Life - simple but, always complicated!!

My family, my extended family, &  I, seemed to be snake bitten in the early 2000 years with cancer. In April 2000, my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. Mom battled but she died in March of 2001. At the beginning of 2002 in January, my father-in-law Stu Alexander was diagnosed with melanoma. Stu died six months later in June. Also, I began enduring some health problems of my own during the beginning of 2002, rheumatoid arthritis and some mental health issues. They were difficult back then, and have proven to be more than one time episodes. 🙏 🙏🏿  Okay, we thought those years are behind us, but in March of 2003 my youngest daughter, Lauren, 13, was diagnosed with a cancer and a tumor growth on her left hip. It was going to require radiation, surgery, and possibly chemotherapy. Lauren went to daily radiation treatments after school, driven by myself or my wife, sometimes a friend, until June, when she had plastic surgery and the tumor removed from her left hip...

Perseverance helped me battle and defeat depression multiple times. That perseverance was built upon faith. We all need perseverance at different times over our lifetimes. Besides the people listed below, there are many others to remember who persevered during tough times; the Apollo 13 crew and the NASA team in Houston,  Jackie Robinson, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Billie Jean King, Madeleine Albright, and   Marie Curie whose most famous quote on perseverance is:  " Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves " . Sam Darnold was on 5 NFL teams, let go by 4 of them before he won a Super Bowl as starting QB.  It took John Wooden coached basketball for 11 years in high school, and 18 years in college before he won the first of 10 national championships at UCLA.  Brock Purdy was the last NFL draft selection in 2022, a few years later the was a starting QB in Super B...

The Pope’s Man Arrives in New York In appointing Ronald Hicks to the most prominent post in the U.S. Church, is Leo XIV assembling his own Team U.S.A.? By Paul Elie February 6, 2026 In appointing Ronald Hicks to the most prominent post in the U.S. Church, is Leo XIV assembling his own Team U.S.A.? By  Paul Elie February 6, 2026 Photograph by Charly Triballeau / AFP / Getty Ignazio Silone’s novel “Bread and Wine” tells the story of Pietro Spina, a socialist and revolutionary who is a wanted man in Fascist Italy, and who, in order to elude capture, disguises himself as a village priest in the Abruzzo countryside. The book, which was published in 1936, is partly a parable about survival and resistance: The villagers awake one morning to find anti-government slogans scrawled on the church steps. They’re alarmed, fearing that the authorities will crack down on them all until the person who did it comes forward. But Spina encourages them to see the graffiti as an act of consc...