Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

Lots of people collect things- coins, books, stamps, you name it. My daughter Camille likes to collect nail polish apparently. Last time I saw her she had enough to treat the toenails of every circus elephant in the world and still have some left.I used to collect comic books when I was young. Back then they only cost a very reasonable twelve cents each. A fellow I knew in grade school used to receive three cents a week for allowance. At the end of the month he had enough to go buy a comic book.How pathetic. His first name was Hampton and he seemed kind of like a three cent a week fellow. He's probably worth millions now. Anyway, displayed in the above picture is a varied assortment of lip balms. They belong to my daughter Jen. I'm not sure if they qualify as an actual collection, because she uses them all. In fact I think she's addicted to lip balm. She let me keep her stash overnight and the next morning she was getting kind of panicky because she claimed her li...

Christmas is just a week away. Like many people in the country, especially here in Alaska where mail can be hard to send or receive because of weather, I'm waiting for some gifts to arrive. I ordered in plenty of time, but competition for space on the cargo planes or mail trucks or however the packages get transported is at an all time high, so I'm waiting and hoping they get here in a timely manner. Unless you're buying a random gift for someone you don't really care about, like the fellow whose name you drew from the hat for the office Christmas party, you probably want to give a gift that means something. If you love someone, you spend a little time searching for something that they want or need.We want to give them something that shows we care. If we, in all our flaws and weaknesses care, how much more does God care? There was a slogan some years back, I can't recall the business, I think it was the FTD florists. The slogan was- When you care enough to send...

 For the first ten years that I lived in Alaska, the only way that I was aware that it was Christmas was to look at the calendar, or perhaps take a trip into town during December. The farm, where I lived, was run by a Christian organization that didn't celebrate Christmas. At least not all the outward appearances that are so common in the country today. We had no trees indoors, except for the ones we cut down and chopped up for firewood. There were no decorations or gifts or fancy dinners. There was nothing to distinguish Christmas from any other day of the year. On the one hand I could understand the doctrine. The commercialization of Christmas that is so prevalent now bears little resemblance to the reason we celebrate the holiday. For so many people Christmas is a time of great stress- too much busyness, too much pressure, too much money spent, and for some, too much time spent alone. All that being said, here in the North country, the nights are long and cold...