U is for Uzbekistan

For  Friday Fragments I thought I would go back in time  and look at 3  increments of 5 years starting in 1993 and telling you what  late April of those years may have looked like.


Fragment 1 :  22 years ago  in Tash Kent
Family Status: Single as they come
Employment Status: Southern Baptist Missionary


In  April 1993 I spent a week In Tashkent, Uzbekistan.  This was right after it had become it's own country after the breakdown of the U.S.S.R.  I was living in Russia at time as a Baptist missionary/English teacher and was spending a week in Tashkent to observe how ministry with Korean Russian youth was going since the team leadership aspect of the ministry in  Tashkent would matc hopefully to what we planned to do in my city of Khabarovsk.

I don't remember a lot about my time there.  I helped with English classes, church services, and also spent time enjoying the city.  I had a caricature of myself drawn at a sidewalk cafe which I gave to my folks upon my return.  My time in Tashkent was as close to a business trip as I've ever been on.

Fragment 2: 17 years ago in Hickory Hills
Family Status: Newlywed
Employed at Dovenmuehle Mortgage

In  April 1998, we had just moved into our apartment after getting home from honeymoon in TN.  We were very busy with our church, work, and being madly in love.  I was working in the phone center at the mortgage company and had only been there since December of 1997.

We ate out a lot, but also spent a lot of time with friends and family.  We started a tradition of visiting our living grandparents about once a month.  Those newlywed times will always be precious to me.  Every day was an adventure and I am glad to say that it still is.

Fragment 3: 12 years ago in Carpentersville, IL

Family Status: Married 5 years and had 3.5 year old girl and 1.5-year-old boy
Employed at Dovenmuehle Mortgage

By April 2003 life was getting back to normal after an eventful 2001 and 2002.  I was working in the research department at my job mostly handling presidential correspondence.  We were attending church in Crystal Lake

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T is for Thome

White Sox Homerun hitters from A.J. to Zeke

T is for Thome

Jim Thome

Let me we be really clear Jim Thome did not ruin the White Sox.  Sure they won the World Series right before he got there and haven't sniffed it since.  But that is not Thome's fault form 2006 to 2009 Thome hit 134 of his 612 major league homers for the Sox.  The 7th most of all time the 134 is good enough for 13th on the Sox all time list.  In his 22 yr career Jim averaged 39 homers for every 162 games played.  Thome hit 42 for sox in 2006 and followed up with 35 in 2007.  Thome's time with the Sox may not have warranted the ring he so dearly wanted, but make no mistake, Thome is no Sox killer.

For more A to Z blogging click here.   

T is for Turkey (place)

I went to Turkey for two weeks in 199 for a short term missions trip.  We took a team of 6 adults  and our baby daughter. I'm going to give you some brief observations from my memories of our time there.

• We spent a majority of our time in Istanbul, which is a city on two continents (Asia and Europe)
• People  on the streets of Instanbul would take our baby daughter out of our hands hold her for awhile and give her back.  We were warned about this in advance so it would not freak us out.
• In 1998 cell phones while common in the U.S. had not yet exploded to their current popularity. In Istanbul, everybody had a cell phone and were constantly on them.  Again, this seems commonplace in the US now but it wasn't at the time.
• Istanbul has a rich heritage and was the capitol of the Byzantine Empire when the city was known as Constantinople.
• Turkey is the home of some ancient biblical places like Ephesus.

Let me show you 3 visual highpoints of Istanbul, The Blue Mosque, The Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar. All places that we visited.  

The Grand Bazaar is one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world.  It marks it's beginnings from 1445.

 M o

The Hagia Sophia was built under the direction of the emperor Justinian in the 6yh century.  It was an  Eastern Orthodox cathedral from 537 to 1453.  In the 15th century when Constantinople was invaded by the Ottoman Turks the cathedral was turned into a mosque.  It remained a mosque from 1453 until 1931 when it was converted into a museum.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosques known as the Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles on the inner walls of the mosque ws built 500 years ago.

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S is for Sherm

White Sox Homerun hitters from A.J. to Zeke

S is for Sherm

John Sherman "Sherm" Lollar

Sherm Lollar played for the White Sox from 1952 to 1963 .  He hit 124 of his 155 MLB homers for the ChiSox.  He would average 14 homers a 162 game season. In 1960, he and Minnie Minoso swapped places several times as the career home run leader for the team.   Lollar died of cancer at the age of 53 in 1977.  At the time of his death he was 3rd all-time in homers for the Sox he is now 15th, 1 behind Joe Crede and 7 ahead of AJ Pierzynski.    His best 2 seasons for the Sox homer wise were  22 in 1959 their World Series year and 20 in 1958.  

Little known fact (I just made up.)  The term LOL derives from the first 3 letters of Sherm's last name.  

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S is for Stewart (Person)

I am something of a Jimmy Stewart fanatic.  I have seen many of his movies.  It's a Wonderful Life is my favorite film of all time.  Mr.  Smith goes to Washington is also in my top 10. He was in so many great films.  So when I decided to watch 12 movies  this year that I had never seen before it didn't surprise me that a Stewart film would make the list.  What did surprise me is that it would be a Stewart film I had never heard of before.

Magic Town (1947) is just that. I had a month free trial of  Amazon prime and was looking for a Jimmy Stewart film I had not seen before and when I found Greatest Show on Earth,  which I had heard of previously but never seen,  When I found it was not available I went with Magic Town.
I did a little researching and found that It's A wonderful life (1946 pictured above) and Magic Town  were back to back box office failures for Stewart.

The main difference between the two is that Magic Town is well deserving of it's failure.  It's A Frank Capra like film , which is  not surprising as it was written and directed by long time Capra collaborator Robert Riskin.  The end result of the reteaming of Riskin and Stewart without Capra is expressed quite well in an IMDB review by Mario Gauci ...

"... while the plot is typically original and engaging, somehow it lacks Capra's cinematic expertise in putting over Riskin's ideas: the tone is too often syrupy and sentimental while the  hero isn't made to face formidable villains such as one finds in Capra's work."

Stewart is not at his best in the movie.  His portrayal of a pollster trying to put a magic formula to work, lacks the multilayered nuanced performances he so often achieved. Jimmy Stewart was in many great movies prior to 1947. If you are looking for better Stewart movies from the 40's, you might want to try The Shop Around the Corner or Rope instead of this slightly above average comedy drama.

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