"What we've got here…is failure to communicate." ~ from the movie, 'Cool Hand Luke'

Solomon was right. There really is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Or, my often-used saying, "The more things change it is the more they stay the same." I had that in mind when I consider the fact that I am hurriedly closing in on 3,400 blogs. It is Thursday, June 25, 2020, and I do hope all is well on your home front. The word rehash didn't come along until a long time after Solomon, (1820 to be precise) but it came to mean presenting something similar in a slightly different form. There's also the rewording, rewriting, and perhaps even repackaging along with repeating. It's okay for you to see it that way because outside of our Savior and Lord who once walked among men, there never lived a man who had more wisdom than Solomon. Yet, even with God-given talent and ability, Solomon had his own set of issues. But that's a story for another day. There are times when I feel like telling myself, "Stop me if you have heard this before." I resist because I would likely be stopping a lot. To be honest, there's a certain level of it all running together over time. One thing is pretty clear. I write today pretty much like I wrote a long time ago. I still have some correspondence, reports, and other writings and they correspond fairly close to my work in the present tense. I would hope I am a little better in some areas of tightening up my text, but, that too is a question hard to answer. I still get notes from people who read what I write and my wife often gives me her thoughts. Sometimes even about my blogs. Joking only.

I've mentioned before about how, over the years, I've made contact with people in my birth dad's family, especially those connected to my dad's twin brother, Uncle Walter. As with most family trees over the past 65 years, his lineage experienced many branches and lots of changes. Occasionally, I hear from a new person on the scene like a grandchild doing ancestor research. Since I've been there and done that, at least as far as I could go, they typically want information and photos I might have regarding people in their family. As we all know, families can be very complicated. I received a request the other day for photos of my dad and his twin brother. The request was from the step-grandson of my dad's twin. He explained how that Uncle Walter's son, David, his step-dad, was the real dad in his life and he wanted to know as much as I could share. See what I mean? He actually is not even blood kin but he is family. I sent him side by side photos of dad and his twin brother along with a photo of their mom. He had tried to get information while David was still alive but he said it just wasn't forthcoming. I think the word on all sides of our family has been 'tightlipped'. So many of the folks I talked to over the years knew something but really had no interest in talking about it. It wasn't as if I intended to write a tell-all book. But, I was very familiar with that sentiment and as my mom used to tell me, "Son, why dig for stuff from so long ago, just let sleeping dogs lie."

Don't get me wrong, I know enough from hints, insinuations, and even some weird connecting of the some of the dots to write a pretty interesting account. However, that was never my intention. I would believe learning surprising information would be the case in most families if the whole story was known. I could keep some of those history detectives busy for a while chasing down this, that, and the other. Some in our family wanted to know because of different medical propensities that have shown up over time. Others wanted to know about their grands and great grands. For instance, my dad fought in WWII and his twin brother did also. Their dad fought in WWI which I would not have known had I not found his enlistment records. That's an example of the kinds of things people are interested in. Sure, I have found a large number of relatives we have that we previously didn't know anything about. A number of years ago one of my cousins sent me a request on Facebook and it asked that I not forget her and their family as they dealt with a serious tragedy. It had not been very long that I even knew we had a connection. Family. Like I say, there's a reason people mark 'it's complicated' in their relationship status. It's been that way since the fall of Adam but we do have hope in the power of Almighty God to help us along the way. Amen. ....More later.