A Letter from the President

This past February ago I posted about some letters and pictures our family sent to President Obama.

A few months ago the kids got a reply. It was typed on a postcard sized piece of good stock paper signed by the president and with the White House Seal embossed on top.

It states:

Thank you for your recent note, and for sharing your thoughts with me. Your kind words echo the messages of millions of American who have welcomed me and my family to the White House with an outpouring of goodwill.

On January 20th, Americans spoke with one voice, choosing hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. Our nation faces serious challenges, but we will overcome them if our imagination is joined to common purpose.

Now is our time to work together, reaffirm our enduring spirit, and choose our better history. With your help, we will renew our Nation's promise to carry forth the great gift of freedom to future generations, as our forebeara have delivered it to us.

Sure, it's a good letter but not exactly what you would expect as a response to 3-9 years olds who sent pictures like this . . .

And asked questions like "Do your daughter's have Webkinz?"

The kids liked it though and Charlie has it safely tucked away in his room with the rest of his treasures.

At the same time the kids were writing their letters, I was writing the president one of my own. I wrote of my genuine gladness that an African American was elected President. I talked a little of our mutual love for the White Sox, but mainly I told him candidly but respectfully why I had not voted for him in either his Senatorial or Presidential campaigns. I told him of my concern for the unborn and my hope for the possible repeal of Roe V Wade. I urged him to change his stances on abortion.

Because of how the kid's letter was responded to, I expected no response to my own letter. Indeed several months had passed since the kids received their letter, and I had almost forgotten about my own letter when I received a hand addressed letter from the White House on July 31st

My letter dated 7/28/09:

Dear Friend:

Thank you for taking the time to share your views on abortion. This is a heart-wrenching issue and I appreciate your input and thoughts.

I am committed to making my Administration the most open and transparent in history, and part of delivering on that promise is hearing from people like you. I take seriously your opinions and respect your point of view on this issue. Please know that your concerns will be on my mind in the days ahead.

Thank you again for writing. I encourage you to visit WhiteHouse.Gov to learn more about my Administration or to contact me in the future.

Sincerely

Barack Obama (signed)

I was genuinely moved that The Office of The President of the United States took time to respond to a concern that I had. I understand that President Obama himself is far too busy to attend to my letter himself. I could tell that the majority of this letter was pre-formatted. I can also see that it's a text book example of a non-response response to the issues I brought forward.

I have struggled for the last 1/2 hour to write a conclusion to this piece. I could wax eloquent of the democratic process where I have the freedom to write a dissenting view to the most powerful person in my country and receive thanks rather than censure. I could make a spiritual tie-in to how writing a letter to the President is like but so much less a privilege than the ability to talk directly to the Executive Officer of the Universe. I could encourage families to send letters and pictures to their elected officials thanking them for their service and communicating their needs and concerns. Since I am not quite sure how to accomplish any of those, I will instead just tell you what I have in store for next time.

Next Time: A few thoughts about movies.

Knowing Your Neighbors

I bet I could write an excellent blog post about the importance of meeting and befriending your neighbors. How to get out and become a community with those who live in closest proximity to you. Yeah that would be a great post, it's just not this post.

I am talking about something completely different. I am talking about my WFMW neighbors. Each week I view some excellent posts about what works for others here in blog world. My problem is that so many of these posts I never get around to applying because of the enormity of fine posts each week. So I developed a system that helps me review past posts and save some of the good ones for posterity.

Here is what I do: Each week after I post my link, I mark the posts immediately before and behind mine as favorites and put them in a folder called "WFMW Neighbors." This is my 25th WFMW post and that means that after I link this up, I will have 50 neighbors in that folder.

After a few months I decided that I wanted to honor some of my favorite neighbors, so I reviewed all my neighbors and put the ones that I thought were best in a second folder called top 10 neighbors. Each subsequent week when I organized my neighbors I put the especially good ones in the top 10 list. My top 10 list often had more than ten items at a time but once a month or so I would weed it down. Today I would like to present you with my Top 10 Neighbors:

Starting us off at #10 is Lynn's Kitchen Adventures who introduced Frozen Hot Chocolate (July 09)

Speaking of neighbors, weighing in at #9 is Kristen's neighbor from Bake at 350 with Mini Moo Cards and coupon! (July 09)

How to Clean a Kitchen By Joyfully Retired (January 09) checks in at # 8.

Which brings us to #7 Protecting Your Marriage (and Money) with A Spending Communication Policy By Sarah @ Real Life (March 2009)

# 6 is Don't Bring Me Down by ELO. (Sorry my inner d.j. escaped for a moment.) Didn't mean to bring things down. It's time to Exhale. Return to Center as they What's Working: Our Mud Pit (May '09)

A Back Seat Boredom Buster is what awaits us at #5 found Inside the White Picket Fence. (July '09)

Momedy (Ba Ba Ba Ba Da) Momedy (Ba Ba Da Ba) presents Making Procrastination Work For You (April '09) at # 4.

At #3 we have Pause your Nose Again from Heavenly Homemakers dot com (February '09)

The Animator's Wife hits at #2 with Cheap Shots- Christmas (January '09).

And my #1. neighbor is A Simple Walk with her beautiful post, A Bag Full of Pennies (January '09)

Introducing My New Neighbors . . .

Tonight Kayren of Everthing's Coming up Daisies blogged about Getting Chewing Gum Out of My Dryer.

AND

Over at Blessed With Grace Lisa shared Things I Liked About Today ...

Welcome to the neighborhood!

Keeping tabs on my WFMW neighbors works for me. Thanks to all 50 of my neighbors for their excellent ideas. To see what works for others, bop on over to Kristen's at We Are That Family. A special shout out to Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer who got this party started. Many of my neighbors originally linked there.

Next Time: A Letter from the President

The Century Mark

My Father-in-law turned 70 today. This is of course a grand achievement in itself. But given his medical history in the past 18 months it is a remarkable one. He has had many sicknesses during that time and has been in hospitals and nursing homes for about 1/2 of the last 18 months. A few of those months he was in a coma like state. The past few months have been a time of remarkable recovery. His oldest son Mike spends 1/2 of the week doing rehab with his Dad. Every time I see him he is more and more active and vibrant than the next.

To celebrate his birthday Amy , her brothers and sisters planned a surprise party for Him. It was really the youngest sister Katie, who just found out she is expecting her first child, that did most of the planning and contacting.

Katie's 30th birthday happens to fall a week after her Dad's. Amy thought that since Katie was already getting the family together that she would work behind the scenes to make a double surprise party. So instead of celebrating Donn's 70th we celebrated Donn and Katie's 100th.

Every one had a fantastic time. So congratulations to Donn on seventy years and continued best wishes on a full recovery. Thanks to Mike for pouring so much of his time in working with His Dad. Best wishes to Katie on 30 years (I have shorts older than that), and congratulations to her and Danny as they eagerly expect their first child.

I will leave you with some research I conducted on what happened 100 years ago:

• There were 45 stars on the U.S. Flag



• The Roman Catholics made Joan of Arc (Not Joan Van Ark) a saint.



• Two cents was the cost of a postage stamp.



• The first race was run at the Indianapolis Motor Speed Way.



• The Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series.



• Las Vegas, NV Population:30

Next Time: Knowing Your Neighbors

Remembering Millard

Millard Posthuma 1916 -2009

Heaven centered living provides own eulogy.

I have recently discovered that there is a new blog carnival for Christian men. When I think of Christian men, I think of Dr. Millard Posthuma. So I am going to submit this post to the innaugural edition of the carnival. If they accept it instead of reading this sentence you will see a link to their carnival.

I first met Millard Posthuma at a prayer meeting on my university campus in 1990. Until he started attending regularly, I, at 24, was the oldest person at the meetings. Millard, then 74, changed all that. The retired surgeon was the father in law of our campus group's faculty advisor.

I remember one of the first conversations I had with Millard. I recognized his last name and asked him if he was related to Dan Posthuma who produced contemporary Christian music albums (Margaret Becker, Julie Miller among others.) It turns out that he was Dan's father. I followed that up with some question of how he must be proud to have such a famous son. His response was that he was very glad that all his children loved Jesus and were following Him.

Now, please don't imagine that comment coming as a rebuke. It was said with the same graciousness he said everything with. I am not sure that I have ever met as kind of a person before or since I met Millard. He was a regular at our prayer meetings and often attended and many times sang at our weekly meetings.

He was also the most active man in his seventies I ever met. He had a spry step and was involved in a plethora of activities: Rotary, Gideons, Pro Life rallies, etc. Anyone who has the caricature of an anti-abortion protester as a hate spewing unmerciful hypocrite in their mind, has never heard Millard present the Pro Life message. He gently stood up for the unborn fetus and used his medical background to provide evidence of where conception begins.

Millard had a great deal of influence on people my age. A friend 5 years my senior became involved in the Rotary because of Millard's leading. Another friend 5 years my junior had him as a groomsman in his wedding. A twenty two year old with a 76 year old groomsman! After I graduated in 1992 I spent two years as a missionary in Russia. Millard sent me a an encouraging letter while I was there mentioning meeting Russians when he was in WWII.

Most of all, I remember Millard loved his wife. He was always so tender and protective of her. I never heard him say one disparaging word about her. If you talked to Millard for 5 minutes, you would know 3 things about him 1: Jesus was his Savior, 2: He loved his wife and 3: He was genuinely interested in you.

When I was a younger man I read many books about dating, love, and marriage. One thing I read that stuck with me was: don't visit friends and relatives on your honeymoon. When Amy and I married in 1998 we honeymooned in the Smoky Mountains. We flew from Chicago to Louisville, Ky and drove to the Smokies. On the last day of our honeymoon we spent the day with Millard and Trudy in Louisville, where they had recently moved to. It was one piece of advice I am so glad I ignored. We had a wonderful visit, the couple married 1 week and the other married 57 years. It also turned out to be the last time we would see Millard alive. I found out a few weeks ago that he had passed away on May 31, 2009.

There is so much I would like you to know about Millard. I could start with his obituary, there are some things that I didn't even know. I knew he was in WWII but I had no idea that he was seriously injured in the Battle of the Bulge. Near the end of his life, Millard started blogging, he only posted three times but one of his posts was so Millard that I wanted to share it here:

A New President !! 11/04/08

A new president? Yes. and he will be receiving our prayers for God's guidance We asked for God to be incontrol in the election, and We trust that He was. Now we owe him our prayerful support. http://mposthumablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-president-110408.html

Millard in his unassuming way could so quickly get to the heart of a matter. The same precision God gave him with a scalpel was also evident in his communication.

In a way Millard speaks even though dead. His life speaks volumes and I'd like to leave you with the sound of his voice as featured in a Gaither and Friends album a few years back entitled appropriately enough: Heaven. (He is on the second to the last cut.) I guess there are advantages to having a son in the music industry.

Goodbye Millard, we miss you and look forward to singing with you again in Heaven.

For more of Six Word Saturday go to Show My Face dot com.

Next Time: The Century Mark.

Home School Convention

There is a special edition of WFMW this week. It is a back to school edition. Things here at the Izola Becker Home School won't get started until the last week of August but I do have a back to school tip to share.

We really like going to our local Home School Convention every year. Even though it is held generally at the end of our school year it really sets us up for what we will do the next year.

There are several things we like about going to the convention: 1)Amy and I get to spend time in seminars and large group settings learning more about home schooling. 2) We get to spend time together. 3) We generally run into and catch up with several home schooling families that we know. 4) Amy likes switching name tags with me during the convention, which is usually hilarious when I forget we switched and someone calls me Amy.

But the best thing about the home school convention is the vendor's hall. This is where rows and rows of companies sell their textbooks, videos, computer based programs and so much more. The majority of these vendors have their best sales of the year at these conventions so this is often where we (as well as many others) buy the bulk of their curricula for the coming year.

The Vendor Hall can be a very intimidating place. Even with all the discounts it can be a very expensive place. What works for us is having a system of how we are going to work the hall.

A. Before the convention we discuss what we are planning on as far as the curriculum for the next year.

Amy and I decided we wanted to try Konos for the coming year as we already had the curriculum from a previous home school convention. Konos is a multi level curriculum that includes all subjects except Math and Phonics. Amy and I then decided that we were satisfied with the Math that the kids were doing with Alpha Omega and would most likely stick with them in the coming year. We also discussed that we would want to focus a little more on Art as all our students show an affinity with that subject and that we also wanted to work more on penmanship as none of our students were showing an affinity with that.

B. We decide how much money we can or want to spend on curriculum.

C. Before we purchase anything we go through the vendor hall and look at what they have. Sometimes things change at the conference and our direction changes from what we were discussing before. Sometimes we end up getting exactly what we were talking about before the conference.

D. We leave the vendor hall and we discuss what we are going to purchase. Often the product is available at more than one vendor so Amy pulls out her calculator (me) to figure out what vendor has the best cost. Sometimes at this point we don't have everything decided yet. If that is the case we might divide and conquer where one of us will buy what we are certain about while the other will continue to look at products and make a decision

E. We generally find at least one new product at each conference that we are very excited to try out. This year we found out about the Draw to Learn series from the Notgrass Company. Remember how we wanted to have some more Art for the children. This book combines Bible Study and Art by having each student describe each of the Psalms in pictures. Click on the book cover for a sample page.

So that is how we make the vendor hall work for us. We are looking forward to a great school year and encourage you all to do the same. To see what has worked for me on previous Wednesdays click here.

To see what back to school nuggets await you at WFMW go back to We Are That Family.

This Article has been included at the Carnival of Homeschooling #189: The Lolcat Edition being hosted this week at Homeschoolbuzzdotcom.

Next Time: Remembering Millard.