revelator (President) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) that all of us do it.
Going back many years later to read earlier journal entries, it surprised me what I had since forgotten or misremembered.
Also, in later years, it amused (but did not surprise) me to learn in a management training class that personal journal keeping builds leadership skills, as it helps you to better plan and self-conceptualize.
Most of my journal entries usually are made right after my morning Scripture study and personal prayers, but often also at other opportune times.
Sometimes, I awaken in the middle of the night, get up, and make a journal entry about a pressing thought or dream.
When my home burned to the ground on October 31st, 1996, everything was destroyed, except my family history records and my journals.
There was a Providentially protected circle of unburned area around those documents, and also around a portrait of my paternal grandfather Edgar Kump and his sister Thelma, who had just passed away in March of that same year.
The proxy Temple ordinance work since then has been done for my Aunt Thelma, as well as for my other kindred dead.

Postscript: Click on "comments" at the bottom of this entry for further feedback from my Aunt Gertrude.

Puppies!

The new two puppies at a friend's home now have names:
"Get Down off the Couch!" and "You, Too!".

Insurance Insecurities

Setting aside (for the moment) increasing our taxes, expanding our federal debt, further endangering our fragile economy, increasing the cost of insurance to those who already have coverage, and making our health care system even worse; here is a big concern of mine about the mandatory health care behemoth that is perhaps soon to be enacted by Congress and signed into law by the President:

*The requirement that every American have health care insurance and the lack of their choice regarding the federally mandated "basic" health care coverage. Our working poor are called "the working poor" because that's exactly what they are - working, but poor. Many of them are eligible for employer subsidized health care insurance coverage through their employers now, but don't buy it because their portion of that insurance payment would have to come from their rent or from the grocery money that puts food in their children's mouths. Even with a generous federal subsidy, the requirement to purchase health insurance will break the financial backs of many of these desperate folks. I wonder how many in Congress truly understand what it's like to be poor in America.

Other issues which would greatly improve and reduce the cost of this pending health care mandate, but have been tossed aside in the legislative dumpster are:
*Allow the importation of cheaper health care drugs from Canada.
*Reform Medical Malpractice law.
*Allow health insurance coverage to compete across state lines.
*Remove health insurance companies' exemption from Anti-Trust Law.

The wag who pointed out that drunken congressmen are more irresponsible than drunken sailors hit upon a sober truth.

Confessions of a Malcontent

Joe Queenan confesses that "...jackasses, pedants, buffoons, and charlatans have always been a clear and present danger to humanity, and that they are not merely a modern health hazard...Proving, once again, that there is nothing new under the sun. Especially if it involves morons.".
His book, "Malcontents", then goes on to celebrate those writers who were "masters of getting up peoples's noses", from Aristophanes to Oscar Wilde.
Queenan even makes a sideways reference to Machiavelli as the "Florentine Chuckle King". (Go figure.)
Particularly refreshing is Joe's meticulous rationale for his editorial opinions and selections: "I felt like it.".
It's comforting to know that I am not alone.