Madeleine Albright passed away this week at the age of 84. She was the first female secretary of state serving under President Clinton. She was the first US official to meet Vladimir Putin shortly after he came to power as the acting President of Russia. She later referred to him as small, pale and almost reptilian.

William Shatner just turned 91. Best known as Captain James T. Kirk, let the record show he has done other things.

I attended a wild game supper last weekend hosted by one of our association churches. First we had mini bison burgers, smoked venison meatloaf, wild boar and smoked turkey. There were more tame sides and desserts, like fried okra and peach cobbler. Then music was provided by Chris McDaniel, formerly of Confederate Railroad, and his new band. Shown above is guest speaker Sid Bream. He graduated from Liberty University before playing for the Dodgers, Pirates, Braves and one final season with the Astros. He is probably most famous for The Slide which sent the Braves to the 1992 World Series. An avid outdoorsman, today he spends much of his time and energy bowhunting. He tells a good story, not just about baseball but about lessons he learned from his dad and those he is teaching his kids.

The Samaritan’s Purse DC 8 airlifted 19 tons of cargo, including medical supplies and hygiene kits, to Ukraine this week. This is this is the 5th such flight since the invasion of Ukraine began a little over a month ago. Approximately 10 million of the 40 million citizens of Ukraine have fled the country so there is an influx of refugees flooding into eastern European countries such as Poland while an ongoing humanitarian crisis continues to worsen in Ukraine itself. Unable to advance Russian forces toward the capital of Kyve, a Russian spokesperson now claims that was never Russia’s objective in the first place. That’s the world superpower equivalent of slipping, flailing both arms and both legs like a ninja, regaining your balance and then saying “I meant to do that.”

I was reading some clickbait foolishness about products we’ve been using all wrong. Just because you can clean your shower by inserting a dishwashing pod into a sponge doesn’t mean we’ve been using them wrong by putting in the dishwasher to wash dishes. I also became aware we live in a world in which the purpose of a watch pocket is a great mystery.

The tiny pocket has both “mystified and confounded” people. It’s one of those design elements that won’t go away even though the era of pocket watches has. The 12 volt electric port in cars is the shape and size it is because those used to be for cigarette lighters. Cars no longer come with built in lighters or ashtrays but there are millions of 12 vote accessories design to fit into that socket so they can’t just suddenly quit making the outlets that way. Some new television still show a screen filled with static when there is no signal, even though it’s not really even static. That’s basically a low res video made to look like static because that what TV’s are supposed to do when there is no input signal. What do you do at the end of a phone call? You hang up, even though it’s been years since I actually hung a phone up onto anything. The save icon looks like a floppy disk. Window shutters are decorative features screwed onto the side of of a house. Some things never change, even though sometimes it’s been so long nobody remembers what they were meant for to begin with.

There’s a trend that needs to catch on. If you can see 20% better at the expense of my not being able to see at all, we still might both die.

This is a local church pastor just down the road from me in real life. He posts a weekly devotional via Facebook Live. In the words of Larry the Cable Guy “I don’t care who you are that’s funny right there.”

It’s funny because it’s true. More guys have played Batman than have hosted Family Feud. I was looking forward to seeing Michael Keaton return as Batman in the new Flash film this November. But that release has been pushed back to June 2023! DC finally releases something I’m excited about… well sort of… I mean, they may still release it some day. It’s like waiting for Top Gun 2.

Well I have a men’s prayer breakfast at 8 AM and a prayer walk in the afternoon. So I will not be indulging if I have a second biscuit; I’ll be carb loading. For Jesus.