Columns

Valentine’s day is almost here and how many valentines will you have? In elementary school we traded Valentine cards. We actually had a big box and we stuffed it full of valentine cards to our classmates. If we received 20 or 30 valentine cards then we felt good because we had a lot of valentines.

Do You Know Your Horse Heroes?When I was yet a schoolboy over at Stonewall, my night job was running the projectors at the local movie house. The Main. People sometimes would stop me and ask me about their favorite movie star. It was usually a horse.

It wasn’t until the middle of 1942 that we Centrahoma folk realized we faced yet another wartime hardship. The great coffee shortage. Seemed like it affected our fellow Americans too. We were each buying and consuming 20 pounds of coffee per year in 1942. But no worry.

Do. Not. Give. Up. Giving up creates hopelessness. And hopelessness creates a huge black hole of depression and deadness in you. When you quit caring about anything in life, you stop living, even though your heart continues beating.

Jim Priest is CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Oklahoma and can be reached at jpriest@okgoodwill.org.You’ve heard this a lot of different ways. “I’m in your debt.” Or, “I owe you.” Or “How can I ever repay you?

Leftovers from last week’s suggestions for holiday gift giving: MISCELLANEOUS GUIDELINES:1. Husband concedes that writing thank you notes for the entire household and buying gifts for husband’s business associates are not the Wife’s job.2.

What is the best Christmas you remember? Was it when you were a child? Was it when you received the gift you wanted? Was it when you received a lot of gifts? Maybe it was when you had a special meal? Maybe it was when family members gathered who are no longer alive? Was it when you were younger?

The last Christmas I spent with my dad was my most memorable. We were sitting around the table and talking about unforgettable Christmases. My dad said that the one he would never forget was in 1944.

No story can match the Christmas story.Mary was just an ordinary girl but she was special in the eyes of God. She was someone God knew he could choose to enter the world as the baby Jesus. Mary and husband to be Joseph followed the leadership of God and were willing vessels to be used of God.

(Note: I promised Christine Provence, my 10-11-12 grade English teacher at Holdenville High School, that I would run this column every year. She liked it better than any of the seemingly endless papers I wrote in her classes).