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Route 66
This is my Route 66 birthday. Like the iconic roadway from Chicago to Santa Monica, my life has had a diversity of experiences. I have stood on the heights of success and in the depths of despair. My days have taken me across fertile plains, grand rivers, through majestic forests, as well as being forlorn in the empty heat of a desert. I have met wonderful, generous people and have known my share of duplicitous hypocrites. My days have seen the road ahead for miles, beautiful sunsets, creation’s monuments, and have felt the awe of being so small in a landscape, vast.
Attractions along the way have included millions of written words, tens of thousands of students, hundreds of speaking opportunities, scores of essays, contributions through ten books, trips to five continents, four higher education degrees, three teaching levels, two educational awards, in one full life. I have taught junior high school through Ph.D. studies over forty years. The craft of teaching has been plied in both Christian and public settings.
My family has been my heart, hearth, and home; my friends have brought joy and encouragement. As for those who did me harm, Joseph said it best, “God meant it for good.” With Paul I would claim both, “I have known what it is to be in want and to have everything I need.” And for the abundance of life, David speaks for me, “All things come from You and of Your own we have given.” Traveling West toward the setting sun, I cast an eye East, to remember the bad and the good, to thank my family, friends, and my Lord for bringing me across my Route 66.
On his Facebook page, former Dirty Jobs host and prominent blue-collar trades proponent Mike Rowe was asked to respond to Howard Dean’s comment that Scott Walker’s lack of a college degree makes him”unknowledgeable” and that we should require presidential candidates to have a bachelor’s.