Introduction Those of you who are reading this (and who undoubtedly are few in number), I admire you for your patience, perseverance, and love. Without those qualities, it is unlikely you would have stuck with me through three extensive periods of time in one single year in which my blog has been “down” for weeks at a time. My site has been hacked and ruined three times, but we have now moved to a new provider who has assured us that security for my site will be much improved. Time will tell. Nonetheless– I thank you for your readership and […]

by Teri Ong A poignant movie scene that never fails to choke me up to some extent is the scene in Chariots of Fire where the head master of a college in Cambridge is welcoming new students. He references a memorial on the wall behind him listing the names of all of the students from that college who were lost in World War I. He says it represents the “loss of a generation.” I think it affects me more than it might some others because I, too, am a teacher who has now seen numerous classes come and go. I […]

by Teri Ong Physiologists tell us that the sense of smell is more acute and memory of particular scents more long lasting than other sensory input in humans. In a metaphoric sense, we ascribe a “scent” to aspects of our life. When things are good we may say that things are “rosy” or “sweet”. If someone comes out of a difficult circumstance in a positive way, we say they “came out smelling like a rose.” But when things are not good we are likely to say, “That stinks!” There are a lot of things in life that are necessary, but […]

by Teri Ong Bill Clinton and his operatives coined (and often repeated) the campaign slogan, “ It’s the Economy, Stupid!”, in recognition of the fact that a large part of the population votes with the pocket book. His slogan is merely a re-cast version of “Follow the money.” That has been said by so many people we could probably never trace its true origin, but it was probably said by an early descendent of Adam. God has warned us over and over again– “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” “Whoever desires to be rich […]

by Teri Ong   I recently read with great appreciation a blog post called “Time to Speak Up” by Kevin T. Bauder [In the Nick of Time, May 15,2009]. The incident that precipitated his fine article was a message by Pastor Dan Sweatt at a meeting of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International wherein Sweatt denounced “Calvinists” as those who “take away the Book” and “take away the Gospel.” Such charges are not only unlearned, Bauder astutely points out that they amount to bearing false witness (un-truths), which is not an error– it is sin. One of Sweatt’s issues is that […]

by Teri Ong [I wrote the following as an opinion column submitted to the Greeley Tribune in response to an article about an illegal immigrant who was working hard to find a way to get in-state tuition rates at one of our state universities. The gist of the article was how deserving this student was and how unfair it is for our legal system to bar his way to financial breaks for a college education. My response was not published in the Tribune, so I publish it here.} To recast the teaser on the special report “Unwanted Potential” published in […]

By Teri Ong One of my favorite bits of animated pop art is the movie Chicken Run. The home version has been out since 2000.  I particularly like Aardman humor and Aardman-style claymation. But I also like some of the more subtle nods they give to some of the great (and serious) films of the past such as Stalag 17 and The Great Escape, films I watched and appreciated with my father, who was a veteran and student of WWII.  And indeed, behind the silliness and fun in Chicken Run lie some weighty themes. In summary, the plot involves the […]

by Teri Ong I have been keeping a long vigil by my telephone this afternoon. My stomach grips every time the phone rings– it is a condition the Apostle Paul called “bowels of mercy” (King James translation). Earlier, my husband interrupted a normally routine music lesson to tell me that our daughter’s roommates had just been in a life-threatening car wreck. They had been “t-boned” by a semi. My husband was heading to the hospital. The semi driver had no time to slow down. The two sisters took the full force in a compact car. The extrication took a long […]

by Teri Ong In a Time Magazine essay entitled “The Great Reset: The End of Excess” (4/6/09) Kurt Andersen makes the case that the current “economic crisis” is good for us because it is forcing us to rethink a fat lifestyle that has left us bloated and sick as a society. He cites many statistics to show where we have gone in the past 25 years: consumer debt up 35%, savings rates down from 11% to 1%, legalized gambling up from 2 states to 48 states, average weight of humans up 20 pounds per person, etc. Andersen calls it our […]

by Teri Ong On my flight to London three weeks ago, I had occasion to watch a BBC documentary on the “Real Atlantis.” The premise of the archaeological detective story was that the quasi-historical accounts of the sunken city of Atlantis probably referred to the destruction of the Minoan culture by water. The current theory is that a giant tsunami inundated Minoan cities when the nearby volcano Thera blew up in the most gigantic eruption known to man. Educated guesses put the death toll at approximately 80% of the total Minoan population, which essentially ended their highly advanced civilization. As […]