The Storyteller | Mary Vee

NPR has been running a humanity series which included interviews with people who feel they have financial issues. All but one story intrigued me. One stirred me to comment in this post. The story is about a man who has a supervisory position. He is married and has three children. He makes a little over one hundred thousand annually.  When he and his wife married and wanted to start a family they discussed the choice between having a two parent income and placing the children in day care or a one parent income and have a stay at home parent. After much thought they decided the two choices would be a wash financially because of daycare costs and went with the one parent income with a stay at home parent. Now that the children are older and one is getting ready to enter college, the man said he  is thinking they made the wrong decision. He looks at his neighbors and sees all they have. Had they been a two parent income they could have a lot more money to buy the things they want

Maybe the Internet has taken away the mystery or fear of meeting new people, I'm not sure. But this week, three cases leaped to my attention where new folk met new friends not on the internet. These weren't just superficial hi, howya doin' chance meetings. They had a deeper connection. Thanksgiving is a great time to talk about this topic. The first new unexpected friend I'll share happened at the local community college during a Citizens Police Academy class. BTW, this is a great class for everyone and is offered all around the country. My greatest take away was the strategies for driving on ice. Of course, I enjoyed the tour through the jail because of the unplanned riot in the women's wing, and sitting in the jury box for the first time while the judge gave her presentation on the courts.  The point being is I met classmates. We had a "graduation", a food and chat time during the last class hour. I took a handful of bookmarks with photos an

Monday night's world cup football playoff between Italy and Sweden proved to be an epic game. This was the first time Italy did not earn the right to go to the World Cup football (or as we Americans say, soccer) games in sixty years. I didn't like the mocking reports against this fine team. And while the Italian fans walked away in silence, I thought there had to be shreds of good hope in this major sports event for them. I searched on-line stories about the event.  Then, this morning, tucked in one article, was the rest of a story. The heroic response by Italy's goalkeeper, Gianluigi Buffon. As we all heard, Buffon played brilliantly. He prevented any scores by Sweden. The final score was 0-0. He did his job. There are no overtime minutes to determine the winner. According to the rules, if a game ends in a tie, the previous scores and win/loss records are used to determine the winner. Italy's team knew what was at stake before the match began. Buffon

Several years ago I stood in the middle of sagebrush that stretched as far as the eye could see and took this photo. The Rocky Mountains served as the border. Looks amazing right? Well... That day, my daughter and I drove away from the city to a Montana ranch for a get-together. We were really excited to see our church friends there. The obscure directions to the ranch house left us wondering several times if we'd stayed on the correct road. On past an Indian reservation and out to nowhere, we made it and had a wonderful time. At the end of a very fun afternoon, we climbed in the car and headed for home hoping to reverse the directions correctly.  A mile before I took this photo, the car made a chugging sound. Then and only then did I notice the gas gauge. The word empty was an understatement. As you have probably experienced, an "empty" gauge means there's a bit more gas left in the tank.  My panic rose to a level 5.  Those of you who have been followi