THE MICHIGAN ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE

I grew up in Davison, Michigan – just east of Flint in Genesee County. Like most of this region the state was divided into mostly rectangular counties with nine townships, and each township had nine sections, and each section had a one-room schoolhouse. Thus on my first day of kindergarten at Goodenough Elementary I was in a room with K-8 grades and one outstanding teacher. [How the teachers handled this is beyond me. Of course how any teacher handles kids is a complete mystery.]

But in first grade they doubled the size of the schoolhouse and put K-3 in one room and 4-6 in the other. This multi-grade classroom provided a huge learning advantage. One received a preview of the next year and review of the previous year. So I was reading with the 3^rd grader when I was in 1^st; and doing math with the 6^th graders when I was in 4^th. As one of my college professors said, “Repetition is the basis of knowledge.” This statement played out well in the one-room schoolhouses of the 1950’s.

Although we had recess and played and exercised a lot one disadvantage was the lack of organized sports because we had no gymnasium, thus no dodge ball. But our 5^th grade teacher, who had been a basketball coach, decided we should learn that esteemed sport. So he padded down some dirt around a pole and hung a net. [There was not a square foot of concrete on the playground.] We practiced until he thought we were prepared and then he took us to the city school for a real game. Needless to say, the city team wiped the floor with us – we really weren’t ready. In fact many of us had never even been inside a gym before. This was the end of my basketball endeavors.

Additionally my sister and I live about a quarter mile north of the school, and in the winter we walked both ways uphill in deep snow. We were too close for the bus to pick us up.

Thankfully the academic enhancements of a one-room schoolhouse served me well throughout the rest of my education!

Copyright 2018 by Carl E Gustafson

MY FAMILY TREE IS DRIVING ME NUTS

Not the members on the tree [especially not the mothers] but the process of developing it. A couple of aunts and uncles, my brother, some in-laws and cousins had all started recording various family members – which was very commendable. But somehow they thought it would be nice to share all this with me.

So I took all of this information and started to compile it in one place. I found a user-friendly genealogy program, and began entering the data. It was quite fun to see all the ancestors’ histories and read their stories.

The thought has always amazed me is that I’m alive today. When one considers that if a great-great-great-great grandfather or grandmother had not lived long enough to have children – “POOF” – I’d be gone! In fact, I’d have never been born!  Somehow God kept my forebears alive and forbearing children.

This is true for each of us, of course. Since we are living, God must have wanted us to be born. And He loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives.

But, back to the tree. I figured it would take a few weeks to get everyone’s information loaded, which was almost true. I discovered pretty quickly that there were missing links in the family.  [Not the evolutionary kind – since that’s a myth.] But there were spouses, children, siblings, in-laws, divorced husbands or wives, step families, third and fourth cousins removed several times, and on and on and on…

So after months, not weeks, I’m up to 513 members of the tree, and I’m still adding to it. There seems to be no end to all the relationships. Thus the ensuing insanity I’m experiencing.

I may not live long enough to complete the entire family tree, and I now understand why this was passed on to me. Now, if I can only find a younger branch that I can send all this to so they can have as much fun as I’ve been having…

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 05/18/17.

THE NIGHT LIGHT

I keep a small night light on for safety, and when it’s dark the 4 watts are enough to light the hallway. Of course, wattage is no longer the way to determine the brightness of a bulb, since fluorescents and LED’s have become popular. [I miss the old incandescents.] Now it is lumens; and 4 watts is about 10-15 lumens. But it’s all I need at night. Since darkness is only the absence of light, even a candle will provide enough brightness to see. However, for more important tasks a much brighter light is needed – up to 1,000 lumens or more.

When God created the universe, darkness was the default state and would have continued as such had God not said, “Let there be light!” And since He is the source of all light, and life, the earth now has both.

But there is a night far more dangerous than the physical type. It’s the darkness of the mind, heart and soul. Like one said, “The problem is not that children are afraid of the dark, but that adults are afraid of the light.” The Bible even says that people love darkness better than light, because it hides their sins, or so they think.

Sadly, darkness is the default state in human lives as well. We cannot bring light into our lives on our own because light must come from an external source. The sun and moon and stars are the external sources that God created to light the earth. And just as we need lamps in our dark homes, we need lamps in our lives.

The spiritual darkness with which we are born will continue until we have the Light of Life – provided by Christ. And His Light never shone brighter than on that first Easter morning!

Thankfully it has continued to shine through today and will continue to shine for eternity.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 04/13/17.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

Of course, without God, there is no bright side! As the hymn says, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

Examples are easy to find and list and I know there are a lot more than I have here.

We have a Representative Republic wherein free elections take place which allow for new and better leaders to replace old and worse ones.

We have a power grid that supplies electricity to our homes and businesses and schools.

We have been able to harness the electromagnetic frequencies that provide the technology to operate TV and Radio and Cell Phones and Tablets through wireless transmissions.

We have more food in our stores than we could possibly need and about which many other nations only dream.

We have clean water that is conveniently piped into our homes for drinking and washing and cooking.

We have clean air to breath and we have heat in our homes for winter cold and air conditioning for summer heat.

We have the freedom to worship in the church of our choice and we have many, many churches from which to choose.

We have men and women who are willing to serve as police officers and firefighters to keep us safe in our homes and community, as well as those willing to serve in the Armed Forces.

We have cars and trucks and motorcycles and also streets and highways on which to travel anywhere we’d like throughout the USA with no border restrictions.

We have low priced gasoline to fuel our vehicles that can be bought at a plethora of gas stations.

We have well-built homes in which to live and pleasant neighbors with whom to visit.

We have a free press from which to glean news and weather and sports and in which to read letters to the editor.

And we have the freedom to write either negative letters or positive letters such as this.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 03/13/17.

THE NEW YEAR - 52 MORE WEEKS

Our current dates are based on the Gregorian calendar, developed by Pope Gregory XIII and his assistants in AD 1582. It replaced the Julian calendar which was from way back in the age of Caesar – 45 BC to be exact.

And calendars are exact.  They must be to keep everyone in the USA and around the world in sync. Imagine if we didn’t have a calendar. One would ask, “When is your birthday?” and you could reply, “I think it’s tomorrow,” and nobody would know any better. You could celebrate whenever you wanted and get lots of presents. But you wouldn’t know if you were 20 or 30 years old. One day you’d look in the mirror and think, “Wow! I must be pretty old now.” Of course this happens even with calendars.

Back to the 52 weeks: The year is based on the solar cycle. We can stick a post in the ground and see how the path of its shadow changes to determine when a year has passed. The month is based on the lunar cycle – full moon to full moon [including some supermoons] or new moon to new moon. [No green cheese.]  And days are a result of the rising and setting sun. As it says in Genesis, God created these to be “for signs and for seasons and for days and years.”

But what is the seven day week based on? Several websites have come up with all kinds of historical speculation – the Babylonians, India, Persia – all had seven days in their week. But where did they get this idea? Again, it comes from the Bible. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. All of the ancients had received a verbal history of creation week, so they adopted it for their calendars.

By the way, in 1929 the Soviet Union changed their calendar to a ten day week, but it didn’t last long because of all the confusion it caused. They went back to seven days like other countries.

So I hope we all have a Happy New Year, which will once again provide us with 52 weeks of seven days each in which to do our work, eat, spend time with our family, sleep, have vacations, golf or participate in other sports, worship our Creator, and enjoy a weekly day of rest as God planned.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 12/31/16.

THE SUPERMOON

A couple of weeks ago we witnessed a “supermoon” that was the closest one to Earth in the moon’s elliptical orbit since January 26, 1948, and won’t be this close again until November 25, 2034. Technically they’re called Perigee Full Moons, and they occur several times a year, though they don’t come as close as the latest one. This event was detailed in The Review on November 15^th.

It’s very interesting to me that we can know exactly when these events will occur, down to the day even 18 years into the future. How is this possible? It’s because we live in an orderly solar system and a well-designed universe. Our Creator made the Earth, as well as the sun and moon and planets – in all the galaxies – like a finely-tuned timepiece, but on a gigantic scale.

There are some, as we know, that believe this happened by accident or as the result of a massive explosive bang. [But with nobody alive to hear, did it really make a sound?] To me the illogical chance of that occurring with the systematic results we witness is an impossibility. Try as one might, no human explanation can account for the beautiful cosmos that has been created.

Thankfully our fantastic, powerful, ingenious Creator has plainly spelled out the history of the world, as well as its future, in both His natural and written revelation to all men everywhere. We can choose to study and learn from His Word, or ignore it and believe the men who, because of unbelief, dream up their own explanations for the supermoons.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 11/30/16.

IN DEFENSE OF GOLFERS

Golf is a terrific sport to those of us who golf.  This may be hard to understand for non-golfers.  In fact, some say it isn’t even a sport.

However, Merriam Webster defines a sport as: “A contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other.”  And Dictionary.com specifically lists golf as a sport.

So now that we know golf is indeed a sport, let us look at its virtues.  It’s played in the fresh air – unlike basketball, which is played inside a stifling gymnasium.  It’s a quiet, gentlemen’s sport. No shouting or pushing or shoving like basketball.  And there’s no ball-hogging because everyone uses their own golf ball.

I agree that golf should not take the place of a church service, where we worship God with the congregation.  But we can worship our Creator on the golf course – in the midst of His great and beautiful creation.  We see the trees, the birds and squirrels, the sun and clouds and breeze [and sometimes the raindrops].  After all, we don’t worship the Lord only on Sunday mornings, but every waking hour.

Of course Sundays are important for our psychological well-being. God created the world and all living things in six days, and rested on the seventh.  Then he told us to also rest on the Sabbath day.  Golf is a great way to relax and rest and worship on any day!

The quietness on the tees and fairways and greens is very conducive to relaxation. The special sound of the driver striking the ball in the sweet spot and the gentle drop of the ball onto the center of the green are both heard only in golf.  And the gentle rattle of the ball as it drops into the cup is the most satisfying sound of all.

Unfortunately, as Rob Todor wrote on August 9^th, there are golfers who aren’t aware of good golf etiquette. They’re too loud, their attire is atrocious, they interrupt your tee shot by driving up behind you or crossing the fairway ahead of you, they impatiently hit a ball into your group instead of waiting until you’re safely out of range.  My personal concern is the slow group that won’t let you play through.

But be that as it may, patience with other golfers is part of the gentleman’s game.  We treat other golfers the way we want to be treated on the course.  Thus, I believe golf is the only sport where one can apply the Golden Rule while enjoying the competition and the comradery and God’s wonderful creation.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 08/17/16.

MY GLOBAL WARMING EXPERIENCE

I checked the outside temperature at 9:00 one morning last April and it was 27 degrees F – a little cool for April. But, by 3 p.m. the temperature had risen to 57 degrees F.  That’s a whopping 30 degree rise in just a few hours.

I had to ask myself, “How did the Earth survive such a warming event”? It was a tremendous rise in heat in a very short period of time.  So I looked back over the entire month, and found some very startling data.  In that thirty-day period the temperature had risen an incredible total of 599 degrees.  That is global warming at its worst.  Nearly 600 degrees in just one month!  We should have all been roasted and baked……………

So, let me put this in perspective.  A few scientists fear a 2 to 3 degree warming over the next century, and yet we’ve seen many times that in just one month!  And during that month the oceans didn’t rise and flood coastal cities.  People didn’t perish from lack of food or water.  Nobody got cooked as they walked or jogged or golfed.

This makes me feel much less fearful of “Climate Change”, because it seems to happen over and over again without any ill effects on the environment or humans.  It looks to me like the Earth is able to withstand wide variations in temperature in both the short term and the long term, and I’m very grateful for this!

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 03/08/16.

MY APOLOGIES TO YOUTH

We have failed to effectively communicate to the next generation the benefits of warming global temperatures.  These include a longer growing season to produce more food to feed the hungry and starving.  [Plus, more corn can be grown for Ethanol production.]  It also means less snow in the winter to protect drivers from fatalities and hikers from frostbite. It means more rain so there will be more clean water to protect those dying of thirst.  And the rain will also help the crops grow faster. [But the more CO2, the less water crops need.]

A lot of positives are involved, which outweigh the fearfulness instilled in our children by the Climate Change proponents.  They only look at the negative possibilities.  They say the oceans will rise due to glacial melting; but the Antarctic ice cap has grown, not shrunk, and the oceans haven’t risen much, if any.  They say the polar bears will disappear, but the polar bear population is increasing. 

I’ve been looking forward to global warming, but sadly Earth’s temperatures have not gone up much in the past 18 years.  And nobody knows when they’ll rise again, if ever.  Some scientists are fearful of “Climate Change” – but it’s far from the 97% of all scientists that our frightened youth have been taught. [This figure is actually taken from selected writings, not from a scientific survey.]

I’ve evaluated a few scientists myself, and they are 100% certain that Climate Change is a naturally occurring and repetitive series of events that cycle through the decades.  One of these is Dr. Judith Curry, Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, whose website is Climate Etc.  I suggest that any adult or youth who would like a very scientific and technical study of this important topic should search this site and read it thoroughly.  She has also authored or contributed to over 196 articles about the Earth and Atmosphere.

And remember what God told Noah after the flood in Genesis 8:22 (NIV): "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."  We’ll always have the seasons, and this means we’ll always have good old climate change.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 05/26/16.

PREPARE TO MEET GOD

Death is in the headlines after every terrorist attack.  But it’s also on the obituary page of the Review.  We see it for friends and loved ones.  Famous people and strangers all face death.  Nobody escapes it.  And that is how we meet God – when we die and pass into Eternity.

So the question becomes, “How do we prepare to meet God?” The timing of this upcoming meeting is completely unknown and could happen at any time; thus the importance of advance preparation...

Thankfully, the Good News is that we can find the answer if we sincerely search for it.  God has put the knowledge of Eternity in our minds and hearts.  It’s a natural [or maybe a supernatural] longing that every person has.  From the search for the Fountain of Youth to long-term cryogenic body preservation that is purchased by some, man’s history is filled with the quest for longer, if not eternal, life.

If it’s God we’re going to meet, it makes sense to see if He has given us any revelation about this yearning we have for living on and on and on and on and on and on and on…

If you, the reader of this missive, are serious about finding out what God has said, then begin with the Holy Bible.  I suggest you start reading in the New Testament, perhaps the Book of John.  It won’t take you long to find the real solution to the dilemma of death and how to get ready for your Divine Appointment.

This was posted by Carl E. Gustafson in The-Review – Alliance OH on 07/02/16.