Questions from the Garden of Life




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Sad times

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A good friend died last weekend. "It's a Hellava thing" was one of the last catch phrases I heard him say. I was lucky enough to see him a few weeks before he passed. It's sad when someone so young leaves when they have so much good to do. I can't say that I understand it; I can't say that I condone his leaving us. Dave was known for many good lines and good stories. He touched lives beyond mine. His love of family was unwavering. As a Midwestern, I was mostly confused by his priorties. We seem to put order and work before most everything and pride ourselves on these accomplishments. Dave was defined by his family and the things that made him enjoy life. His legacy will long be remembered because he was not confused; he had his priorities straight. Family first. Family above all else. Family was the accomplishment. His actions were better than even his best jokes. He is missed already. ...And in despair I bowed my head...
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Making Sense Out of Nonsense

Making sense of nonsense: Life in the land of Ivan Many thanks for your prayers, emails, and phone calls to us about evacuating for Hurricane Ivan. Luckily, it became a great practice plan instead of the real thing. As Florida has been planning for weeks, due to their disastrous summer, those of us in New Orleans had a gathered nonchalance about the weather activities of our sister gulf state. It wasn’t until Sunday that the weather forecasters began making recommendations about finding “your evacuation kit.” Evacuation kit? Hurricane plan? Did it involve a snow shovel? How about using kitty litter on ice? Those are about the only weather-related tricks I know. (Carrying kitty litter in your trunk not only can be used for icy spin-outs but as additional weight for traction.) Where were those types of helpful hints in hurricane country? We maintained the same attitude as the natives until I discovered that they had been covertly making hotel arrangements over the weekend. On Monda...
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Made it out of New Orleans

Greetings, This is a relatively quick note to let you know that we are fine. My 86 year old mother, my dog, and I evacuated from the New Orleans area on Sunday morning. We left at 5 am and wound up in Chicago at 8:30 at night. The biggest irony was that this is my week of vacation and we were going to spend it in Pass Christian, MS, just about where Katrina hit landfall. The area was underwater for awhile and I can only assume that we would not have survived had we gone there. Initially, we were going to wait out the storm in Oxford, MS, about 2 hours south of Memphis. At a Sunday 10:30 am press conference, the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, told citizens to mandatory evacuate and not to return for five days. That was enough for us; we called a good friend in Chicago and found out how long it would take to get there. We are now safe and comfortable and plan to go to Stevens Point for the next month or two while we try to regain control. To be honest, this is still beyond my comprehen...
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