There are some really smart people in this world. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I am however, aware of stupidity which might make me a little higher on the cerebral food chain. Maybe not, but my lack of being able to comprehend real smartness, probably allows me to think so. My stupid detector went off at an airport in Uganda on one of our mission trips.

1989 was an exceptional year, I think. Not just because Taylor Swift was born, but because of things like The Berlin Wall came down, the world wide web flickered on, and I began a crazy cool marriage to the love of my life. 

Back in the day, two guys in Nashville joined with some songwriting buddies at the famous eatery called Tavern on the Row. They ate a bunch of food, drank a round of drinks, and threw song ideas back and forth, as you would if that was what you did.

I had been giving away little Bibles at prison and found out they were using the super thin pages for rolling paper. So I began to make them promise me something. “If you promise me you will read this before you use it, I will still give it to as long as you promise me you will read every single word and read it out loud.”  One young brave man said, “Yes, Sir. I promise.” I told him to smoke his way through the book of John…

I really like Francis Ford Coppola. The Francis Ford Coppola Winery near Geyserville, California, is one of my favorite places to visit in that part of the world. His movies, such as Patton, The Godfather and The Outsiders, have helped shape American culture,but one of his most successful movies was one of the worst in terms of filmmaking disasters….

For more than twenty years I have often visited the shrine of Texas independence on the date of the anniversary of the final siege. It means a lot to me. I especially appreciate the anniversary service that happens just before day light. A somber ceremony with bagpipes, women holding thirteen candles, speeches in both Spanish and English, and rein-actors from the San Antonio Living History Association.

The drought that affected Texas beginning somewhere around 2008-2009 crept up on us through the years like a slow cooking brisket. It was terrible. Our creeks dried up, our ponds went dry, the rivers quit flowing, and our lakes, well, I had never seen anything like it.  You could drive your car on the dirt road that used to be your favorite fishing hole. Farmers had to send to other states for hay. I remember in 2010 passing hundreds of flat bed trucks in Georgia with round bales headed west…

Abraham Lincoln was 6’4” and with his stove pipe hat he was a seven footer. You can imagine how he was considered to be gigantic to people who didn’t leave the farm very often.

When addressing a crowd at Niagara Falls he mentioned real giants saying, “When Columbus first sought this continent- when Christ suffered on the cross- when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea- nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker- then as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now.”