“Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks” Unknown Author

We open up today's greeting and find that we have landed on this last day of November, Wednesday, the 30th, in the year of our Lord, 2011. That is correct. The calendar bears testimony to the dating in and around the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That's exactly what the A.D. stands for, in the Latin, Anno Domini, which means year of our Lord. I am aware that some scholars have changed this designation from A.D. to C.E. which stands for Common Era. They also do away with B.C. (Before Christ) by using B.C.E. (Before Common Era). This way they attempt to dismiss any connection to Jesus the Christ as it relates to dates and time. They do have a few problems here. To begin with, there are over 2,000 years of written materials that do use the B.C. - A.D. form of dating. That is a huge body of documentation that stands as historical evidence as to the meaning behind these designations. Even more important is the immutable truth of the birth, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, and no amount of fiddling with the time marks will change the truth. As the song says: "You ask me how I know He lives; He lives within my heart!" Amen, hallelujah, praise His holy name!

There are only 25 shopping days until Christmas. The recent black Friday promotion paid off big. The key? It was the opening of some of the big stores on Thanksgiving Day, some in the evening before Friday. Total sales are estimated at 52 billion, up from 45 billion last year. That's a whopping 16% increase. Wow! We watched in horror as the news feeds showed some of the fights, altercations, and shenanigans going on across our land as people tried to get their hands on the products they wanted. I heard about one fellow who died from a heart attack and several others received a variety of injuries. Playing those games are just not our cup of tea. But there are many folks that have made it an annual part of their shopping tradition. I was really surprised at some of the comments I heard directly from people who did show up for the bargains at stores in our local area. They reported they saw a lot of pushing and shoving along with some people having to be separated. I was actually somewhat shocked hearing these folks because I would have thought them to be the very unlikely candidates to have participated in this type of promotion. But, obviously they did. I read about the Target employees had put together a petition asking their management to please consider saving their Thanksgiving holiday, but in the end, the bottom line won, and they too went for the gold. I am well aware of those circular decision trees. Without the money coming in, we wouldn't have jobs, therefore, we must do whatever it takes to get the money. That kind of rationale can make sense if the process itself is governed by some strong ethical standards, but, alas, for the most part, those, if they exist at all, mostly gather dust in notebooks, and are there for show purposes only, not for interfering with the bottom line. This is based on my observations during my nearly 25 years in the large corporate world.

We all are aware of the risks associated with someone with bad intentions gaining access to our personal financial information. Mom and dad came up with a pretty clever system. They shred everything and then they burn the shredded strips. That should just about do it. Don't you agree? I did see where our government is offering a $50,000 award to the person who can come up with the best process to recover shredded documents. If they really wanted to make it difficult they could include recovering those documents destroyed by my mom and dad. I do know that we would need a blast furnace just to take care of the Medicare promotional literature we receive each week. I am a subscriber for several years now to the Life Lock protection services that supposedly helps secure all the digital information that exists out in the cyber world. They send me a report every month indicating the status of my protection. These are the things we have to do in today's electronic era. We do know that things can happen. The bank we use has changed names about five times over the past 15 years. All of the previous names were good names, well recognized, and thought to be very viable. However, mergers and acquisitions, along with bailouts and buyouts, well, we end up having to change bank names, check names, and on and on. When all the smoke cleared, that is, if all the smoke has cleared, we ended up with one of the largest banking institutions. That should mean something. Right? A couple of years ago we received a letter from this large banking institution saying that our account information may have been compromised because of a lost briefcase in Europe. They recommended we change our passwords. Hello? Of course we took this seriously and notified all the appropriate financial and credit agencies. This created some hassles for us but can you imagine little us being in someone's briefcase that gets lost in Europe? Thus far we haven't received any sympathy cards from someone over there who might have looked at our account information and felt sorry for us, but we all must admit that we do live in a mixed up crazy world, but it's the only one we have, at the moment, therefore, we need to make the best of it, each and every day. Have yourself a most wonderful Wednesday and Lord willing I will see you here next time right here at our designated spot on the world wide information highway. I think my mom always told me not to play on the highway but we live and learn. May God bless each one. Amen.        .....More later.