bierkergaard

My Dad was over for Easter. It is always a good time. I like hanging out with my Pops. He is a fount of wisdom and purveyor of stories. Like a walking and breathing book. Lessons of Life in condensed comments. Just add beer... He noted, when we were out barbecuing on the back porch, that I really needed to cover the back porch light. The previous tenant somehow had broken the previous covering (I don't want to know how)--and for the last year and a half I have left the light, wires and all, uncovered. To bear the elements naked. Bare Bear, or, Bear Bare. I was in denial of sorts. I knew I should do something for quite a while but my Dad had to be Captain Obvious and point it out. So, I went out to the local hardware store a couple of days later and was surprised to find that almost all of the items of this genre were the whole light apparatus, not just the glass enclosure for the light. I didn't want to mess with the electric wires and all. Neither did I wish to spend th...

Thursday night, I headed to downtown Lancaster to catch the band Kingsfoil, a Central Pa. band who are really good. One of their claims to fame is that they used to have a drummer formerly from some TV show. Really not worth looking up. I think it was Malcolm In The Middle. I have been listening to Kingsfoil for the last couple of months on Spotify. Time will tell if Spotify's model will work. Americans like to mooch without paying up. Although, I have been amused by people complaining on  Facebook, who should know better, about the ads directed at us freeloaders. As the old saying goes, "Beggars can't be choosers." My conscience was bothering me because I don't have any intention of paying up on Spotify. Just like iPhone apps. If I have to pay for them, I am not downloading them. So, I accept the AutoZone guys screaming and even the occasional condom ad on Spotify. Yet, I think artists deserve support. So, there to the Lancaster Convention Center I went. Con...

“Since then your serene majesty and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither sale nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me, Amen." On this date in history, Luther appeared before the Diet of Worm and the Emperor, to either recant or reaffirm his writings. He had asked the previous day to have the night to consider his response. The above paragraph is his concluding statement. I have been recently listening to a Podcast about the History of Rome from its inception to destruction of the Empire. I have been ama...

Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. I know the refrigerator word magnets have gone the way of the Rubik's Cube. Passe. No longer cutting edge, yet on the high school's Guidance Department's office metal file cabinet next to the chairs where students wait to see us, the swami school counselors, these word magnets and phrases provides a psychological palette for the students who come in. The combinations can be silly or sad, and even occasionally profound.  I review the work regularly to observe what is going through the students' minds. And more importantly, what is stirring in their souls. The other day I saw a girl student feverishly composing her words like Beethoven at the piano. I am not sure if she is the one who constructed this above but I surmise that she was. Her affect and engagement reflected a seriousness that seemed congruent to the expr...

Last Sunday, our gathering of Veritas Church volunteered for this organization : (www.bindinglove.org) Binding Love is a non-profit that takes donated clothes and turns them into scarves and sells them, directing the proceeds to help get women out of sex trafficking in Thailand. Our job on Sunday was to cut the clothes into the size needed for scarves. Kind of full circle for the clothes since many of them are crafted in the developing world by poorly paid labor. Mostly women, mind you.  I found my 7th grade Home Econ. class to be of little residual value as I attempted to cut the clothing straight. Yet, it was a fun day and despite the seriousness of the situation of the sex trade, I was getting silly. I put on the pink shirt and had other scraps of clothes around my neck and pink and blue wristbands that were previously sleeves.  Someone commented that I looked like a mash-up of Richard Simmons and Rocky, and then me and another guy alternated between soun...

Last Friday, a call went out on Facebook that a farmer friend of mine needed a hand unloading 7,000 pounds of potatoes coming in late on a tractor-trailer. The truck was delayed, some of those that were going to help out when the shipment was supposed to have come in earlier in the day, had to leave. I was at home when I saw the message. I was going to lift weights. I decided to pick up potatoes instead. I remembered an old comic in Mad Magazine where a kid is lifting weights while his poor mom is taking out a massive trash can load of garbage. It is easy to ignore pleas for help. Pretend I didn't see it. The story of the Good Samaritan starts with seeing but not responding. Luke 10 is clear that they saw.   However,  I decided to run contrary to my individual inertia and hopped in my car and headed West to York. It was only while driving out to the location that I recalled that my farmer friend had bailed me out years before when, during one Halloween Night, he hurried...

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead , Phil. 3:13 Last year when my appendix ruptured, it was a fairly painful experience from start to finish. One relic that I kept was a pair of hospital issued blue socks with some branding from a health care conglomerate in plastic fused onto the fabric. Not very comforting on any measure employed.   I haven't worn them since the hospitalization. A couple of weeks I asked myself the question of "Why I Am Keeping These Around?" For the fond memories of peeing fire, trying to rock out of bed, the killer antibiotic, the nurse stealing a trifling $5.00 out of my wallet?   I would put a photo of the blue socks as a pic but I am just not into giving them any publicity. Soon to be in the trash.  There was no reason to keep the socks except as a reminder of the unsavoriness of the entire experience. The low-poin...