The Best Laid Plans . . .

 

As Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men gang aft agley” (often go awry),¹ and last week’s blog post reminded us that we can’t predict the future. Put those two together, and you have a roadmap for our latest international travel adventure.

The plan was to spend six days traveling on our own in Iceland and then fly to Ireland for a two-week tour. After doing our sightseeing in Iceland, we headed for the airport hotel for our next-day flight to Ireland. The tour company wanted a COVID test before joining the group, so we took that when we got to the hotel. Unfortunately, Roland tested positive. (I never did.) We ended up cancelling the tour (which we have since rescheduled) and spending six days living in the airport hotel before coming home.

Fortunately, while life calls for constant adjustments to our plans, the changes don’t always have to be devastating. The hotel was relatively comfortable, the food was decent, we had plenty of reading material, and both the airline and the tour company rolled over our payments so that all we were out was the hotel bill and meals while living at the airport. More importantly for me, I had several manuscripts in the cloud and managed to get quite of bit of work done.

And we did get Iceland in. Here are a few photos. The one at the top of this post is the Northern Lights from Hotel Anna in the countryside. The next one was taken flying over Greenland, and the following two are Hallgrims Church in Reykjavik and a view of Reykjavik from the tower of Hallgrims Church.

These photos were taken at the Arbaejarsafn Open Air Museum. The first is a church, and the second shows Roland standing in front of a separate vestry building.

The next two are scenic pictures taken while traveling through the countryside following a route called “The Golden Circle.”

These three were taken at Thingvellir National Park. (Actually, the Th is a funny-looking P.) The first shows the Almannagja, where North America and Europe meet, the second is Oxararfoss (foss means waterfall), and the third is the foot of Oxararfoss, which you can’t see from the top.

Our second day on The Golden Circle was a water day. Not water sports, but natural water features. The first is Stokkur Geysir, which was across the street from our hotel. The others are all waterfalls: Gullfoss, Seljalandsfoss, and two of Skogafoss. You can see the long walk to the top of Skogafoss, which neither Roland nor I took.

We saw the sunset and the Northern Lights from the grounds of the Hotel Anna on The Golden Circle near those last two waterfalls.

The next two photos show buildings at the Skogar Folk Museum and a nearby cave house, which does extend back under the mountain. It was probably used for storage rather than living in, but the early Icelanders took advantage of the caves and built entrances on them.

Finally, I must close with a photo from our airport home. This art is called “The Nest” and shows a jet being born from an egg.

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¹ From “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns.

Predicting the Future

 

Several things have happened lately to remind me how hard it is to predict the future.

I recently watched a 2013 rerun of Shark Tank where an entrepreneur pitched a cell phone app that interacted with bar codes and QR codes. Mark Cuban passed on it partly because, as he put it, “QR codes are on their way out.” Fast forward nine years, and he was so wrong.

This past September I received an assignment to write the February 2025 devotions for a devotional magazine called Portals of Prayer. Yes, you read the date correctly. I submitted an outline earlier this year, and the devotions themselves are due in January 2023—two years before they will be published. Scripture doesn’t change and a good devotion should be timeless, so that part is okay.

Unfortunately, writers are not as timeless. I was asked to submit a short biography with the devotions, and who knows how much will change before the publication date. I could even be dead by then. So I assume they ask for an update shortly before the devotions are published.

Knowing how far in advance the devotions are normally assigned, I was surprised in July to notice references to COVID-19 and its aftermath. My best guess is that the person who was originally assigned those devotions didn’t meet his or her deadline for some reason so the publishers had to look elsewhere—either by making a rush assignment or by moving up devotions that had already been submitted. Regardless, it appears that something happened that the publishers hadn’t predicted.

In this world, there is very little we can count on. Even death and taxes have their uncertainties.

But one thing is predictable. This world will end and then the judgment. Those who know God will go to heaven, and everyone else will go to hell.

I’m glad I’ll be in the first group.

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The image at the top of this post is Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment.”  I took the photo on a 2018 trip to Rome. The original is in the Sistine Chapel, and no photography is allowed inside. I didn’t have to violate the rules to get this picture, however. The Vatican had placed a reproduction in the courtyard for visitors to photograph, instead.

A Tribute to My Grandparents

 

My calendar says that yesterday was Grandparents’ Day.

Both of my paternal grandparents died before I turned seven, so I didn’t know them well. I mostly remember the cookies in Grandma Page’s cookie jar. Even so, I loved to hear my father’s stories about growing up with his parents, and I cherish this photograph of my older brother and me with them in the front room of their Fruitport, Michigan home.

I have more memories of my maternal grandparents. They lived on the Iowa farm where my mother had grown up and, although it was several hours away, we visited as often as we could. No matter how late we arrived, Grandma Wagner always had food on the table. She had long hair that I loved to comb, but she criticized the length of my bangs and claimed that I would lose my eyesight because of it. Grandpa was the stereotypical farmer and spent much of his time outside long after he had “retired” and turned most of the farming operations over to my Uncle Wyman. Grandpa also enjoyed photography, and we spent many pleasant hours looking through his pictures.

Grandma Wagner died when I was in college. Then Grandpa moved to Arkansas to live with my Aunt Phyllis and I didn’t see him as often.

I was fortunate in both sets of grandparents, but I appreciate them most for modeling their Christian faith to my parents, who in turn modeled it to me.

And I will be forever grateful.

Labor Day Origins

 

As mentioned in my last post, one of my as yet unpublished stories takes place during the Pullman Strike of 1894. My research for it uncovered some history about Labor Day, so this is a good time to share that information with you.

The first known celebration of Labor Day in the U.S. was organized by labor unions and occurred in New York City on September 5, in 1882. In 1887, Oregon was the first to make it an official state holiday, and other states soon followed. But it took the Pullman Strike to turn it into a national holiday.

In July 1894, President Cleveland ordered federal troops in to break up the strike, which was disrupting the U.S. mails. People still argue about his motives and whether it was the right response, but that isn’t the subject of this post and I won’t accept any comments on that issue. In any event, President Cleveland felt the need to smooth things over with the labor unions. He apologized by making the first Monday of September a federal holiday.

And we have been celebrating it as Labor Day ever since.

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The photo at the top of this post shows an early Labor Day parade. I couldn’t find an exact year or location for the photo, but it is in the public domain because of its age.