LSJ Blogs: John Schneider

The plan for 2010

My one and only resolution for the coming year — and, in fact, the coming decade: Be more generous.
Not necessarily with my  money (my wife and I have a plan in place for that), but with myself.

Not our finest 10 years

Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, Bernie Madoff … not to mention a stolen presidential election, “Shock and Awe,”  and rampant Wall  Street avarice.
I think the decade-namers are right: Good riddance to the Naughty Aughts.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s wishing you all good health, a warm bed, a roof over your head, a good meal, someone to love, and useful, engaging work.

I won’t stand for this winter storm watch stuff

Snow,  on top of sleet, on top of freezing rain?
On Christmas Eve evening?
How perverse can Mother Nature be?

Whom do you tip at Christmas?

When my dad was a mail carrier, the tips he got from his customers each Christmas — “pops,” he called them — helped him buy our family Christmas. He made a ceremony out of opening the envelopes at the kitchen table each night. We all gathered around as he added up the loot.

Home-schooling a complicated course

In October 2007 I learned — in spades — that home-schoolers are fierce in their opposition to government intervention.
That education came after I wrote about a Perry Middle School teacher’s bad feeling about a girl pulled out of school by her parents — perhaps, the teacher feared, for the wrong reasons.

Oy to the World

What do “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song,”  “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Baby,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Winter Wonderland” all have in common?

Slap the cuffs on me

I once shot my brother with a BB gun, because he shot me. Our father was displeased in the extreme, and took the guns out of service for a week or so.

Our free ride

One more possible reason — aside from Christmas spirit and patriotism — why people were so eager to help bring the soldiers of the 1073rd home for Christmas:
The recognition that 100 percent of the sacrifice for  our two wars has been borne by about 1 percent of our population.

What made me do it?

The holiday buffet hors d’oeuvres were enough for lunch. More than enough. Yet, I went for the salads and breads; the soup and chili; the ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy …
Why? because it was there.