Ole Pappy

Here it is, a new year already. The nice thing about New Year’s Day is that we get to start all over again.

“Think about it like this,” my Ole Pappy used to say.

“This is the first page of a new book.” Then he added, “So make it a good one.”

As I think back on 2017, I find it was filled with far too many bad times. Things like the Hurricane disasters in Texas and Florida, abundance of mass shootings, like the one in Las Vegas and other places and the horrible fires that destroyed so much in California and other places.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could start this new year, 2018 without any of these things? Now, it’s not going to be easy.

But maybe we could take a page from a movie I saw called, “The War Room.”

Now, it wasn’t about your typical kind of war. It was a war against Satan and the evil things that seem to transpire because of him. These people designated a War Room in their homes and went there to pray. And, of the most amazing things kept happening as a result of that prayer.

Hey, I know it was a movie — but it really made me think about the fact we can do something about all the bad things happening around us.

There have been other amazing movies this year as well — and most of them, based on solid morals and love sure make you feel a lot better about the world. It sure beats turning on the evening news to hear what terrible thing has happened now.

Recently at a Minneota Rotary meeting, Wayne Hennen and his daughter Isabelle talked about their visit to Guatamala as part of the Big Stone Therapy trip to help others.

The amazing times they had and the friendships they made while helping others was a remarkable story. If only we had more of this kind of good news.

Or maybe we just see too much of the bad and not enough of the good. The Hennens showed pictures of people who had big smiles on their faces when they were helped by the folks from Big Stone.

It was one of the “feel good” stories of the year. In 2018, I would hope to see many, many more of these types of stories. We need the good news, not more bad news in 2018.

Next week, The Mascot will present our annual, “Top 10” stories of the year, plus our Top 10 Feature Stores and Top 10 Sports Stories. It always amazes me how much news we’ve gone through in the past year.

And after gleaning the past issues of the Mascot, we always find there was more good news than bad.

But then, that’s the nice thing about weekly newspapers — they try hard to find the good! We spend a lot more time looking for the good news than we do reporting the bad news. Sure beats what you see on television most of the time.

So as we head into a new year — 2018 — my wish for all of you is to have a GREAT YEAR and that we’d always look for the good and not the bad news.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

LAUGH A LITTLE: Depends on how you see it! Grandpa goes to visit his daughter and family, which are six hours away. He was tired when he arrived and wanted to visit — but was summoned by four grandkids to go outside and play ball.

Outside the kids put the ball on the tee and asked grandpa to kick it. He asked, “why do I need to kick the ball?”

They replied, “Mom said when grandpa kicks off we get to go to Disneyland”.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: As My Ole Pappy used to say, “Don’t ever steal and don’t lie. The government hates competition.”

Ole Pappy liked politics — after all, he was a newspaperman. But most of the time he just liked to make fun of it. And he usually made me laugh.

Thanks Ole Pappy!