When we visited in June, it was the second time for 3 1/2 year old Payton and 1 1/2 year old Caroline, and the first that Payton may remember.  On both visits young Caroline interacted with Grandma freely and they seemed to enjoy each other’s contrasting skin textures and details of clothing and hair and even smiling faces.  Last year, Payton was apprehensive, even a little afraid of aging Grandma, whose decade-plus battle with Parkinsons has left her bent and feebled, and sadly unable to communicate clearly or even make it possible to know what she understands and processes.  Last month, Payton was still guarded, but a little more interested in Grandma Jewell.  

But a few days after we returned to our home in Batavia, Payton said matter-of-factly: “I want to make a card for Grandma Jewell.  I love Grandma Jewell.”  (Who she has decided is “sick.”)  Little Caroline wanted to join in, so Debbie put them to work with construction paper and finger paints outside on a table, and a sweet card was made.  Debbie took a picture of the girls at work.  We sent the card and photo to my sister Barb, who shepherded Mom at her home in recent years until a special place could be found, and still visits Mom frequently.  Barb took the card and picture to Mom one day this week, and send this message to us:

Thank you so much for the beautiful card that Payton and Caroline made for “Grandma Jewell” and also for the sweet little heart that thought to make her a card. I took the card and the picture to her today, and she really seemed to understand my explanation and enjoy the beautiful painting. I put it on the wall under Dad’s picture.

Barb attached a picture of Grandma with the card and picture of the girls work on the wall behind her. 

How important it is to encourage contact between our little ones in the sunrise of their days and the aged saints in their sunset years.  What richness and blessing.

I’ve taken off those who have dropped out–Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, John Thune, and Mike Huckabee; as well as Donald Trump, who I added for his brief run. 

Mitt Romney has had an edge in this “prestigious” poll since the beginning, although Palin edged ahead a few times some months ago.

I have always liked Mitt Romney, but I don’t think he will be the nominee.  His Massachusetts health care history may sabatogue his run with Tea Party types; and I still am not convinced that a Mormon will win in the southern primaries. 

I also like Tim Pawlenty, but in the age of celebrity politics, I really doubt he has the charisma (or the fire) to come out on top.

For me, the most interesting candidate is Michele Bachmann.  She fares extremely well in the comparison to Palin.  Bachmann is far more experienced, far brighter, faster on her feet and able to respond well to hard questions.  She has a good record in the Congress and impressive private life credentials.  She is a strong Christian with admirable real life bona fides.  She remains at some disadvantage because Members of Congress rarely become president.  But then, a senator had not been elected president since JFK–until the junior senator from Illinois came along. 

So please vote in the updated poll, and let me know how you view the new roster of candidates.

Check out the time-elapse video of the painting job.

When I seek to honor the men and women of the armed forces who paid the ultimate price to fight for freedom and justice, I think of their peers and how they honor those who didn’t make it. Those who remember their fellow soldiers who fought and died on the battlefields of the last century are now bowed men in their eighties and nineties speaking hesitantly about their colleagues and their service a lifetime ago in the killing fields of Europe and Asia. We owe our nation to them, because of their moral strength, their youthful sacrifices, and their country-building ethic.

Harry Jewell, 1945 (5th Army, 34th Division, 135th Infantry)

There has been much courage and dreadful sacrifice by veterans in the intervening years, but on Memorial Day and all days when we honor veterans, I think of my favorite veteran, my father, who left us to be with the Lord he loved in January 2004 at the age of 79.

“They were better than we are,” wrote Tom Brokaw about the generation that saved the world from the last century’s Axis of Evil. The stark statement is true, we know. My father, Harry Jewell, was better than I am, I know.

Dad was a member of what they’ve called The Greatest Generation. He served his country mostly in Italy during World War II, and he was a hero of the American variety—putting his life on the line to save the world, and spending his life to serve his family, assuring their well-being in so many ways.

Dad told very few stories of the War, like most of his comrades in arms who saw their service as opportunities for duty, not celebrity; he didn’t relish the ugly memories. But from time to time we’d pull out a remarkable tale. Such as the time he was racing his jeep across an open field, with German artillery following him, but missing by just a few paces each time. Or the time he and others stepped inside a building, and their friend was obliterated by a shell on the front step they had just left. Death was always so close.

A sense of purpose prevailed and soldiers like Dad never asked why. Evil is evil, and men like Dad didn’t have any trouble recognizing it, as many seem to today.

A man of deep faith, my Dad demonstrated his peace with God in his final days and his homegoing. In life and at death he was an example to all of us.

Thanks to all who have served, then and now. And thanks Dad. I miss you.

Matthew 24: 36-37

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

He’s also got real and imagined baggage. The imagined baggage is his tenure as Speaker, when he brought the Republicans to power but ticked off enough Democrats and media that it has become a supposedly troubling time in his past (when many believe it was a shining moment for conservatives). The real baggage is a stretch of bad behavior involving wives and a mistress.

The question for Republicans, and in particular social conservatives such as evangelicals, is whether Newt’s big conservative ideas will offset his big mistakes, and more importantly, whether he has repented of his sins and turned his life over to God. That’s a tough call, not only because it is not our role to doubt anyone’s profession of faith, but because both authentic repentence and authentic forgiveness are in short supply in the world of politics.

Nonetheless, it’s good to have Newt in the race.

As of today the percentages:  Mitt Romney, 21%; Sarah Palin, 19%; Mike Huckabee, 18%; Newt Gingrich, 11%; Tim Pawlenty, 10%; John Thune, 10%; Haley Barbour, 8%; and Mitch Daniels, 3%.

But now, of course, there is The Donald.

Some claim he is catching fire with key Republicans.  Others in the GOP are downplaying his candidacy and claiming that he can’t be taken seriously.

Trump is pulling about 26% in recent national polls, with Huckabee a distant second at 17%. 

So I have added him to my poll.  If you haven’t voted, and a lot of you haven’t, please cast your vote now–to either give Trump some respectability (which, I believe, he lacks entirely), or to be sure he doesn’t catch up in this prestigious poll.

After living and working in the loop for two months, I am a fan of the Chicago skyline, which is a dramatic mix of old and new, with varied and creative architecture, and many of the tallest buildings in the world in the city considered the birthplace of the skyscraper.

I’ve already written about turning a corner and finding myself in the shadow of the tallest building in the U.S–Willis Tower (Sears Tower). 

In the midst of my skyscraper fascination, I read a good blogpost by Jonathan Merritt on the Q Blog about what towering builidngs tell us about ourselves.  An excerpt:

Mason Cooley stated it most succinctly: “A skyscraper is a boast in glass and steel.” As such, our city’s buildings have become a statement on our prosperity spoken through the megaphone of architecture. Someone has well said, if one wants to know what America thinks of herself, look at her skylines.

In a city where winter will not ease its frosty grip and Spring is rumored but unfulfilled to date, Chicago can use the boost of a boast.

Of note, as Merritt points out, is that office buildings have replaced towering church spires as the central symbols of city centers:

But skyscrapers tell us about more than the material realities we’re facing. Spiritually, they tell us about America’s changing religious landscape. City skylines were once filled with more than tall buildings. In America’s early years, churches broke the rhythm of banks and businesses. As Harvard Professor Edward Glasser has pointed out, early city planners in the West took note of the Bible’s “Tower of Babel” narrative, and as a result, the tallest buildings in city centers were almost always churches.

There are still good, vibrant churches in the city.  It’s just become more difficult to find them.

A church on Monroe Street that I walked by one evening last week.

But I’m clicking into the Braves-Marlins game online, because my heart’s still with the Braves (Bravos up 5-0).  I’ve lived in Atlanta for 14 years, and its been very easy to be a Braves fan because it is a quality organization that fields a winner every year.  The pitching is almost always good in Atlanta, so its painful to watch a couple of marginal pitchers in this game in Chicago.

Truth is, I’m primarily a baseball fan, and I learn to follow the local team (and in Chicago I have two choices).  And since I’ve moved a lot in my life, I’ve followed a lot of teams, and I still have an affinity for many of them.

I was born up the road from Cleveland (in Ashtabula) the year the Indianas won the American League pennant (but lost to the Yankees in the World Series).  I don’t remember that.  The first team I do remember getting excited about was the Pittsburgh Pirates, who won the World Series when I was in first grade (1960).  It was the famous Bill Maseroski homer that did it, and I remember it.

We moved to Boston the next year, and although I never made it to Fenway, I remember getting some Red Sox autographs at a local bowling alley.  Wish I knew where those went!  I think Tony Conigliaro may have been one of them, but I’m not sure.

The first baseball game I went to was with my Dad. When we lived outside Allentown, PA (Emmaus) we went to Philadelphia and watched the Phillies beat someone, with Richie Allen (later Dick Allen) taking over the game with a homer and other extra-base hits. 

When we moved to Iowa I was in junior high school and during those years I remember laying on my bed listening to the Cubs on the radio.  Those were the days of Ron Santo, Ferguson Jenkins, and Billy Williams.

When I went to college in southern California and stayed several years to begin working, I went to a lot of Dodgers games at Chavez Ravine, and great place to watch baseball–with Tommy Lasorda fielding great teams–including the infield of Ron Cey (3rd), Bill Russell (SS), Davey Lopes (2nd), and Steve Garvey (1st); and Steve Yeager behind the plate.  During these years (75 to 83), I also went to many Angels games at the big A.  I remember the warm daytime games and beach balls more than any memorable teams there, although Nolan Ryan was pitching for the A’s then, and Gene Autrey owned the team.

Then it was off to Washington, D.C. in 1983, which didn’t have a team then; but Baltimore was less than an hour away. It was the Cal Ripken era, and Baltimore was the best baseball town I remember–first at Memorial Stadium in a Baltimore neighborhood, and then the great Camden Yards on the waterfront.  I went together with Dave Carlson and other friends at Prison Fellowship, where I worked, to buy a partial season ticket for the Orioles for two years.  I was at the opening game at the new Camden Yards, which the Orioles won.

Washington was making a play for its own team, still two previous Washington Senators teams had left for other cities–to become the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers.  The local organizing group that was trying to convince Major League Baseball to give D.C. another chance was selling season tickets, which we bought.  They named the team (which was not to be at that time) the Nationals, and I have the hat that I got as part of the deal. Since MLB made a different choice, we got our money back.  Of course, DC eventually got their Nationals, when the Montreal Expos fled Canada for our Capital.  The Nats are beating the Phillies tonight, which is a good thing (back to being a Braves fan).

After Washington, I moved to Atlanta to watch Bobby Cox lead the Braves to many division championships.  But now, we will be in Chicago.  Maybe I’ll lay on my bed and listen to the radio for old time’s sake.  Go Cubs.