Paul Luvera Journal

We flew  to Scottsdale on Thursday. It wasn't too bad coming in, just a little bumpy, but there was  a  down pour of continuous rain once  we were on the ground. Our friend, Art Swanson, was driving over from the Palm Springs area to go with me to the car auctions this weekend. When he arrived, he looked like someone who had faced  death and survived. Highway 10 from California, he  said, was just plain awful. He went through high winds that moved his car (and…

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I was given as a gift a book with the unusual name of How Many People does it Take to Make a Difference? written by Dan Zadra and Kobi Yamada. I was inspired by the thoughts in this brief book as well as the message it contained. In a passage entitled "You are Royalty" the authors point out that if you can drink from your kitchen faucet whenever you want, you are better off then 1.5 billion people who have…

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Lita and I arrived at our home in Scottsdale a few days before Christmas. We traveled with Josephine and  Valentino. They are our two Bischon dogs who complicate our lives, but are worth the effort because they are very loving animals. The weather was  in the mid forties, but clear and sunny. This hasn't been weather for swimming and we  have  had frost on the ground. We moved from our previous house, about a block and a half away in this gated community, to…

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The newspaper reports that Kim Peek, age 58, died December 19th. Mr. Peek was diagnosed as severely mentally retarded as a child. In fact, throughout his life he need around the clock supervision. He wasn’t even able to dress himself or do simple things such as comb his hair. Born in 1951, his parents were advised he should be put in an institution, but they cared for him at home instead. This required constant care every day because of Kim’s mental problems. After…

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Sam Kinison was born in Yakima, Washington. His parents were Pentecostal preachers who preached in different churches around the country. Sam followed his dad’s footsteps and became a Pentecostal preacher himself after attending Bible School in New York. His sermons were the old style fire and brimstone approach. However, after he and his wife divorced he gave up the ministry and got involved in comedy starting in small clubs in Texas. His comedy style wasn’t unlike his preaching which featured…

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I don't know about you, but I get a lot of e-mails from people sharing what they regard as funny. I get cartoons, stories and the like, most of them I delete as not my kind of humor. However, this one, someone sent me, did amuse me. I liked the humor in these newspaper ads. Here is what was mailed to me and I particularly liked the last one dealing with the sale of encyclopedias: These classified were really put in the…

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We are in Scottsdale closing down our house for the summer. Just like a Prairie Home Companion’s news from Lake Woebegone, here are a few items hot off the Scottsdale press. About twenty two miles North of us is the town of Cave Creek, population about 5,000 people. A quaint town worth visiting for its many shops, places to eat and general charm. Shortly before we arrived the results of a contested election to the Town Council were announced. Thomas McGuire,…

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RBC Ministries publishes a useful daily devotional Our Daily Bread which I enjoy reading each day. On Mother's Day the devotional was entitled "Magnets and Mothers" and described a school teacher who gave her second grade class a test. One of the questions dealt with magnets and read "My name has six letters. The first one is M. I pick up things. What am I?" The teacher was surprised to see that almost fifty percent of the students didn't write "magnet" but, instead…

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The AP Press reported that Jack Lohrke died last Wednesday in San Jose, California at age 85. He was a former major league infielder who played in the 1940's and 1950's. In his rookie year, in 1947 he hit the Giants 183rd homer of the season breaking a team record. Lohrke was two years with the Phillies and several seasons in the Pacific Coast league before retiring. He batted .242 with 22 home runs and 96 runs batted in during…

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