My White Christmas' The angry winter lashed out with wind and drifiting snow, the likes of which were never seen this far south. Could it be that a white Christmas would blanket southeast Georgia the first time in recorded history? December 23rd, 1988 would be remembered in south Georgia as the day it wouldn't quit snowing. Light dustings occurred every so often, but this was different - an accumulation of three, four, five and even six inches in places. Gusting winds built unseen drifts against trees, mounds, and ditch banks.Children were estatic and native adults were mesmorized by the uncommon and picturesque landscape. A blanket of white graced lawns, roofs, fields, even roads; and it was two days before Christmas! Could it be that my 84 year old grandmother would see her first white Christmas? Christmas eve brought more flurries, and freezing tempertures kept it white producing the most memorable Christmas Day ever. Snow ball fights and snowmen replaced toys and presents as the 'joy' of this 'once in a #lifetime,' White Christmas in Hinesville, Georgia.

UFO The dust had scarcely settled from the passing truck, when suddenly the sound of a hum was above us. Looking up from our Chevy convertible, we saw what appeared to be a flying saucer. It hovered over the top of a tall pine with flashing lights ringing it's outer circumference. Based on the size of the tree, the craft had to be 50 or 75 feet from one side to the other. It had a metallic gray appearance, and looked to be 15 to 20 feet thick in the middle, tapering down toward its outside. The hum continued as we both sat spell-bound by what we were seeing. The accounts in Douglas, Georgia Newspaper in the spring of 1968 attested to many sightings on nearby farms, but we knew nothing of this fact until later. We weren't the first or the last in Coffee County to see what appeared to be a UFO. Some reported seeing multiple craft at one time, though we only saw one. These sighting lasted for several days, and then, just as soon as it started, it ended. The initial sight of this was shocking, but what happened next was an even greater surprise. Suddenly, without any preliminary indication, this object flew to a new location a 1000 or so feet higher, traveling this distance in a split second. How could anything fly that fast? Were we seeing things? The travel time between where this object was, to where it flew was hard for my mind to comprehend. We could not hear the sound any longer as the great distance and low volume erased the sound factor in the sighting. To this day, almost 50 years later, I still have no clue about what we saw. It has remained, for me, a great mystery.

#life In An Army Town The pretty young mother was doing her best, but the needs of two small children momentarily overwhelmed her. The resilient strength that had carried her since losing her soldier seemed to be waning - an unclear future and engulfing loneliness painfully settled in her heart. I saw it etched in her face from my table in the Army town cafe. She wandered in, I knew who she was; I had seen her picture and knew her story from the local news - another brave husband had given his #life. Now, left to fend for herself, another non-combatant victim of war - empty, bereft, uncertain. My heart was broken for this young stranger - my misting eyes revealing me. Another war had made its claim on another family. What would she do? Where would she go from here? When will this end? Another young #life filled with death. I weep for her...I will always weep for her!

The Words of a Song I've often thought about words of a song, the flow, the rhyme, the beat all wrong. How can something so meaningless be played, when a medium so popular has ability to convey. You waste your gift, your chance to provide, a guiding light to those who don't thrive. The young are needy for truth and for love, and you give them such a distorted view of it all. Write away at your wasted words, hang them on music where they'll fly like birds. The sky's the limit the producers will say, trash up your words so the music will be played. You had your chance, you'll think one day, about a time you wasted when you had something to say.

Geography Connects To #life What role does geography have in our lives? Is there a connection with where we live and our #life's work? Does the place we live have any connection to the time we are living? Have you ever felt at home in a perfectly strange place? Do you yearn to live far away? Perhaps there is great purpose in one locale that doesn't reside in another. I believe 'location' has an almost Divine connection to #life and its ultimate purpose upon the earth. Many men and women of great accomplishment state they were in the right 'place' at the right time. Strangely, the Jewish people felt compelled to move to Israel, even before the Holocaust. Spontaneous #life and miraculous growth occurred there in a few short years after being declared a State in 1948 - military, industrial, cultural, and economic growth occurred, almost cataclysmically. In Europe they were massacred as a defenseless people, in Israel they became a world power overnight. Names like Jobs and Gates may not be household names if the time and place of their lives had been different. The name J.P. Morgan may never been known beyond the boundaries of a small southern town had his pulse not been on the financial markets in New York City, where he grew up.