Life Stories

Category

OVERQUALIFIED

(I started to make this a social media expression, but decided to move it here. It’s just some musings, and I’m not going to spend extra time editing it or over-formatting it. Some will get it, others will not.) _____________ OVERQUALIFIED. It’s the word that keeps coming to mind tonight as I review and reflect upon an experience I had tonight. While it was moderately or maybe quite “successful” it was not fully what was expected either on my end...

The Story of My First Two Investors

I have often been asked how I started doing caricatures, but rarely asked how I started my entire business. I got to thinking about this today, and thought it would make an interesting story-post. Sometime back around 1986-1987, I was working as a clerical aid for Allstates Engineering Company, an onsite contractor at the old DuPont Louviers facility in Newark, Delaware. There was an older woman friend from the Newark Church of Christ (where I had worked a number of years prior...

A Baby Lamb and Its Mama in Distress

It’s midnight here and I just had a thought-provoking experience. After driving back late from my mural work on a stretch of country roads where I was literally the only car for a good 15 minutes or so, I needed to tend to my sheep. After cleaning up inside some, I went out back and planned to go down and give them their daily treats and check on them. My phone was dead and I had no flashlight but I...

Presence, Absence and Distance

There’s a saying these days, “Fake it til you make it.” I don’t like that statement; and furthermore, I don’t agree with it. Just what is one faking? And, more importantly, “What will it mean to ‘make it?'” I got into bed around midnight, and then, I lay there looking at my phone. I rejoiced with those who rejoiced at the birth of another child and grandchild, while my hopes of seeing my own grown children/grandchildren any time soon ebb...

A Letter That Will Make the Demons Tremble

“I thank God, whom I serve, as my ancestors did, with a clear conscience, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.”~ I Timothy 1:3-5 I had been thinking at some point starting to write letters to my grandbabies, but had...

Cousins, Conversation and “Concepts”

Yesterday we six Slifer women of either sister/first-cousin relationship gathered for the day to converse and catch up. There were two themes we came back to at points as we shared and reminisced on memories of past generations: 1. We all seemed to agree that as we get older, there are new or different questions we wish we could still ask of the older generations that we did not ask as much when we were younger and had opportunity. 2....