My grandfather, Nicola Luvera died in Anacortes on Independence Day, July 4, 1956 after living more then ninety years. His story is one of courage and determination. After working in a slaughter house in Italy for twenty cents a day he decided to try to find a better life for his family in America. He managed to borrow money from relatives to sail to the "new world" where his relatives had found work. In 1902, he left and made his way to Montreal, Canada…
That's the title of an article that was recently published by the Catholic News Service. Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops has written that the Sunday sermon or homily should not be longer then eight minutes which is about the average listener's attention span, he says. The bishop also urges preachers to spend the appropriate amount of time to "craft a well-prepared and relevant sermon for Mass." Among the general guidelines, he also suggests that a…
Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted excommunicated a nun who served on a hospital commission that voted to allow an abortion for a woman who would not survive if she delivered and a fetus with little or no chance of survival. We have seen during recent political campaigns and in other settings, that many bishops seem to relish the power they claim to possess to excommunicate or deny communion to those they have decided are immoral. As one letter writer to a Catholic…
There is a website called inspire 21.com http://www.inspire21.com/stories/truestories/. It features true stories that are inspiring to read. One of the stories is a story I read somewhere else in the past and had forgotten about. The story is entitled "Who packs your parachute? It involves a true story about Charles Plumb and his parachute experience. Charles Plumb was a U.S. Navy jet pilot. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy. He flew in Vietnam. After flying 75 combat missions his luck ran out….
When I was a child growing up in Anacortes, Washington, there were two movie theaters in town. One, the Empire Theater, at 7th & Commerical Avenue, was directly across from our family’s grocery store. The building is there, but the theater hasn't operated in many years. Today, Burton Jewelers occupies the area which was the lobby and ticket office. Since I was too young to work at the store they would take me with the family to our family grocery store, but, I…
I hadn't head of Desmond Doss (1919 – 2006)- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Doss - who was the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor until I came across a note about him. He was one of only three who was so honored. He was a Private first class at the time of his actions. As a Seventh Day Adventist Doss refused to carry a weapon into combat and served in the Pacific theater of World War II as a medic. He…
Matt Emmons is a native of New Jersey, and an American competitive sport shooter. He began shooting competitively at high school. At 17 he became a member of the National Rifle Team. In college he won the NCCA a rifle championship four times when he in college. He has had an amazing career of success in his field. But, he also has had a bizarre history of bad luck in the Olympic shooting events. In the 2004 Summer Olympics he had…
You get all the news here. A couple of news items caught my eye this week. The first two involve a couple of guys who managed to shoot themselves in the testicles. How could they have done that, you ask? Well, to start with, it helps to not use common sense. Our first victim was a macho kind of guy who, for reasons I’ll never know, walked into a Lynnwood Lowe’s Home Improvement store with a handgun stuffed down the waistband of his pants. Maybe he had…
While we were in Europe, I enjoyed reading the European newspapers. One item I thought amusing was in the London Daily Mail. It reported that billionaire socialite Goga Ashkenazi was at a charity auction when an expensive painting was being auctioned off. She made the mistake of spotting her new friend, Jennifer Lopez, at the auction. The mistake was she waived to her and that resulted in her inadvertently buying a $240,000 pound ($347,544.00 in U.S. dollars) painting by accident. I had…
We left our hotel in Positano and drove for an hour and a half to the Naples Airport on Friday. The weather was clear and cool. The Naples airport is small and easy to get around. Security was quick and we ended up at our gate with much time to spare. The intercom continuously is broadcasting flights and flight departures with gate changes in Italian and English. The door alarm would go off for no reason. Frantic calls to someone…
