WHAT’S UP? HAS MOVED

What’s Up? with Merlene has moved! Find the new site here:
http://merlenedavis.bloginky.com
Thanks! (Don’t forget to change your bookmarks!)

Family road trip

Please, please, I beg of you.
Do not ever suggest a restaurant to hungry members of my family, in town for the funeral of a beloved family member, and then take the scenic route, over about 35 miles of circuitous country roads, never traveling faster than 25 mph, to get to the food.
They will eat you.
That’s [...]

Pancreatic cancer claims my big brother

Whenever I saw ­interviews ­featuring Randy Pausch, the ­Carnegie Mellon ­University ­computer science professor who became the public face of p­ancreatic cancer, I would breathe easier.
Pausch, famous for the last ­lecture he gave last ­September that subsequently was turned into a best-selling book, was ­diagnosed with that cruel ­disease in ­September 2006, shortly before my [...]

Forgive me, but I can’t help but gloat

This page is filled with information and suggestions, compassion and empathy for those parents of younger children who will be headed back to school.
The cost of supplies, the aggravation of having to entice sleepy kids out of bed at dawn, and the need to save vacation days to tend to a sick child are enough [...]

Life Renewal Program gives support for ‘life-controlling issues’

“God has always been there for me, always been in my life,” said Doug Keith, 47. “And he has always let me have my free will. But there gets to be a point where he humbles you.”
Keith realized that when he found himself “wallowing in isolation,” drinking a case of beer a day, and trying [...]

Obama is black; McCain is old; let’s move on

I truly hate all the recent exchanges between the campaigns of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama concerning who “played the race card.”
See, Obama mentioned that the Republicans would be trying to scare people by noting he is not patriotic, or that he doesn’t look like the presidents on our paper money.
McCain’s advisers pounced on [...]

Volunteering opportunity

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday ­— as in tonight — Jack and Ann Salyer invite you to stop by NorthEast Christian Church and join their friends, fellow church members and strangers as they help students in need.
“You don’t have to bring anything,” Jack Salyer said. “Just yourself.
“It will be a night of fun, ­fellowship, food and [...]

Everything’s coming up duct tape

Anna Kate McFarland, 17, stood in the middle of a group of women old enough to be her mother, or possibly her grandmother, teaching us how to fold a 2-inch piece of duct tape into a pentagon shape that would, with our patience and her nurturing, become a petal on a rose.
And, by the end [...]

Hate is not a good reason to kill

I simply do not understand it.
You are angry with liberals, with folks who want to protect the rights of people, so you take a rifle into a church which unashamedly holds those beliefs, and you open fire on innocent people, killing two and wounding four others, two critically.
That’s what Jim D. Adkisson, 58, allegedly did [...]

I Can Still Hula Hoop!

I remember skillfully hula-hooping on various parts of my body in my youth. I could do two around my waist and one around each arm.
Of course there is a distinct possibility that my memory has blurred with the expansion of my waistline and the passage of time.
But I do know I could hula hoop and [...]